Super7 founder Brian Flynn discusses how nostalgia drives his DUNGEONS & DRAGONS figures

Thank you, Brian, for joining me. For those that aren’t familiar with your company, what is Super7?
It’s getting harder and harder to describe who Super7 is! We started out way back in 2001 as a magazine about collecting toys, then turned to making toys. Today, we consider ourselves a premier design house and producer of pop-culture ephemera across every subculture you grew up with… Science fiction, giant monsters, comic books, punk rock, skateboarding, robots, rebellion and more.

Okay… 20 seconds in and you threw in a curveball!
That’s my forte!

Ha! It might be a record… In 2001, you were a magazine, but you then switched to making toys? That’s a heck of a leap. What inspired that?
At that time, if you were collecting Japanese toys, the two main magazines in Japan were Hyper Hobby and Figure King. To push circulation, both of them would have coupons inside. You had to cut out and send these coupons, with a cheque for $50 or whatever, to get a repaint of a vinyl figure…

We wanted to replicate that experience for the American customer. Of course, the idea for any collector to cut a page out of your magazine is almost sacrilege – so we really wanted to push the envelope. But the colour schemes we leaned into were unique and very different from what was happening in Japan.

How so?
Generally speaking, most vinyl colouration at that time was historically referential. They’d look back at something that had happened in a toy line or whatever, and they’d recolour to that very specific moment. We didn’t even watch a lot of the more obscure Japanese shows, but we knew toys! So, we began designing them according to what we believed was most visually appealing. They made no historical sense – but looked impressive. After a certain time, we became more successful in making toys than magazines – and the rest is history.

Oh my days! What an incredible origin story. I love that. What a way to stand out in the market – by designing to an aesthetic ambition!
Yes! I can’t say that was intentional. It was the only thing we knew… Asking ourselves, “What if we did this? That would be cool!” We were just thinking very selfishly about what we wanted to put on our shelves. We hadn’t yet realised that what we were looking for was the same thing many other collectors were after. And that’s been a guiding focus for us ever since. If we know that we would put it on our shelves, we feel fairly confident other collectors are looking for the same thing.

And in that respect, you’re not only the founder at Super7 but also the lead designer. What are your qualifications for that?
Technically, I come from a graphic design background. That’s how the magazine got started. I knew how to do digital pre-press and whatever… I knew how to make it look like a real magazine, even though it was just two dudes in their house.

“I asked myself what kind of toys I liked and what my aesthetics were…”

Ha! A couple of chancers starting a magazine?!
Yeah! But really design is sort of the same across anything… It’s taking the form and the material you have and reconstructing it into what you’d like to see. So going from graphic design to toy design was straightforward. It’s still the same thought process. A lot of times, if you’re talking about graphic design, people do have a style because that’s what they lean into, the aesthetics that they prefer.

You just extended your style into toys?
Right. I asked myself what kind of toys I liked and what my aesthetics were. Then, I started putting my creations out there. Like anything else, after doing it enough times, that’s what I became known for.

I’m really curious, though, was anybody sort of waving a flag of caution and saying, “Listen, you don’t know anything about toys! Stick to what you know!”?
No, but then I’ve always had a nasty habit of getting into plenty of things I don’t know anything about. Ha! Because I’m not calculating lunar trajectories, you know? I’m not doing biophysics. I’m just figuring out how to get something made. How to get something out of a mould?!

Ha! I love that attitude. And it’s evidently true because you’ve got a huge number of products and what I take to be dozens of licenses. Would you name some of those for us?
We do a little of everything… We work a lot with Hasbro, we work with GI Joe, Transformers, Power Rangers, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS… We also work with a lot of music acts: punk, heavy metal and hip-hop acts. Toho is a huge one for us. Godzilla… Godzilla was basically the impetus of the very first issue and the first toy we ever did. It was a translucent-grey 1954 Godzilla meant to look like the monster when he was underwater in the original black and white film. So we’ve done Godzilla forever! There’s also Thundercats, SilverHawks, and some of our own IP, like The Worst, say, and The Weirdest.

It’s a real who’s who of of material; quite a broad range…
Well, the downside for us advanced collectors is that you get to a point where you’re always looking for all the other stuff… We’re like, “That would be cool too! Let’s do that!”

Ha! “Squirrel!”
Ha! Exactly!

You mentioned DUNGEONS & DRAGONS there… We are – of course – coming up on its 50th anniversary. I noticed that your ReAction figures are very much inspired by the original cover art. Is that what you grew up with?
It is, although I must say that the town I grew up in was really small, so I didn’t actually play that much! But we all had the books and the modules, and we’d imagine them and just pore over the books over and over again.

“When Hasbro agreed to license our figures, I really wanted to focus on the artwork.”

Which books, specifically?
I’d sit there and read and read Fiend Folio and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. By the time I actually got to play with some friends, we might play for a couple of hours, but I’d probably spent ten times that just looking at the artwork and being into the books. So when Hasbro agreed to license our figures, I really wanted to focus on the artwork – that’s where my love of the franchise started.

Which held great nostalgic value for you…
Right. To me that artwork was the most compelling part. Today, you might look back and argue that some of it’s a bit crude or not as polished as it is these days, but I say that’s what gives it its wonderful charm. It just didn’t look like anything else. The Errol Otus art especially… For me as a kid, that was just mind-boggling; the way it kind of glowed with light. In those early editions, those images were so striking and unique; NOTHING else looked like it… The modules, the maps! We’d spend hours just imagining what it would be like to walk through those spaces.

It’s hugely enjoyable watching you talk about this, Brian. You clearly have a tremendous passion for it. So when you came to make those ReAction figures a reality, what was the biggest challenge you faced?
The biggest challenge with a lot of it is that it’s never been interpreted other than in those paintings. In some cases, there are no back views, no side views… There were no legs sometimes! When you’re talking about the Demon Idol from the Players’ Handbook, for instance, you only see it from the waist up – like us on this call! Now, I’m imagining you have legs, but for all I know there are tentacles!

Ha! No, you’re right to imagine legs! Ha! So with some sculpts, you had to extrapolate from what’s there, and the tone of that material?
Right. Take the Githyanki, for example… What does the rear side of the Githyanki look like? It doesn’t exist in the Fend Folio… So we can extrapolate from the front but, to a degree, you’re writing it in a little as you go. And hopefully – if you do it correctly – everybody’s on the same page.

And in terms of the audience, WAS everybody on the same page?
Yes, I think when it finally came out, people just weren’t expecting it. There’d been miniature figural stuff forever, but no one had ever really come back and packaged up the vintage art or made traditional toys out of it, much less throwing back to a 1980’s form factor with the 1980’s art. I think a lot of people never saw this coming!

Great! And of all the figures you’ve done, dare I ask if you have a favourite? I know that’s like asking you to pick a favourite child!
That’s okay. I have a favourite child here! It’s the Githyanki. I keep looking at that thinking, “There’s so many places we can go with it; so many expressions of him left to discover So maybe I’m going to make a bunch of Githyankis over the years. Everybody get ready for it now!

Ha! 120 of these things!
Ha! Save the space on your shelf ’cos they’re coming! Ha! Whether anybody wants them or not is a different conversation, but that’s what I’d like.

Well, that’s the reason, Brian, that we have limited editions! More broadly, then, what do you think is the reason that DUNGEONS & DRAGONS has endured for 50 years?
I think it offers a lot to people who are creative-minded but may not have the manual skills to bring their ideas to live, a platform where they can visualise and populate various imaginative worlds.

Have you seen that audience change over the years?
For sure! My children actually play it quite a lot – but not because of me! They both have DUNGEONS & DRAGONS clubs in their schools. Their version is very different from the one I grew up on. But what’s really interesting to me is their D&D clubs are 75% or more female. You’re talking about 20 girls in the room, whereas when most people think of D&D in the eighties and nineties, they think it’s a bunch of dudes hanging out in the room.

“What I see now is a radically different way of playing…”

Oh, very much so…
What I also see now, with that almost-all-girl group, is a radically different way of playing. Historically, when we played, we would’ve been like, “Alright, we’re going to go fight a bunch of stuff!” But these groups like playing tricks on each other! It’s very interesting to me that my oldest will always talk about a spell called Vicious Mockery where you just make fun of someone until they die. They think that’s the best thing you can do because it’s hilarious.

Ha! I think someone’s casting that on me! So tell me, Brian, where do you think the brand could go next?
I think the brand is only limited by the imagination of the people that come into it. Because despite people turning DUNGEONS & DRAGONS into their own sub-brands, I still don’t think we’ve really seen all the key characters transcend the game. That’s mostly because people’s entry point is their own character. They’re the heroes of their journey. But what you’re starting to see – I think to a degree with Baldur’s Gate – is key characters that can be attached to your campaign that then you start to know as individuals…

So if they get to the point where they’ve got those individuals that really start to transcend the game, I think that opens it to a much bigger audience… Much like when we had the cartoon in the 80s. I watched that all the time and I can tell you all about Bobby or Eric or Diana or the Shadow Demon or Dekkion or whoever. That’s why when we got into the Ultimates collection, we more or less went straight to the bad guys – because that’s what I wanted to see!

And on that, what else do you want to see happen with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS? Apart from your collection of 120 Githyankis, obviously…
Ha! Talking about it selfishly, I’d want to see if there was any way I could make a DUNGEONS & DRAGONS module featuring our characters from our own IPs; The Worst and The Weirdest. Larger picture, I think D&D is really doing a good job… The way people play now is so radically different from anything I could ever have imagined. The modern game has really opened up – and that open-endedness is really exciting.

Great answer! We need to wrap this up, Brian, but what’s the one question I could’ve asked you today but didn’t?
Hmmmmm. I think you could’ve asked me what I’m most excited about!

And what are most excited about?
Well, I love the ReAction figures – they’ve already been out and successful; I’m super-excited about them. What we’re doing with the Ultimates is exciting, too… Cartoon-accurate animated figures; being able to go into the villains like Dekkion and Shadow Demons… That’s the stuff I’m most excited about. And I hope that people really get behind that because it allows us to go really deep into a world that’s never been touched. If I can bring that world to life through Super7, GREAT!

Brilliant. What a fantastic note to end on. Thank you, Brian.