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McFarlane Toys is a company started by Todd McFarlane that makes detailed models of characters from movies, comics, musicians, video games, and sport figures. Founded in 1994, the company was originally dubbed "Todd Toys," but the name was changed in 1995 following pressure from Mattel (who feared the new company's name would be confused with that of Barbie's younger brother).
Exquisite attention to detail is the most defining feature in a McFarlane Toy, though almost always at the expense of articulation, which has been a rather large complaint often made against the toy line with regards to the fact that often the toys produced by the company are unplayable and are more like statues than toys. Others have complained about the poor quality of the assembly and plastic itself, finding certain toys extremely brittle and fragile. Still, the line proves popular especially among young adults, and is arguably the most commercially successful toy line at the moment, and has influenced many other toy lines to try imitating their style.
The line, which originally began with action figures based upon Todd McFarlane's "Spawn" comic series, has since grown to feature a large number of licenced property lines including "Movie Maniacs" (which features numerous famous horror icons such as Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, The Terminator, Leatherface, and The Thing), as well as other characters and lines like Basketball and Baseball legends, video game characters (from Soul Calibur, Onimusha and Metal Gear Solid), and Where the Wild Things Are characters. The toy line has also made original works of their own, giving a grotesque twist to fairy tale stories, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and historical figures, and have also collaborated with people like Clive Barker and H.R. Giger to produce other original figures.