BMC Toys Production Roundup: January 2023

BMC Toys American Hero Collection
Some popular products are now low or out of stock. The next restock order has shipped and scheduled to arrive around late February. There's been a lot of development towards a BMC Toys Yorktown playset revival. Progress slowed since October as I haven't had time to provide feedback on the 3D models. I'm looking forward to digging back into this project and getting a full boxed playset back into production along with supporting shoebox and bagged sets. 

BMC Toys Classic Army Men Collection
Lots of restocks and a couple of new color variants arrived just in time for Christmas 2022:

• BMC-67085 BMC Classic MPC Machine Guns 16pc Black/Silver Gray
• BMC-67100 BMC Classic Lido WW2 Soldiers 40pc OD Green
  
• BMC-67022 BMC Classic Marx WW2 US Soldiers 31pc Purple

The next shipment should arrive by late January and will include some more color variants and the new Teepee parts packs:

• BMC-67087 BMC Classic Marx Army Base Accessories Brown
• BMC-67101 BMC Classic Lido WW2 Soldiers 40pc Tan
• BMC-67102 BMC Classic Lido WW2 Soldiers 40pc Gray
• BMC-67090 BMC Classic Indian Teepee 3pc Tan Parts Pack
• BMC-67092 BMC Classic Indian Teepee 3pc Brown Parts Pack
• BMC-67096 BMC Classic Indian Teepee 3pc Red Parts Pack

The small Teepee is a mold from South America that most likely originated in Italy. It's similar to the teepee that was offered by MPC, except this one is round instead of flat sides. The mold was in good shape, but had a sketchy mounting system, so it had to be reworked to a more standard mounting system for production in the PA factory. I don't have finished product photos yet, but this should give you a general idea:

Plans for 2023 include more of the 'Parts Packs' so we can get more vintage molds back into production. The parts packs are basically the contents made from a single mold packed in a polybag with a sticker label. The parts packs will also function as 'building blocks' for larger sets. This is kind of a throwback to how many of these molds were originally utilized in production at the Louis Marx & Co. factory. The parts from a single mold were trimmed and packed in a small paper bag right at the plastic injection machine. The bags were boxed and warehoused until they were needed for boxed playset packing.

BMC Toys Plastic Army Women Collection
The second production run of the Plastic Army People Bucket set arrived just in time for Christmas 2022. This set was originally requested by a number of supporters during the Plastic Army Women Kickstarter. After the initial run to fulfill all the preorders and Kickstarter rewards, production of this set stalled. It's a fairly complicated since it involves 11 different molds and 2 different colors. It kept getting pushed back as the factory wrestled with all the problems from COVID-19 and then moving to a new facility.

I've received a number of requests for a Plastic Army Women Project update from Kickstarter supporters. I need to write up a full post about finishing the project, the impact it had, and potential future related projects. In the meantime I'm happy to share the follow-up to the Plastic Army Women stop motion video from 2021 (which received 3.9 million views). Here's JaCobra Studio's Army Women 2:

Tim Mee Toy Realistic Reissues
I'm moving Tim Mee Toy production news to the TimMeeUSA.com website. You can find the latest update here: Tim Mee Toy Production News: January 2023.

I've got lots of projects in progress that I can't reveal until I have a better idea of the timelines.  All the uncertainty over the past couple of years has made it nearly impossible estimate how long any particular part of a project might take. 

Here's to the hope that we'll all have just a little less uncertainty in our lives this year. Tanks' for all your support and patience.

Happy New Year,

Jeff at BMC Toys