MegoMuseum.com: Collector's Heaven
Visit the World's Greatest Virtual Toy Museum: Pop Culture History
Nov 17, 2008
Mego Toys had humble origins as a seller of generic toys in department stores, advertised in newspapers in promotional partnerships with the stores. As advertising began to climb in price, it became obvious that the company would need to find other ways of making money. Tapping into pop culture in the days before it was known as pop culture, Mego created a series of toys that are still desirable in the eyes of collectors forty years later. The Mego Museum tells the story and gives collectors a place to exchange information and expertise.
Catalog Pages
One of the gems of the site is an extensive collection of pages from various department store catalogs, featuring a variety of Mego products including their most famous product, the 8 inch World's Greatest Superheroes line.
The progress of the line from its introduction in 1973 to the last gasp in 1982 is detailed in the advertising pages, individual pages dedicated to each product in the series and dozens of interviews with former staff, artists and various collectors.
More than Heroes
Beyond the famous line of superhero figures, the Mego Museum delves into the history of virtually every toy ever produced by Mego, along with what are called "Mego-esque" knock offs from around the world. Toy lines like The Planet of the Apes and Star Trek are examined in detail, including breakdowns of the various body styles used at different times in the company's history, shared head sculpts from one line to another and the dozens of accessories created to enhance the Mego experience for kids in the 1970's.
Collector Information
Many of the individual action figures and play-sets have idiosyncrasies that either enhance or detract from their value. Some figures suffer from "Zombification" where the plastic of the head discolours over time to an unhealthy looking greenish hue, while certain body types suffered from weak knee joints that could break even while the figure remained pristinely packaged. Despite the less than attractive nature of these unfortunate phenomenon, such problems don't always lessen a figure's value.
The variations in sculpting of different figures over the decade long production runs of figures like Batman and Robin, including changes to costume details and head sculpts are all documented extensively. The site also provides accessory checklists for each figure to allow a collector to be certain they have all the proper pieces that belong with each action figure.
No specific information on dollar values of figures is discussed, but some idea of value can be inferred from the expert descriptions of each figure which often include reference to the relative scarcity and desirability of various incarnations of specific figures. With a bit of cross reference work on sites like E-bay a beginner collector or someone discovering what might be a treasure in the attic can get a good idea of an action figure's value.
Trading Cards
One of the most appealing aspects of the Museum is the ongoing Trading Cards project. For a trading card one of the iconic Mego action figures is posed and photographed professionally with an appropriate background and set in a standardized Mego Museum frame. These pictures can be downloaded and true collectors can seek out printed versions published by the Mego Museum and distributed exclusively to members. Not every action figure has had a card created in its honour yet, but the Museum continues to bring new additions to the line.
For many Mego collectors, no collection is complete without a set of Mego Museum Trading Cards to go along with it.
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