All I can think is that some of the figures DO look a lot like the actors (Vincent Price, Herbert West) and there must be some fuzzy "recognizability" factor involved in here. Legal stuff can get weird. But I was surprised and disappointed to read that back at the time, figuring the situation was more like you thought, which is why I remembered it.
Yeah, that doesn't make any sense, because Zach from Diamond Select has repeatedly said Minimates don't have to, and there's no way Funko could make everything they do if they had to.
first, I’d trust Randy’s word over Zach’s any day of the goddamn week.
Second, Zach said Minimates didn’t need likeness rights because they don’t have noses.
Funko Pops have no mouths (for the most part) and are made using a standard loaf head with a triangle nose and black soulless doll eyes (again for the most part… but just checked, yeah, the Shinning pops have the loaf head with no mouths and triangle noses, just hair and eyebrows from the actors)
that level of abstraction is what gives Minimates and Pops a likeness pass, Toony Terrors are sculpted to look like the actors: noses, mouths, eyes, hair… EARS!
It’s also possible it’s on a case by case, licensor by licensor basis as to what is allowed and what isn’t.
Beetlejuice has a “stylized only, no likeness” merch rule and allowed a Toony
Hocus Pocus has a metric fuckton of merch every Halloween and none of it uses the actors’ likenesses which suggests they have a similar stylize only no likeness rights, but Disney allowed Toonies (BIG ONES!) anyway
Randy said an Ultimate Jack from an American Werewolf in Lodon was not going to happen for Likeness reasons, but we got a toony (now it’s possible it’s a Robocop situation and they don’t have human face rights and if they can’t do a Jack you can display slowly decaying they don’t want to do one at all, but still: a toony despite no likeness rights exist)
Jack Nicholson is extremely litigious and very protective of his likeness, it’s possible Warner chose to reject human Shinning Toonies because they didn’t want to deal with it, and if the licensor says no you can’t just make it anyway because minimates got to make noseless ghostbusters so it’s fine.
also unrelated… I bet those weird Kenner style (not the homages, the Kenner style toys with action features) of Alien and Predator are why we’ll never get them as Toony Terrors. They launched at the same time at the same price point and then Disney was like “nah, dawg, new stuff only!” and effectively killed both lines… now they probably won’t allow any more Kenner style AvP figures OR Toony Terrors because “not new stuff!”
Edit:
I totally just remembered! Even Funko Pops have had issues with “likeness rights” in the past!
Tom Cruise famously refuses to allow his likeness for anything (it’s probably why, if you remember all the rumors before RDJ’s eventual casting, he was passed over the role of Tony Stark since he’d make toys an impossibility) and his only Funko Pop, Nick Morton from “the Mummy (2017, the bad one)” was discontinued at his request, even though it’s extremely generic looking, if you took it out of it’s box and tossed it to someone and said “who dis?” They’d more likely say “you made a ‘go Pop yourself’ but forget to move any options off ‘default’?” Before “why that’s Nick Morton! Anchor character of the Dark Universe franchise!”
Jerry Seinfeld also famously won’t license his likeness (he also famously dated a 17 year old, just important to remind everyone of that every now and then) Funko announced that Seinfeld pops were coming in 2015 but they took several years to actually materialize, most likely because even though you can legally license “Seinfeld” the show and legally release a dead eyed all middle sliders loaf head bobble and call it “Jerry Seinfeld” doing so would anger the actual human Jerry Seinfeld (who famously called Miller and Lord talentless hacks because they “stole” his bit about Superman not liking Green Lantern, meanwhile he called a cook book writer a crazy crank because his wife stole their idea to grind up veggies into chicky nuggs to give your children trust issues)
Funko’s Toony Terror adjacent like “Vinyl Idolz” made some Seinfeld characters in 2016, all of whom were Krammer and some secondary characters (some of whom never even got Pops! Where’s my Peterman, Frank Costanza, and Puddy Pops Funko?!?!) likeness rights definitely prevented a Seinfeld from being made in the Seinfeld line. I would not be surprised if behind the scenes Funko was having to work on a deal with Jerry himself and their logic was “oh we’ll just put Jerry, Elaine, and George in a second wave of Vinyl Idolz” but those were long dead by the time a deal was reached and the Pops! finally came out.
TL,DR: likeness rights are a land of contrast
Whether or not a figure requires license rights comes down to your lawyer and the licensor. All an actor has to do is be able to convince a judge or jury that the product in question resembles them enough that an average person would recognize it. Litigation is expensive and famous people can usually afford it so most lawyers will advise their clients to not bother taking a risk if it’s questionable. I would think the majority of Toony Terrors definitely fall into the questionable realm so if NECA can’t secure license rights they probably won’t do it. Funko and Lego can probably get away with most, but as Doc Baghead outlined above, there’s still some actors who will challenge even those, and rather than fight about it in court, they would likely just pass.
With NECA specifically, I would guess they did digitals of Jack and Wendy and either their lawyers said “We need license rights,” or the licensor did. And once you’re turned down, you really need to make sure the end product doesn’t resemble the actor if you’re going to try it anyway. I can’t imagine doing Jack, toony or not, without Nicholson’s eyebrows or smile.
Randy Falk is not only an @$$hole, but he has flat out stated factual opposites on numerous recorded occasions to make himself look better, and Zach Oat is one of the nicest people I have ever had the pleasure to meet.
I would NEVER trust Randy’s word over Zach’s any day of the goddamn millennium, lmfao.
I’m not going argue with you over who’s parasocial interaction is better.
I’ve never personally interacted with Randy so I can’t speak to his character at all, I have interacted with Zach and he’s always been an asshole to me, but glad he was nice to you though!
I'll never understand the weird hate-on people have for Randy. Yeah, I've seen him get testy when people get pushy online (they even posted his personal phone number at one point, part of what drove him off Twitter interactions), but people always claim he lies and I've never seen it despite reading all of tweets while he was still on there. Or at least I was never confused enough by what he was saying to think he was saying something different.
@doc-baghead That sucks. Maybe just catching him at bad times, in bad moods? *shrug*
@cmoney The most recent example I can think of is his bragging that "no one has ever made a comic-based Usagi Yojimbo action figure before NECA," which is factually incorrect. There's been a few others, but I have no vendetta against him, so I haven't kept a list, lol.
And he just comes off as a jerk to the people he supposedly likes on camera. I'm not so autistic to mistake social cues, and I'm not a giant fan of friendly ribbing/roasting, but I can recognize that easily, and it's never seemed like that to me. He appears to genuinely dislike the person he's saying he likes. *shrug*
And unrelated to those things, he has also voiced opinions that support exclusivity/rarity & secondary market price-gouging, and those rubbed me the wrong way on their own.
Trevor, on the other hand, seems like the coolest guy ever, and I want to be friends with him, lol.
---
Back on topic - I found Tarman!! It was the only one, too.
I also found 4 or 5 regular Wednesdays (no school uniform or Enid, but I wouldn't have been able to afford the whole set anyway, especially with Tarman).
She honestly looks slight enough & is in the package bubble pretty high up, so she might fit with the rest of the line.
Also, her card says "Toony Terrors" whereas none of the Hocus Pocus cards I saw this morning do (that I could see - I didn't pull any of them down & inspect closer, but I also didn't inspect hers to notice it).
I can report back tonight after work if anyone is interested.
And unrelated to those things, he has also voiced opinions that support exclusivity/rarity & secondary market price-gouging, and those rubbed me the wrong way on their own.
This one I'll give you for sure. I hate that attitude and I've seen him talk like that too.
Heck, that was my FIRST exposure to him, so it definitely started off on the wrong foot, lol.
Easy, there, ToonTurts, lol...
I always felt like these guys had a similar look...
And, I mean.........I'm calling it: it totally works!!
Definitely eager to find Enid, now!
I still think she’s a little tall, but at the same time I think that looks a lot better, she has shelf presence this way, so I dig it.
We need a comparison pick with the Toony Bruce Campbell in honor of today… ASH WEDNESDAY!
One of my local Targets got in a handful of new TTs. Mostly Nevermore Wednesday, but a few Tarman as well. No M3gan or Fiend, and only a single Vincent Price. Skipped Vincent, since I'm waiting for his Ultimate, but I snagged Tarman since he seems to be the hot ticket item from this latest wave. He's really nice out of package. Some really fun detail. I love how his little included stand is a pool of tar. These guys don't always hit for me, but when they do, they do!
Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!
The stand adds 1/16 of an inch, which is pretty substantial to a figure under 5".
Latest Post: McFarlane Toys DC Multiverse Our newest member: Count von Curdles Recent Posts Unread Posts
