About Where This Came From: First, this came from a 1970-1990’s Tonka designer executives home. He passed some time ago, this collection includes MANY product samples, packaging prototypes, etc. I will likely miss some and classify them as just basic stock. Some may have generic price tags as he was going to sell them shortly before his death. So this at worst is a standard product, could be something more. If questions ask, I got around 1,000 items in this collection. Comes as shown.
Condition: This is a hardcopy, this would be one of 6 or so originally made. The sword tip is broken off. Taking a closer look there are tiny surface air bubble pit marks and bumps which leads me to believe we are looking at hard copies where a high durometer urethane was “poured” into silicon mold. This accounts for rough parting lines. This hardcopy is like a rough draft, it is not finished. For whatever reason, the Willow line seems to have a progression that deviates from Tonka’s standard procedures and use of materials. This was shown to the former Director of R&D and Engineering at Tonka.
If you want to learn about hardcopies continue reading. When they were needed they were used to make the following. Steel molds tooling master for production. Paintmaster was for showing the final product colors. The photography sample, as the hardcopy version has more detail than the steps that follow it. Photography is generally done before the figure is even finished. Packaging sample or a carded mock-up paired with a matching proof card to show how the final packaged toy will look. Office copy in case of questions. Hardcopies made from a negative silicone mold will be slightly larger than the final finished toy. This also allows for shrinkage on the final product. Hardcopies are made from Urethane resin and can be found painted, unpainted, as well as assembled or unassembled.