Cover of ToyFare #80 featuring Teen Titans action figures |
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| Frequency | Monthly |
|---|---|
| First issue | 1997 |
| Final issue | 2011 |
| Company | Wizard Entertainment |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | New York City, New York, United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | toyfare.wizarduniverse.com |
ToyFare was a monthly comedy and collecting magazine published by Wizard Entertainment that focused on collectible action figures, busts, statues, and maquettes. It previewed new and upcoming lines and figures each month, as well as providing a price guide for toy lines, new and old. ToyFare was also known for its satirical humor, which could be found on almost every page.
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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 was 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 was Twisted ToyFare Theatre, 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 magazine's earlier run, though without the comedic intent). The strips predominantly feature a line of toys called Megos (a line very popular in the 1970s, during the youth of much of the magazine’s staff). Most of the regular figures/characters featured in the strip are principally those based on Marvel Comics characters, such as Spider-Man (popularly known as "Mego Spidey") and the Incredible Hulk. Twisted ToyFare Theatre's popularity was 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.
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 staffers, such as Doug Goldstein, Tom Root and Matthew Senreich went on to help create the Adult Swim program, Robot Chicken with actor Seth Green. The show is in much the same vein of humor as Twisted Toyfare Theatre.