uk variants

There are a number of Mighty Max toy variants that collectors will want to be aware of, some much rarer than others. I don’t have a single one, so I had to borrow photos from ebay and other places once again in order to archive them here. Excuse the occasional bad photo, since I didn’t take these, and due to Photobucket deciding to flush itself down the crapper and yank away everyone’s off-site hosted pics, I had to borrow thumbnails in some cases.

Corpus (Series 2) got a pastel makeover to make it less scary, I guess. Now it looks like the worst easter egg ever.

Battle Conqueror got a weird death metal repaint, making him look strangely modern.

Ice Alien (Series 1) has a rarely seen cousin, the Fire Alien. I’m not sure if that’s what it said on the card, too, or if that’s just the nickname for this odd variant, which may have come with one of the UK multi-packs.

Wolfship 7 (Series 1) gets another gaudy color scheme that makes the original toys look positively subtle. Either that or these variant aliens are colorblind.

This is an official variant of Scorpion (Series 2), made to resemble as closely as possible a shitty custom paint job by a mong on the internet.

I hope to find better pics of this one: the red variant of Kronosaur (Series 1), which still looks ridiculous, but not quite as bad as the others.

Aurore graciously donated these beautiful photos of the rare blue Lockjaw (Series 2). Guess Big Blue smothered to death in his pretty pink coffin.

mm variants 15.jpg

There’s also a super rare periwinkle Rhesus variant apparently, which I’ve never seen apart from this photo.

I’ve also seen variants listed of Arachnoid, Skull Dungeon, and Doom Dragon (Series 1). The Arachnoid variant has a near-imperceptibly browner case, and with the latter two I failed to see any difference from the originals. As far as I know, these are all the official variants. Anything else is probably a knockoff or a shit custom repaint.

This was a big surprise: apparently in the UK they made Sammy Steel variants. Information about the toy line itself is already pretty damned obscure, so to find out that there were variants is pretty incredible. These photos are courtesy of an ebay user who will hopefully confirm whether these are authentic or reproductions.

Compare to the original parts below:

Spaceman figure is in this pic. ^

The paint on the originals and the variants are both equally cheapo. The sticker placement could be achieved if the set was re-molded at home, and the outer casing appears to be molded from black plastic and not simply repainted. If anyone has photos of more variants, do send them my way so I can confirm if this is the real deal or not.

UPDATE 1/6/2016: Holy crap, they’re real. Someone else has been selling them, too! I stumbled upon her Dome of Doom variant below:

And when I asked her about the item, she kindly linked me to a previous sale, a Sinister Saucer variant!

The US version:

This is amazing to me. That this obscure-as-all-hell knockoff toy had regional variants. If anyone has a complete set, send me all your photos and ebay listings!

UPDATE 3/18/2016: Found something even more mind-blowing, courtesy of a very difficult-to-find UK ebay listing.

sammy steel my adventure journey

My first thoughts were along the lines of UK Sammy Steel being distributed under a different name, but upon closer inspection, Imperial’s brand name is entirely absent from the packaging. This leads me to believe that we are looking at a BOOTLEG of a knockoff of Mighty Max.

I tried to convince the seller to ship to the US, but they’ve been unresponsive, so it’s likely I’ll never get my hands on this one.

UPDATE 5/15/2020: Got a carded knockoff, so it seems they’re not just UK variants. Someone took the molds and made alternate playsets minus Sammy. Here’s a Dome of Doom comparison.