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Kiss action figures

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Action figures have been an important staple of the rock band Kiss' financial empire. Kiss merchandising currently includes more than 2,000 product categories and are popular with collectors. [1]

Mego's Kiss action figures in their 1978 catalog.

1 Mego
2 McFarlane

The first run of Kiss figures were produced by Mego in 1978, with two variants: one series with ordinary "skinny" bodies, and one series with muscular, more superhero-like, physiques. Paul Stanley's head was recycled from Mego's doll of the Captain from Captain and Tennille, repainted and with hair glued on. [2]

In 1997, action figures were part of an overall marketing deal between McFarlane Toys and the band and included Kiss comic books based on their album Psycho Circus. Band members were portrayed with exaggerated features and rocket-launching instruments on their costumes in Series 1.

Series 2 in 1998 saw figures based entirely on the Psycho Circus characters, where each band member became more of a super-hero, with even more sensational sculpts. They also came packaged with a second, circus-themed figure : King of Beasts with the Animal Wrangler, The Celestial with the Stiltman, The Demon with the Ring Master, and The Starbearer with the Jester. The third series, released in January of 1999, were the Tour Edition figures, which were true-to-life sculpts of the band members and they generally appeared on stage during the Psycho Circus tour: wearing their standard black outfits with plenty of giant silver boots/gloves/trim, big black hairdos, and steel instruments. It marked the first time that the figures simply featured the band members and their instruments without any inklings of super-hero status. McFarlane Toys would produce other such ‘unembellished’ figures of musicians in the following years, especially of classic rock icons.

Series 4 (Sept 2000) combined both these aspects, creating a more-photo-realistic Kiss figures produced at that time and based it on a famous photo from the Kiss Alive! (album) tour, taken in 1976. All members were sculpted, with few points of articulation, to be exactly posed as they were in the photo and the detail included painted-on chest hair, precise facial expressions, and minutely-detailed costumes.

Series 5 was released in 2004 with the "Creatures" theme, and was highlighted by incredibly detailed sculpts of the figures. The figures are not so much representative of the specific band members' as their persona characters: "The Demon" for Simmons and "Space Ace" for Frehley, "Starchild" for Stanley and "The Fox" for Carr. The toys included a greater amount of articulation, primarily in the arms than McFarlane figures generally have, which made them poseable in a larger variety of positions. Furthermore, individual seams, buttons, knobs, buckles, strands of hair, etc were carved into and fully-painted onto the figures.

In August 2004, a seven-figure set based on Ken Kelly's cover painting of the band's Love Gun album was released. It includes figurines of the four band members on a stage base that replicates the album cover's alabaster setting, plus three scantily-clad female groupies.

Finally, in October of 2005, boxed-set three packs were released, each containing three different previously-released versions of either Simmons or Stanley, which displayed the evolution of their costumes as well as McFarlane’s renditions of them.

The following is a list of all figures in McFarlane Kiss Action Figures lines: