MAXx FX Freddy Krueger – BDR Loves Halloween

by Rob Hughes • Awesome Stuff, Toys and Board Games • Tags: a nightmare on elm street, collectables, dracula, freddy krueger, halloween, jason voorhees, Maxx FX, Mel Birnkrant, Miracle Max, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Toys

Halloween is almost upon us which means 31 days of nonstop HORROR in the Hughes household. Thankfully my lovely wife has no qualms with this and in fact is instrumental in making our place a super spooky place to hang our hats at the end of the day.

Not only is our place plastered with horror screen prints, decorations, etc.. but she even allows me to display my horror ~~toys~~ collectibles that in no way show that I’m a 35 year old man child. THEY ARE INVESTMENTS DAMMIT.

We’ll be having some Halloween-centric posts coming up in the next few weeks and I figured I’d kick it off with one of my favorite “collectibles” that I have yet to own (hint hint Lesley).

MAXx FX Freddy Krueger

Mel Birnkrant envisioned a series where an 11 1/2″ action figure (named Max Miracle) would be able to assume the identities of famous monsters that would allow kids to take their boring looking human figure and transform him into one of their favorite movie monsters. Monsters such as Dracula, The Wolfman, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Jason Voorhees, and the Alien would have been a few different ways kids could transform Max.

Early prototype version of Max

Each transformation would be sold within a “Movie Cassette” so kids could collect their favorites.

He even came up with an idea for a Movie Van Accessory that would essentially be a storage carrying case for the cassettes along with being a backdrop for kids to play “Movie Director” with their newly created Max Miracle figures. It’s a great idea that never materialized as Mel originally intended.

If you thought to yourself “Man, that’s such a cool idea! I wonder why I’ve never heard of this?!” it is because Matchbox bought the idea from Mel and decided to make unwise decisions at almost every step of the way.

They shrunk the figure down in size to 8″ which meant that details were lost in translation, they gave poor Max an incredibly tiny head (seriously, look at how tiny that thing is!), and they also decided to release a Talking Freddy doll at the same time that essentially doomed the whole series due to the outrage from parents.

Seriously, that makes sense. Who would think it was a great idea to market a talking doll to kids based on a child molesting murderer? At least the MAXx FX series was trying to show that horror movies aren’t real. That being said, I’d love to have that talking Freddy doll. (HINT HINT LESLEY)

Unfortunately thanks to the outcry from pissed off parents, this line died a quick death.