Fair question. Tentpole media franchises are dependent on physical merch and in past decades they previously came out with the action figures first and had screenwriters write stories around them.
over time my makeship nawnii, typh and soon sashley plushes will become my family heirloom due to how rare they are
and also i really want to get a stuffed 3d bunny head hairclip because it looks so cute
i even had various stuffed animals over time
i used to have 2 teddy bears as a kid 1 from the 50s or 60s that had a dress and i used to put in pampers that i would steal from my paediatrician back in 2004 or so (my aunts dog ripped it apart btw)
and the second teddy bear was a gift from my sisters relatives when i was 3 that teddy bear im not going to explain how it got destroyed because its too hot for this forum but eventually i had to put clothes on top of it because it was falling apart into pieces
these days i still sleep with plushes but i sleep with a stuffed easter bunny that i found at a thrift store (its just a regular bunny with a shirt) but i still sleep with it because it looks cute compared to a body pillow
What about prototype toys? I remember jazzwares showing at a toyfare that they were working on Viewtiful joe figures for fire Leo and hulk Davidson that never got released since the other toys sold bad/ the tv show dub was canned at 26 eps on KidsWB.
Lost merchandise (including clothing, which I know has also been brought up) can be an interesting subject, but because they don't technically count as media, they go beyond the scope of this forum for the time being. Maybe a new sub-forum could be created for non-media lost material? But where should a line be drawn? Can food be counted as material? I remember watching a video about a rare kind of Pokémon-themed ice cream. Also, at what stage would non-media lost material be counted as "Found"?
This is a really interesting topic because I know there are a lot of opinions on the subject and I myself have some viewpoints that are probably a little different than what people might expect.
In the context of figures and plushes, the Lost Media Wiki itself does not count them as pieces of lost media. I believe their reasoning for that is because it doesn't fit the definition of media, "the main means of mass communication (broadcasting, publishing, and the internet) regarded collectively". I disagree with this because I would argue the existence of a figure or plush is a means of communication through publishing a toy but I can respect their decision on it.
Another reason however which is one I agree with the Wiki on is that lost media in regards to toys is very vague and could create article spam. For example on the Lost Media Archive there's an article for a Toy Story Woody doll that has a different voice box than most retail versions. Personally I find this to be a stretch of the term lost media and it's more of a novelty search, definitely not suited for an article or anything like that.
Where I most greatly differ from the Wiki on the subject though is in the context of prototypes. Think of these as pitch pilots to plushes or figures- they were created behind closed doors, seen one or twice at toy fairs and definitely never meant to be owned by the public. This makes their existence quite interesting to different collecting scenes and people; for me the cancelled ToySite lines from Nintendo have gone down to be some of the most iconic prototypes within the video game merch scene and to this day we still don't know what happened to all of them.
Instances like that strongly justify my belief in them being lost media, however they wouldn't necessarily be valuable to people who don't collect video game merch so again the Wiki omits them from the site because of that. Prototype rarity is also another factor, how can we distinguish which prototypes are rarer or which ones are worth finding? To me this mindset differs from the idea that all cartoon pitch pilots are created equal for example because prototypes collectively cannot be grouped into one category.
With that said I love reading the occasional plush or figure mystery and I wouldn't be against article additions of notable prototypes but it's just a matter of what their context is and who exactly sees them as notable.
A case of a lost toy that I think is pretty interesting is "Brrrbils". It was a rip-off of Furby that is only known from one old promotional video. There was apparently at least one website about the toy, but it wasn't archived, and moreover, it is totally unclear whether the toy was ever commercially available.
There's a whole bunch of Toybiz products that were never produced. Some Marvel Legends figures, like the X-Babies, Frog Thor and Forbush Man, to name some of the more unique ones, plus a Balrog figure as part of their Lord of the Rings line, though it wasn't going to be properly scaled with the other characters, at 14" when the others were at a 6" scale (seeing this hole in the collection, Neca made their own Balrog figure specifically to scale with the Toybiz figures, standing at 23"; how often do you see a company make a product for the purpose of fitting in with a competitor's product line?).
Go back even further, and they have this cancelled action figure of Dark Aegis, a villain completely made up for the 1990s Iron Man animated series who only appeared in one episode and about whom basically nothing is known.
Last Edit: Nov 8, 2021 3:34:31 GMT by teridaxxd001
lsupersonic- yeah i remember your video on the jumpman, that was part of my inspiration for the question.
they shouldnt allow those toys then to be seen by audience eyes cause obviously people are going to ask about it, same goes for like unaired pilots and director cuts.
Post by thevoiddragon on Nov 15, 2021 20:20:14 GMT
It's a little strange to me why anyone would say yes. Are they something lost that would potentially be of interest and worth investigating? Sure. But are they "Lost Media"? No, definitely not - they by definition aren't Media. Lost Merchandise is something I find interesting too, but Beyond both being "something lost" it's a completely different category and criteria compared to "Lost Media".
It's a little strange to me why anyone would say yes. Are they something lost that would potentially be of interest and worth investigating? Sure. But are they "Lost Media"? No, definitely not - they by definition aren't Media. Lost Merchandise is something I find interesting too, but Beyond both being "something lost" it's a completely different category and criteria compared to "Lost Media".
lets create a spinoff of the lost media wiki and call it lost merchandise wiki then
