On Friday, The Nacelle Co. showed off everything it’s been working on this year at Comic-Con International: San Diego (SDCC), including the debut of the new Biker Mice From Mars motorcycles, previously reported on by The Pop Insider and The Toy Book.
We also got our first look at Nacelle’s The Expanse line of action figures, which features the show’s main characters: Chrisjen Avasarala, Camina Drummer, James Holden, Amos Burton, Bobbie Draper, and Naomi Nagata. The panel also spotlighted a new wave of Robo Force figures, including Hundred, Sentinel, and S.O.T.A. 89; The Great Garloo figure which is available now at nacellestore.com; Dargon and Stelara figures from Sectaurs that will be available in October; and a new collection of figures from Power Lords: The Extra-Terrestrial Warriors.
With some properties, such as Robo Force, Nacelle had a lot of freedom to remold the toys and series into its own image. However, Biker Mice from Mars had an established fan base that wasn’t afraid to tell Nacelle where they thought they were going wrong.
“Biker Mice has a real hard core fan base that doesn’t fuck around,” says Brian Volk-Weiss, CEO of Nacelle. “The original toys had six points of articulation and we launched, I believe with 14 points of articulation. It was like 95% positive response, but a very, very passionate group of fans were like ‘There’s no ab crunch. How come that’s different? What about the helmets?’ I fully admit this: I had underestimated how important so many of these things were to the fans.”
Now, the Biker Mice from Mars from Mars have 22 points of articulation and come with interchangeable heads that feature helmets.
Volk-Weiss also says that the company is focusing on making toys they can also adapt into TV series. Ryan Reynolds’ production company, Maximum Effort, has signed on to co-produce a Biker Mice from Mars animated series with Nacelle.
“If we’re going to make the toys, we’re going to make the show,” Volk-Weiss says. “As an example very recently, even in the last month, we were offered an amazing IP, but they didn’t have the TV rights, they just had the toy rights so we passed.”
Nacelle is continuously breathing new life into nostalgic franchises previously owned by other companies, including Biker Mice from Mars (formerly Galoob), Sectaurs (formerly Coleco), The Great Garloo (formerly Marx Toys), Power Lords (formerly Revell), and Robo Force (formerly Ideal).
We hope Nacelle’s trend of giving some love to the toys of ‘80s and ‘90s kids’ childhoods continues, they just do it so well!
Additional reporting for this story was provided by Senior Editor Madeleine Buckley.
