TOYHEM! From Birdman to James Bond to the Green Hornet and MORE…
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Welcome to TOYHEM! For the seventh straight holiday season, we’re bringing you a series of features and columns celebrating the toys of our youth, which often made for the best memories this time of year. Click here to check out the complete index of stories — and have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and Happy Holidays!
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The other day, we ran a groovy feature on a complete line-up of faux 1960s Filmation DC superhero action figures. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check it out here. You’ll be glad you did.
Anyway, at first, the designer was known only as “Ron” (and I complicated matters by first calling him “Ken.”) Well it turns out that Ron (not Ken) is actually Ron Lopez, customizer extraordinaire. The guy’s pretty prolific and he’s done a ton that I would love to own and you would too.
“I have made many customs. Some I’ve sold and others I retired after an official version got released,” Ron told me. “I have posted many of them under the name RocketMan62 on the Figure Realm website.”
He also does custom Aurora Models posters…
… and custom and restored Saturday morning cartoon ads:
We’ll get back to those soon enough, but for this TOYHEM installment, we bring you 13 CUSTOM CLASSIC ACTION FIGURES (or Waves) YOU WISH YOU HAD — all by Ron Lopez:
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MORE
— The Complete TOYHEM INDEX of Stories and Features. Click here.
— OH, WOW! These Faux FILMATION ACTION FIGURES Have Fans in a Frenzy. Click here.
December 21, 2025
Love it!
December 21, 2025
Absolutely love these. Some are spot on! My only suggestion would be to use a more “non-superhero” body for The Lone Ranger. That aside these are very creative.
Now if we could just figure out who this “Ken” person is.
December 21, 2025
I would’ve loved the Birdman action figure as a kid. Biiiiirdman!
December 21, 2025
Wow wow wow. Great work. Let’s see some real Spidey ‘67 figures. I know someone made them…
December 21, 2025
Ron here. Thanks for the kind comments and suggestions. I appreciate it. Dan was kind enough to request and showcase some of my custom work here. I take inspiration and ideas from many other talented customizers and my approach to custom figures is usually based on my nostalgic interests for those characters that companies usually have not made official 6-inch figures of (my favorite scale). I try to minimize as much as possible any painting or dyeing parts so finding the right parts in the right colors to use for a character is the biggest and often costly challenge for this fun hobby. So i’m glad you folks liked them. Thanks again.
December 21, 2025
I would have fought a bear* for some Impossibles figures as a kid.
*-Like a cub-size bear, I mean, realistically.
December 22, 2025
Beautiful, but The Shadow has never used a revolver– his twin 45 automatics are as much a part of the character as his slouch hat.