JUNE 2019 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 25
WHOLLY MOLI
MEGO CEO MARTY ABRAMS
ACTION FIGURES’ FATHER
BY CLAUDE SOLNIK
Even before superheroes proved
their superpowers at the box office
in the late 1970s, Marty Abrams, of
Great Neck, had an entrepreneurial
eureka moment that made him the
father of the action figure.
Inspired by comic books, TV shows
such as Batman, and pop culture, he
decided to bring these heroes to life
on, well, a small scale. Abrams took
the toy company his parents founded,
Mego Corporation, and turned it into
the master manucatrurer of action
figures, making the original comic
book hero toys, including Superman,
Batman, Hulk, and many more.
“Before I licensed and did a figure, it was
never done before,” Abrams says. “I was
the first one to translate two-dimensional
drawings of comic book characters
into three-dimensional action figures.”
Mego’s action figures topped
$200 million in sales, says
Abrams, is equal to about
$600 million today, before
video games stunned these
superhero toys like corporate
kryptonite.
Great Neck-based Mego,
named for a phrase Marty’s
brother said when he wanted
to go somewhere, went bankrupt
in 1982. Abrams bought
back the company and last
summer brought it back from
the dead.
Last summer, the company
relaunched 120 action figures
(and counting) with an exclusive line
in Target. Superman flew again – at
least in imaginations.
“The core customer for the new line
is 25 to 55,” Abrams says. “They’re
collectors, not kids.”
The Mego method remains the same:
create affordable action figures.
He rounded up nonexclusive rights
(they’re cheaper) of characters and
sometimes actors’ likenesses, as with
Henry Winkler as “The Fonz.”
In other cases, he got permission to
make characters, but not the performers'
likenesses, leading to some
figures (they don’t sell as well) that
recreate characters, but not actors.
“We dress the characters in the
look we’re creating,” he adds.
Mego last year topped $12 million
in sales and Abrams expects to
triple that figure this year, before
expanding beyond Target next
year.
“Kids still want something three-dimensional
to hold in their hand,”
Abrams says, noting that children
also remain customers. “They want
to hold the good guy in their right
and the bad guy in their left hand
and smash them together.”
Mego CEO Marty Abrams of Great Neck
with some of the action figures he created.
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