We have a collection of prototype action figures coming to our store soon! Recently, we received a vintage collection of prototypes and memorabilia from a former Tonka Executive. As a vintage toy buyer, I feel the most exciting collections are the ones from the former company employees. His collection also included toys from all phases of pre-production.
Moreover, this collection contains prototypes from all of Tonka’s vintage toy lines from the mid-1980s.
This included:
- Go-Bots
- Spiral Zone
- Rock Lords
- Super Naturals
- Steel Monsters
- Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
- Willow
- Tonka Trucks
- Hollywood Dolls
- Keepers
- Pound Puppies
- TNT Racers
- and many more
Vintage prototype action figure toy collection for sale
The following pre-production steps will all be represented in this sale:
- Concept art
- Illustrations and drawings
- Mock-ups made of wood, clay, and wax
- Silicone molds
- Hardcopies both assembled and unassembled
- PTO models
- Made of resin and Dynacast
- Paint masters
- Unpainted
- Pantographs
- Steel molds
- Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) tooling aids
- First shots
- Test shots
- Engineering pilots
- Polybagged samples
- Pre-production packaged samples
- Packaging prototypes
- Internal company documents
Get notifications of when our vintage prototype action figure collection goes on sale!
The real gems are the unreleased action figures since these hard copies from multiple toy lines are unknown to collectors! This collection even contains hard copies where you can see the running changes that the production team made to the sculpt. If you want to know more about them, follow my blog. I will be releasing photos of everything in advance of my selling them. I’m only including a few photos of these great vintage items with this post, more to come later. If you want to know when they start coming up for sale, sign up here pre-sale notification.
Author: Chris Ingledue
Affiliation: Autobot
Function: Theoretician
Bio: I am the founder and owner of Wheeljack’s Lab pop Culture and Toy Shop. My vision has always been to reunite customers with their favorite childhood toys and pop culture, triggering fond memories, and reigniting their imaginations. Every day, I work in the “lab” where it’s Christmas 365 days a year. I scour the internet, like when we had the Sears Catalog of yesteryear, for the next great treasure. Then, I await the arrival of the postman as if he were Santa Claus himself and helping collectors worldwide with their own versions of Christmas. Every day as a vintage toy buyer is an absolute joy!