I haven't really explained the @MountainTownToys thing recently.
I feel like I should.
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In January of 2025 I sat out to make injection molded action figures.
I was burnt out after more than a decade in tech, I was exhausted by the direction the industry was headed, and I really just wanted to do something real and joyful that didn't involve AI or making money for some far off billionaire.
I'd been making toys, resin casting, in small batches for years. Hell, I started kitbashing with Lanard SPACE CORP figures when I was 7 or so, but I'd been trying to make toys in earnest since 2019.
I learned the basics of Injection Molding from The Crafsman Steady Craftin in 2021, and I had the equipment on hand, and I had some time to burn, so I started making Injection Molded toys.
Well, "I"
at that point, it was me and Sundog.
So we started making toys.
Those first toys were, honestly, pretty bad. The surface finish of our plastic was garbage, we were blowing up our resin printed molds after fewer than 10 figures, sometimes after just one, the sculpts were ... well, they were the first sculpts Sundog had ever done, and they were notably amateurish, the paint jobs were bad, the plastic was the wrong texture, and the paint just kept flaking off.
And, to top it all off, we were cheating. The toys used a 3D printed internal skeleton to hold the limbs together!
But we did it, we made some mostly injection molded, jointed action figures. I took them to Assembly Required Asheville and I sold a few, and I got super sick, and I spent most of the next month in bed.
Over the subsequent months, me and Sundog dug in our heels and started addressing those problems: We found a better plastic (thanks Dynamic Modifiers) and learned a lot more about mold making, ultimately going through 60 iterations of the mold design that produced our first 100% injection molded action figures.
In August of 2025 (at the Philly Assembly Required show) we unveiled a line of Kenner style jointed action figures, entirely injection molded, made in PAL, a safe, non-toxic, easy to recycle, 20% post consumer recycled PVC alternative, with better paint jobs, and with refined versions of some of our original sculpts.
We made way more of them, and made them way faster than the Playmobile style figures we'd started with.
They were getting better, but the head sculpts were still just okay, and the finish on the pieces was still just okay, and we were still destroying our molds after ~50 figures or so.
But, from there it was obvious that we'd figured something out.
Doors were opening.
