Time Travel Art Machine: Mattel Elites

Toying around.

A few years ago I was asked by Mattel to pitch ideas on how we could work together and my idea was to do some sort of build-a-painting. The build-a-figure thing has been around for a while, where a piece of a figure comes with different figures and you have to collect all of them to make the whole thing and I thought it’d be killer to do the same thing but with a painting.

My original pitch was to do it as a puzzle that people could then hang up on their wall, but logistically that wasn’t feasible so Mattel suggested doing it as a backdrop for their Mattel Elite figures instead. For EIGHT WAVES, essentially an entire year’s worth. I negotiated to have the packaging list my name on the front and for an entire year, around the world, the most popular action figure line that year had MY NAME listed on the front.

It was fun dropping in at stores just to see them ‘in the wild’ and occasionally sign them and then put out on social media where to find them. It’s one of the top achievements of my career to date, easily.

As you can see, I made each of them a little bit different to give each wave a unique and fun feeling for collectors. I’ve stayed in touch with Mattel and we’re always talking about what our next collaboration could be.

That said, how great-looking are Jonathan Bartlett’s Elite Wave 100 packages? Seeing what he did is what made me think to share these.

Love you more,

Rob