what happened to the original figure moulds anyone know?

[grinchy]

I was watching plastic galaxy and i started to wonder what happened to the original steel figure moulds from the 70/80's line, did they just melt them down, anyone got any ideas?
I know they released that four pack in the nineties of the classic figures but i believe they were recast from existing figures not the original moulds

 

[MarkG]

Iirc, there are a few guys on RS that have original moulds, but can't fully comment.

As for the 'classic edition 4 pack', yes, they were cast from original figures and hence slightly smaller in size.

 

[grinchy]

cheers i thought so, i'm also wondering how many moulds they had for each character, not just 1 or 2 they produced millions of figures so there must have been plenty of moulds

 

[Frunkstar]

I suspect the majority of them were sold off as scrap for melting down at some point when the toy line was not longer in production & there was no longer a income coming in to warrant them being used, I have often considered the spray masks they used for painting the figures as none have ever surfaced & presume its the same case for those, in a way a huge shame & loss, but in this generation of repro, maybe a good thing.

 

[walkie]

Joe Y owns the uzay moulds, and the polish bootleg ones were sold off last year through RS.

The only moulds for lincensed products in collectors hands are the top toys ones from a find in Argentina, in this case there are both steel production and silicon pre/prod.

How many moulds per figure? That's easy to estimate using Wollfs COO guide. If there's 4 unique COO families for a figure and each family has 1 or 2 slight variants ie Luke FB date up/date down.

So that's 4 x 2 = 8 moulds.

 

[Stargeezer]

Joe Y owns the uzay moulds, and the polish bootleg ones were sold off last year through RS.

The only moulds for lincensed products in collectors hands are the top toys ones from a find in Argentina, in this case there are both steel production and silicon pre/prod.

How many moulds per figure? That's easy to estimate using Wollfs COO guide. If there's 4 unique COO families for a figure and each family has 1 or 2 slight variants ie Luke FB date up/date down.

So that's 4 x 2 = 8 moulds.

your talking about different moulds here, but 1 factory would have multiple production lines running to produce figures, and each line would have had his mould. i don't believe there would have been only 8 factories with all only one line to produce Luke Skywalker for example. I think 1 factory can have multiple production lines producing luke farmboy figures at the same time and each production line has it's own mould, so also going by the fact that there where multiple factories around the globe, there surely has been more then 8 moulds for one figure.

But like stated earlier, these probably all got sold for scrap by the end of star wars line.

 

[M4K3R1]

There is a very old thread on RS about this,
a Kenner ex employee, was present when the original Kenner molds went to the bottom of Hong Kong Harbour.
The chaps name was David I think, I have been looking for that thread for a while but cant find it.
Anyone scuba dive? :wink:


Edit,... got the name wrong, chaps name is Tom,
just found the old thread, read post #15
http://forum.rebelscum.com/t962730/?highlight=kenner+molds+hong+kong

As I said above, anyone for scuba.

 

[Stargeezer]

So basicly your saying Toy Toni has been divin g at the wrong place to find these moulds.... :lol: :lol:

 

[M4K3R1]

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Any sharks in Hong Kong?

 

[Joe]

The only moulds for lincensed products in collectors hands are the top toys ones from a find in Argentina, in this case there are both steel production and silicon pre/prod.

That's not 100% true, while there aren't many Kenner moulds in collectors hands there are a few. Ron has the Rancor Kepper Torso mould for example:

Gus also owns a micro 2-1B mould.

I was asking around this year about the moulds actually simply because of the blue harvest stuff, the moulds used for any BH pieces must have survived the initial cull and were definitely still around until the 90's (94?) but sadly it's likely that after the BH stuff was pumped out those moulds were then also destroyed (so the ones owned by Ron and Gus probably made it out of Kenner before the BH period).

 

[walkie]

You learn something everyday, it was silly o'clock when I typed that original message and I meant to say was...

The only "PRODUCTION" moulds for licensed products., blah, blah...

 

[Joe]

You learn something everyday, it was silly o'clock when I typed that original message and I meant to say was...

The only "PRODUCTION" moulds for licensed products., blah, blah...

Oh my..3:39am! What were you doing up at that time? :shock:

Yeah I get you now, there are fair few silicone kenner moulds out there but steel/production moulds likely all perished. Never say never though, imagine if someone turns a bunch up one day?

 

[grinchy]

very interesting, those silicone moulds would be for first shots i'm guessing as they wouldn't use them for production moulds.
thanks for the info, hard to believe they junked them all

 

[Joe]

Almost right, first shots were the first figures through the production moulds (Steel ones), the silicone ones would have been used for hard copies.

 

[grinchy]

Cheers, still learning these production names.
Thanks for the info

 

[Joe]

If you are interested in that side of things this is a good read with plenty of additional links in it http://forum.rebelscum.com/t930520/

 

[grinchy]

cheers i'll have a good look around, i find the behind the scenes stuff very interesting, i've made many moulds over the years for various things, so seeing these original moulds is very cool, the silicone moulds i've seen in these threads all would produce decent pieces today, years after they were originally made, shows the quality of the original mould makers work

 

[Joe]

cheers i'll have a good look around, i find the behind the scenes stuff very interesting, i've made many moulds over the years for various things, so seeing these original moulds is very cool, the silicone moulds i've seen in these threads all would produce decent pieces today, years after they were originally made, shows the quality of the original mould makers work

Yeah I can quite believe that, they had some talented people working at Kenner that's for sure. The Blue harvest stuff from the 90's looks pretty flawless from what I've seen pictures of (give or take a few that haven't been cleaned up) and those were all from original silicon moulds from the Vintage period that were re-used.

Since I used a picture of Ron's RK earlier in the thread I thought this link would be helpful too: http://theswca.com/index.php?action=disp_item&item_id=48123

 

[grinchy]

thanks for the link, i can see theres lots of cool info out there, i was going to ask what the blue harvest you mentioned was, but found out myself, again i hadn't seen that before either

 

[Frunkstar]

Do you know if any of the metal spray masks have ever cropped up Joe?, I got it word of mouth from an ex palitoy worker that they were used here at Palitoy, so it would make sense that some of the other European factories may have also had to do the paint app's on figures, but from what I know none have ever been found.