The PopCult Toybox

We featured America’s favorite horror-movie host, Svengoolie a few days ago in our Sunday Evening Video feature, and since we were already talking about the legendary monster movie maven from Berwyn Illlinois, now PopCult gives you a quick photo review of the deluxe Svengoolie Studio Set, from ME TV and Figures Toy Company.

This limited edition set is the third action figure version of Svengoolie from FTC, and this time they pulled out all the stops, including a ReMEGO 8″ figure fully-dressed in Svengoolie’s trademark outfit-Red shirt, Black suit complete with detail on the lapel and a removeable top hat and shoes– and his casket, plus a backdrop of his set, and even a miniature Archie McPhee rubber chicken.

The figure itself has a great headsculpt with paint detail of Rich Koz in his Svengoolie warpaint, with rooted hair. The body is a typical Figures Toy Company MEGO copy (this time of the heftier style used for figures like The Penguin, back in the day). It’s got the pitfalls of most of FTC’s imitation MEGO bodies, but is still poseable and can hold his chicken. It’s vitally important that one can hold his chicken.

The top hat can be a little stubborn about staying on Svengoolie’s head, but it is one sturdy, solid hunk of plastic, which is a lesson learned from it dropping on my feet several times during the photo shoot.

The backdrop, which is printed on the package insert, is a fantastic addition to the set, and adds to the fun.

The flips side of the package insert is pretty cool too.

The casket is impressive. It is not hinged, nor is the lid in two pieces, but it is velvet-lined– even the lid, and it captures the look of Svengoolie’s newly-refurbished casket (which is probably eight years old by now). This piece looks great and the figure fits into it perfectly. It also looks terrific displayed in front of the backdrop from the package.

Here’s the Svengoolie figure in front of his casket.

And here’s the casket, with the lid closed for those of you who prefer a closed-casket collectible.

The tiny rubber chicken is half the size of what had previously been the world’s smallest rubber chickens, also made by Archie McPhee. You do just get one, so maybe they can offer an accessory set with extra chickens later. As you can see at right, the chicken is securely held in the packaging, so that you don’t suffer any loose chicken incidents during shipping.

The set comes packaged in a deluxe clamshell–something FTC is very good about–and looks great in the package, or set up on your desktop. Some collectors over at the MEGOMuseum forums add custom figures and rotate them in to represent whatever movie Svengoolie is showing in a given week.

All in all, The Svengoolie Studio Set is a great collectible for fans of the show. It’s a limited edition, so quantities are limited. And it’s not cheap. It’s a reasonably-priced $49.95 (plus about thirteen bucks shipping), but considering the limited number of these sets being made, the deluxe packaging and all the extras, it’s pretty much a bargain. The sold-out earlier editions of the Svengoolie action figure, which didn’t come with the cool accessories are now selling for upwards of a billion dollars and your firstborn on eBay (disclaimer: slight exaggeration there).

Another cool features is that FTC’s collector-friendly packaging allows you to take the figure out, play with him when nobody is looking, then put him back in his package so that people will just think you’re a collector instead of an adult who still plays with toys.

This set checks off all the boxes for fans of Svengoolie, fans of MEGO-style figures based on horror movies (and there are a lot of us), collectors of action figures based on TV shows, and fans of Me TV. You can display it with pride in your home or office, or you can act out the shows with your toys as they happen on TV…if you’re into that sort of thing.

You can order this directly from the Svengoolie Store at ME TV.