Sometimes, I get to work on the most awesome jobs.
I've always wanted to work in toy design. The closest I get from time to time is when I do character design for 3D modeling, where I can visualize characters or vehicles in full orthrographic turnarounds format. But for a time, I got to work on designing toys for fast food kid's meals.
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| DC Comics Super Heroes toy designs for Jack In The Box kids meals, for Promotional Partners Worldwide. |
DC COMICS SUPER HEROES - JACK IN THE BOX KID'S MEALS TOYS
I was assigned to work on the toy set above. Each character I did orthographic turnaround designs for the sculptors to work from. The concepts were given to me, and in a few cases, a visual sketch was provided for me to then organize and take to finish. The Batmobile, Aquaman and Green Lantern I contributed more to in terms of final positioning and detail, while Wonder Woman and Darkseid were pretty straightforward designs whose prelim sketches provided to me needed little adjustment.
Superman in the phone booth was my favorite. In addition to Superman in his simple stance, I got to design the function of how the phone booth doors would open. Everything worked so well in the end, I felt like a kid buying all the copies of the toys I worked on.
This made everyone at the Jack In The Box restaurants think I was a very disturbed man-child who had no life, when I would come . Hey, I wasn't disturbed! The other stuff I can't argue about...
PROMOTIONAL PREMIUMS
The same companies I would do fast food toy design work for also produced items that are called 'Premiums', which are promotional items - toys, collectibles, souvenirs and household products - that are linked to a particular product for entertainment properties or companies.
SCULPTED DVD HOLDERS
I got to work on a lot of concepts for what was supposed to be a line of premiums and products to be sold in Blockbuster Entertainment stores. Unfortunately, a lot of these concepts never got produced. That's too bad, because I think these things would have really sold like gangbusters!
Well, I know I'd buy 10 of each of them, at least.
Being such a huge Rankin/Bass fan from way back, this is my favorite DVD holder I got to work on:
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| The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass DVD holder, designed for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment. |
Every nerd and geek I know (me being one of them) would LOVE to have one of these:
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| Alien movie 'face hugger' DVD holder, designed for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment. |
Bookends, anyone?
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| Aliens vs. Predator 2 movie DVD holder bookends, designed for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment. |
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| From Dusk Til Dawn movie DVD holder, designed for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment. |
It seemed like a no-brainer to adapt Iron Man comic book illustrator & Iron Man movie character designer Adi Granov's brilliant composition & design into a DVD holder.
I think this would have sold really well, too:
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| Iron Man movie DVD holder, designed for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment. |
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| Iron Man movie 'helmet face plate' DVD holder, designed for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment. |
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| Iron Man movie 'chest plate' DVD holder, designed for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment. |
I worked on the Padme & Watto cup-toppers , and part of the Anakin Skywalker cup-topper.
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| Star Wars Phantom Menace soft drink 'cup toppers', designs for Promotional Partners Worldwide & Pizza Hut restaurants. |
This was an interesting and difficult learning experience about how, when you seemingly do everything correctly, things still don't turn out as you had intended:
One of the first set of fast food toys I did designs for was recalled for safety concerns. I was assigned to take characters from an almost never-known property called The Treeples (They're animals who live in trees & talk like people... they're The Treeples! get it? Yeah, this property never really took off), and make a 'barrel of monkeys'-type set of toy designs to be manufactured into one of the premiums to be handed out with the kids meals from KFC restaurants.
One of the first set of fast food toys I did designs for was recalled for safety concerns. I was assigned to take characters from an almost never-known property called The Treeples (They're animals who live in trees & talk like people... they're The Treeples! get it? Yeah, this property never really took off), and make a 'barrel of monkeys'-type set of toy designs to be manufactured into one of the premiums to be handed out with the kids meals from KFC restaurants.
Unfortunately, after the concept was approved by the company that hired me to do the designs, after the individual characters and the container was designed by myself and approved at that level also by the company that hired me, then those approved designs were sent to Korea to be manufactured for a company that has had (and still has) a great track record of many years of extensive experience producing safe toys for children.
Sometimes unforeseen things happen:
PREMIUMS MERCHANDISE
Sometimes unforeseen things happen:
In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), KFC Corporation, of Louisville, Ky., is voluntarily recalling about 425,000 Tangled Treeples toys included with KFC Kids Meals. The toy is a green plastic container with small, blue plastic animal figures inside. The bottom of the container can fit over a child's nose and mouth, which could pose a suffocation hazard to children under three years of age.
A 19-month-old girl reportedly had the Tangled Treeples container stuck over her face, causing her distress. When her mother removed the container, there was a red mark left on the child's face.So just like that, these toys were recalled. It was a fun project to work on, with unwanted and unexpected results.
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| Treeples 'barrel of monkeys' fast food toys, designed for Promotional Partners Worldwide & KFC restaurants. |
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| Horton Hears A Who movie 3D puzzle sculpt design, for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment.
The 'barrel of monkeys' concept is often used in the designs of promotional toys, and this was no exception:
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| Horton Hears A Who movie 'barrel of monkeys' designs, for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment. |
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| Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium movie 'sock monkey clip-on', 'tin holder for wind up figurines', 'sock monkey huggable DVD wrap-around' & 'cylindrical glitter-tube w/floating characters', designed for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment. |
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| National Treasure - Book Of Secrets movie DVD packaging tins, designed for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment. |
Batman candy holders with Bat Signal light projection, designed for Promotional Partners Worldwide & Whitman's Chocolates.
Grinch movie '3D balance game' and 'Christmas hat', designed for Idea Planet & Blockbuster Entertainment.
POINT OF PURCHASE ARTWORK
For a collection of 'magic trick' kids meals toys, back in the days when Photoshop coloring was just starting to be used widely, I did illustrations for the 'Ohh! It's MAGIC' toy set for Jack In The Box restaurants.
The coloring was handled by someone else. My illustrations were used on displays that sat on counters next to registers, and on drive-thru display boards, also printed on the bags used to put the kids meals and toys into.
I was also assigned to do some minor formation corrections on a few of the toys that were initially designed by (listen up, comics geeks) long-time veteran comic book artist Mike Grell.
I was also assigned to do some minor formation corrections on a few of the toys that were initially designed by (listen up, comics geeks) long-time veteran comic book artist Mike Grell.
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| 'Ooh! It's MAGIC' P.O.P. (Point of Purchase) display design and illustration, for Promotional Partners Worldwide & Jack In The Box Restaurants. |
