So I saw the Exo-Head thread was updated and I was checking it out and saw this post from Paul: So Jun, the creator of Exo-Head, released only a few releases and then no more... It's been years since the last... but what happens to the molds when the person making the toy stops making them? Do they stay with the factory?, get shipped back to the owner?, recycled? I know its not all that cheap to have a set of molds made, so I hope they're somewhere and will be used again. I suppose its just a matter of hoping that particular figure you love comes out of retirement at some point...
Usually just those two, they stay at the factory if the owner has no interest in keeping them unless the factory doesn't want to store them and/or they go back to the owner. Later they usually end up rusting and becoming unusable.
Yikes. Rusting away is no way to go. Too bad. And it's probably unheard of for one maker who may be uninterested in making more toys to sell the mold to a more interested party.
Do you have any examples of toys you know were made in Japan later reappearing as Chinese bootlegs? As far as the Chinese factories go, I just asumed the workers made the toys from the original mold the factory had in possession, not thinking the creator could really do anything about it, or factories took an existing vinyl toy and made new molds from the vinyl figure. I remember the Sick Boy BIlly bootlegs on ebay were slightly smaller than the original which confirmed the later.
I was indeed thinking of China, not Japan. As to whether there were extra runs molded or if the molds themselves disappeared, I don't know... What happened to BxH? I seem to recall Kidrobot had D unny molds stolen...
I've seen Marmit molds up on YJA. Amapro had photos of him filling a bunch of molds with cement once the licence expired. Speaking of Amapro, he still has the original molds for the Naruton which originally came out in 1996, but the Raragon molds are long gone. He doesn't know what happened to them. Rumble Monsters seems to have taken over some of the Charactics molds, and the toygraph car seems to be in the hands of Sunguts now. I of course don't know if they have just licensed them, purchased or were gifted them outright.
It is definitely nice to hear some of the older molds are be used again. And I realize as I say this that neo-kaiju/sofubi is relatively young, but it would be neat to see someone bring back some of the "classic" figures from various toymakers that don't get produced anymore or were retired for whatever reason. Not that I could afford to buy any of them anyway.
