After six years, 3,000-plus miles and one pandemic, the TOYS THAT TIME FORGOT book series — a visual history of unproduced toys — achieves trilogy status with the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for VOLUME 3 launched today, February 10, 2021. Want to learn about plans LJN had for a 3.75-inch scale line for the “V” television series back in 1985? How about what Playmates Toys had in store for the second year of Skeleton Warriors product in the mid-1990s? Maybe a mid-2000s plan to bring the James Bond franchise into the world of six-inch, highly-articulated action figures is more your speed? Well… you’re in luck!
Written and complied by journalist Blake Wright, the 200-plus page, hard cover book will take an in-depth look at close to 20-plus instances (including the three mentioned above) of toy lines that made it to a certain point in the development process, but for one reason or another never made it to store shelves. Stories will be supplemented with supporting photographs of the production process, existing prototypes, control drawings used to create the sculpts, concept sketches and more. The stories (and supplemental materials) have come straight from the men and women that lived them — from inventors and sculptors to project managers and toy company executives.
TOYS THAT TIME FORGOT is the only book series to date that has covered this topic. Like its predecessors, TOYS THAT TIME FORGOT VOLUME 3 is an art/history book. It is not a guide designed to log each figure and each accessory in a sterile format. It presents these ‘lost’ toys in dynamic,
eye-catching ways that showcase both the toys as art and their respective places in history.
Also like the previous books, VOLUME 3 is split into three sections: The Golden Age (1980s), Darker Times (1990s) and The Gilded Age (2000s). Each section will have entries representing a healthy mix of both licensed and inventor-based products… some of which have never been seen by the public.
The 30-day campaign for TOYS THAT TIME FORGOT VOLUME 3 runs through March 11, 2021. You can find the Kickstarter campaign here.
