SDCC 2023: Derek Handy & Ed Duncan On Mattel's Masters Of The Universe, Jurassic Park & WWE Toys

Mattel's VP of Design for Action Figures, Derek Handy, and SVP for Design of Action Figures, Ed Duncan, discuss the WWE, Jurassic Park & MotU lines.

Mattel was founded in 1945 by Harold Matson, Ruth Handler, and Elliot Handler. Mattel is second only to Lego as the largest toy manufacturer in the world. Mattel is a massive company and has developed partnerships with some of the biggest brands in the world, including WWE, Disney, Jurassic Park, and more.

Outside of their partnerships, Mattel has created countless toy and game brands, including Barbie, Hot Wheels, American Girl, and Uno. Mattel has also expanded beyond toys and games with tie-in novels, television series, and movies. Mattel has recently seen great success with the recent Barbie movie release and is reportedly working on numerous projects based on their other brands.

Related: Margot Robbie Is Shocked Her Radical Barbie Movie Got Made: "There's No Way Mattel Is Agreeing To This"

Screen Rant spoke with Ed Duncan, SVP of Design for Action Figures, Plush, and Games, as well as Derek Handy, VP of Design for the Action Figure Team, about some of Mattel's newest releases at San Diego Comic-Con. They discuss some of their favorite new action figures, including Master of the Universe and Jurassic Park anniversary additions. They also explain how detailed the WWE action figures are and how they update the figures to match new additions to the real wrestlers' looks, including tattoos.

Screen Rant: Welcome back to Screen Rant's coverage of San Diego Comic-Con 2023. Thank you so much for joining me. I am with Mattel. You're waiting, first of all, introduce yourselves and tell me what you do.

Derek Handy: I am Derek Handy, VP of Design for the Action Figure Team. So I'm overseeing all the action figure brands.

Ed Duncan: I'm Ed Duncan. I'm SVP of Design for Action Figures, Plush, Games, and I'm over inventor relations for all brands at Mattel.

I went down by your booth earlier. It is phenomenal. I loved every single thing I saw. There's an exclusive here at Comic-Con, the Motherboard figure, which is the largest ever Masters of the Universe figure. Why Motherboard, and what are some of the features this figure has for those Masters of the Universe collectors out there?

Derek Handy: So, based off the Netflix content, so new character that people aren't necessarily that familiar with, but it's great to extend the MOTU universe, bring in freshness to it. It's a big figure. It's 12 inches, so it's twice the size of any of the other figures, posable wings, it's amazing. Yeah.

Those wings are super cool. Talk to me about the design of those wings a little bit.

Derek Handy: So yeah, it's all articulated. You can fold it into a nice tight space you can fit on your shelf or expand it to, I think it gets to about 16, 18 inches.

One thing I love about what you guys do at Mattel is also your box art, because I think that's just a work of art by itself. It sounds beautifully anywhere you want to put it. What goes into some of those designs for that stuff?

Derek Handy: We have a dedicated team that loves, and even going back to the stuff from the eighties, all that amazing artwork. I mean, you have a couple of those paintings in your office. It's just breathtaking artwork and they want to make sure they're keeping that flame going into all the Comic-Con. Even the stuff that's at retail just making sure it's a piece of art in the package itself.

That's incredible.

Ed Duncan: And on the Comic-Con ones, you have a little bit of more money to play with so you can do some trickier things. So I think there's some magnets in that box.

Derek Handy: Yeah, you can spend a little bit more money in the package.

I mean, the packaging alone in some of these things is incredible. I'm a big WWE Ultimate Edition collector, like, I got back into collecting action figures based on that one toy line.

Derek Handy: Nice.

Shout out to Kyle Peterson, who got me back into WWE, the line. You have a beautiful Muhammad Ali figure down there, which compliments really well with the WrestleMania stuff with Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. Talk to me about bringing Muhammad Ali to the WWE Universe line, Universe Ultimate Edition line.

Ed Duncan: So, Muhammad Ali is an icon, and it's an honor for us to bring that to our WWE line. And his presence at WrestleMania I just gives us the window to do that. It's a really great version of him. And then we're able to do that boxing version of him too, to just give everybody a figure that they've been wanting forever.

I love that about this line because it comes with so many different accessories and facial expressions. This one comes with the referee t-shirt that he had in WrestleMania I, but it also comes with the classic boxing gloves that he had in WrestleMania II. And you can pose that beautifully with that Roddy Piper figure. Talk to me about including both of those looks for this figure.

Ed Duncan: It was a stroke of genius. It actually comes with a soft goods robe too. It really put them out there in the full boxing look.

Let's talk some Jurassic Park, because there's this great Steven Spielberg director action figure from Jurassic Park and you guys are celebrating Jurassic Park. Could we talk about that a little bit? What went into making the Steven Spielberg director action figure?

Derek Handy: That was a lot of fun. And speaking of great package, the full clap box with the top that rotate. Yeah, it's really good. And we really wanted to pay homage to Steven Spielberg, and it's just how amazing Jurassic Park is with the anniversary and down to the details of having the armature that the Dilophosaurus sits on, all those little behind-the-scenes details that we're sure collectors are going to love.

Are there any reveals that I wasn't able to see?

Derek Handy: We haven't on Jurassic. So Jurassic, we have a fan panel tomorrow that we're talking about. In booth, showing behind the scenes that will show images of some of the new stuff coming out. Our big unveiling, we've got the crowdfund for the Jurassic Park gates. We've got the full 3D of the gates there functioning, gates are opening, sounds, lights, it's awesome.

Ed Duncan: But there's new figures being revealed in the booth every day across all the brands.

Derek Handy: [For Jurassic Park], there are lots of new dinosaurs, which is the great thing about Jurassic, you've got this heritage of all the new species that are coming out. What you know for T-Rexes and Velociraptors in the past, but even the team will send back and forth whatever news story of a new dinosaur that comes out. And fortunately, Universal-Amblin are willing to let us do that and branch out to other new species that have never been seen before, and really make our own interpretations of those. So it's a lot of fun. It's a deep well of characters and dinosaurs.

I know toys are your business, but are you guys collectors of anything yourselves?

Ed Duncan: Oh, absolutely. It's an occupational hazard. I collect old obscure stuff. I'm an old man and I grew up in the seventies, so I have a lot of toys, a lot of Japanese action figures from the seventies, like old Battlestar Galactica stuff, old, old Marvel and DC stuff from the seventies.

Derek Handy: Jurassic really got me back into it. Sarting that out, launching the brands in 2018, there's a fairly large collection of dinosaurs in my house, and then the other is 12-inch figures.

Let's talk about the Masters of the Universe figures that you guys revealed. What went into the process of getting those figures made?

Derek Handy: The Gwildor and then we did Skeletech. Both of those are based on how they're seen in Netflix. So that's working closely with Rob and the team to get the assets from them to make sure that we're getting it right and they have the full turns, which is really great. They've been amazing in giving these an asset for that.

The WWE line is fantastic, and the ring that you guys have down there was almost like a breakdown of making an actual wrestling ring. There are literally panels underneath, like the canvas mat that fans wouldn't normally see, but you know that they're there as a collector. What goes into that decision-making to make that kind of stuff so detailed?

Ed Duncan: The people that design that line and all of our lines are true fans and they know these details. They know that they would be important to them as collectors, and they build the line that they wish they had.

Incredible. Are there any dream figures and Mattel that you guys want to see produced personally?

Derek Handy: I feel like we've covered a lot of bases, but there's always more to do. I mean, there's, we're talking about a couple species of dinosaurs that we want to do. We've been talking about some extra WWE talents that, of course, we're always finessing rights and working with WWE team to make sure we can do those extra characters that everybody are clamoring for.

One of the things that is incredible to me is the detail on those figures. If a wrestler gets a new tattoo, it's immediately on the next figure that you guys produce of them. How difficult is that for you to keep up with?

Derek Handy: Oh, we're constantly on our toes. As the guys go to a WrestleMania or go to an event, they're taking photos of, and the next day going back to the asset team at WWE saying, "We need this, we need this, we need this. We need turns of that tattoo." And they've been great at getting us those assets as well.

Ed Duncan: Yeah, they're very responsive.

Derek Handy: It's a constant push to make sure you're keeping up with whatever happened this week. And there's always something new.

Ed Duncan: It's so dynamic. Either something new's happened or somebody might get injured, or it's just a constant liquid state where you're just reacting to what happened, that's fair-

Derek Handy: Which, the nice thing as well with WWE is going back to that heritage and going back to how people love specific Wrestlemanias and specific matches. It's not that when something new comes out, the old stuff is just wiped clean.Everybody loves every single match and every single show, that you can still produce those, the retro characters and have all those costume details.

Ed Duncan: And it's got such a legacy and heritage.

Bret "Hitman" Hart is my favorite wrestler of all time, and you guys have him in his Attitude Era. There's a lot of emphasis on this Monday Night War Era. Can you guys speak to that a little bit?

Derek Handy: Yeah, it is a favorite era of quite a few people that work for the company.

Ed Duncan: Yeah.

That's incredible.

Ed Duncan: Those older talent, those are some of the harder figures to do because a new person, you can take them in a room and scan them, and you get a lot of information from them. But somebody from back in the eighties, even if they're still alive, they don't look like they looked in the eighties. So, that's just raw talent, somebody sculpting that from photos.

Derek Handy: And that's the trick, is to make a figure that you don't have any reference or they're not around look as good as someone that you scanned last week.

What you're telling me is that there's a sculptor that actually sculpts those. I guess they couldn't be scanned.

Ed Duncan: You can't go back in time and scan somebody.

Derek Handy: That is artistry. Yes.

Ed Duncan: But that's how we used to do it. The scanning has come and helped a lot, but back in the old days, things were just sculpted by humans.