ToyFare
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ToyFare is a monthly comedy and collecting magazine published by Wizard Entertainment that focuses on collectible action figures, busts, statues, and maquettes. It previews new and upcoming lines and figures each month, as well as providing a price guide for hundreds of different toy lines, new and old. ToyFare is also known for its satiric humor, which can be found on almost every page.
The magazine began publication in 1997, initially borrowing many features which first appeared in its sister magazine, Wizard. It has maintained a steady monthly schedule ever since, reaching its 100th issue in December 2005. It is well known for using alternative covers, a feature which was first utilized with issue 20, and has been used almost regularly since issue 57.
The most popular feature in ToyFare is Twisted ToyFare Theater, a humorous strip done by photographing toys on sets built by the magazine’s staff (this technique was likewise used for covers for much of the magazines earlier run, though without the comedic intent). The strips predominantly feature a line of toys called Megos (a line very popular in the 1970’s, during the youth of much of the magazine’s staff); most of the regular figures/characters featured in "TTT" are principally those based on Marvel Comics characters, such as Spider-Man (popularly known as "Mego Spidey") and the Incredible Hulk. Twisted ToyFare Theater's popularity is such that Wizard Entertainment has released several trade paperback collections of the strips.
In recent years, the magazine added "The Monthly Rag", a feature similar to supermarket tabloids, presenting parody articles using various toy and pop culture references (an example would be an article reporting on the intelligent design debate on the planet Cybertron, home of the robotic Transformers). Originally, this feature's main articles were humorous exaggerations of actual toy-related stories (such as news of the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series' release on DVD, reported as "Shocking He-Man Footage Made Public!"), and a sidebar column would appear somewhere within the "Monthly Rag" section with short summaries of the real news behind the exaggerated articles. For reasons unknown, at one point the summaries column was dropped from "The Monthly Rag", causing confusion among readers as to exactly what the source material of the humorous articles was. Finally, any pretense of reporting actual news in any form was dropped and replaced with the "Rag"'s current format of purely fictional parody material.
[edit] Regular features
- Monthly horoscopes with ridiculous or nonsensical predictions, supposedly written by Cobra hypnotist/interregator Crystal Ball (billed as "psychic to the famous toys").
- An advice column headed by a fictional character who, because of a specific situation or certain quirks in their personality, gives advice that ranges from useless to extremist to outright non-sequiturs. An example would be "Ask Anakin Skywalker, Burning in Lava" (a reference to the character's horrific fate at the end of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith); all of Skywalker's responses were non-sequiturs, primarily cries of pain and lamentations about his fall from grace.
- A classified section featuring ads supposedly placed by various fictional celebrities, such as movie or TV characters and superheroes.
- The "Page Sixteen Girl", a photo on said page of a sexually appealing female character in action figure form, a parody of the Page Three Girl, a feature originating in the Rupert Murdoch-owned United Kingdom tabloid The Sun.
- Parodies of comic strips, usually placing toy or other pop culture characters in the roles of an established comic strip, such as "Cringerfield", which placed the feline character Cringer from the Masters of the Universe mythos into a setting similar to that of the comic strip character Garfield (with He-Man in the role of Jon Arbuckle).
[edit] Exclusive offers
In addition, both Wizard and Toyfare often feature mail-away offers for exclusive merchandise. Toyfare at first largely offered Toy Biz figures that had been repainted or slightly modified into other characters, though have since gone on to offer exclusive figures that run the industry gamut, including figures from Jakks Pacific, Minimates, and Heroclix.
Several former former staffers, such as Doug Goldstein, went on to help create the Adult Swim program, Robot Chicken. Along with actor Seth Green, the show is in much the same vein of humor as Twisted Toyfare Theater.
