A throwback to the good old days!
When it comes to toy brands, everyone knows the big boys such as Hasbro, Mattel and maybe even Playmates, but you are sorely missing out if you aren’t familiar with Super 7.
The Super 7 Company was founded in 2001 by Brian Flynn out of San Francisco. It started out as a magazine about vintage Japanese toys, which was published until 2007. Flynn, who was a designer by trade, also happened to be a rabid collector of vintage toys. So he began designing toy lines based on the popular brands from his youth. Super 7 now is the home of many fun and creative toy lines, but the one we are focusing on is my personal favorite, the ReAction line of figures.
Super 7 began the ReAction series in 2013 with the classic style of the vintage 3.75” Kenner figures from the 1980’s. The figures basically created vintage style action figures of movies and brands that we grew up with, but never actually had an action figure line of their own during that era. The figures feature some pretty basic sculpting, but that’s what makes these figures so unique and charming.
When the ReAction line first began in 2013, Super 7 partnered with Funko to give them the licenses and distribution channels they needed. A few years later, in 2016, Super 7 announced they had resumed control of the line solely, and would began producing figures of their own without Funko. The ReAction figure line has been going strong ever since, with an ever growing lineup of brands and licenses.
If you were to create a comprehensive checklist for all of the ReAction figures since 2013, it would be quite the long list. The line actually began with one franchise, and that was the classic 1979 movie, Alien. An action figure line was initially planned for the movie by Kenner, but never made it to release at the time, due to the mature theme of the movie. The figures were famously displayed in catalogs but were never actually releases to retail stores. ReAction launched an Alien line of figures in 2013 to mirror the figures that were originally produced by Kenner. The line launched at San Diego Comic Con that year, and turned into a huge hit.
The following year in 2014, ReAction went into full production mode with lines based on all kinds of franchises, such as Back to the Future, Goonies, Escape From New York, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Predator, Pulp Fiction and the Universal Monsters. The next year, 2015, saw the launch of Gremlins, The Karate Kid, Jaws, Terminator, Big Trouble in Little China, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Flash, and several modern horror brands such as Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th.
Super 7 definitely had the reputation of making action figures from just about anything they could get their hands on, and that has only grown over the years. Nowadays, Super 7 produces ReAction figures based on everything from sports figures (MLB, NBA) to music entertainers (Grateful Dead, Brittney Spears, Johnny Cash), and from established franchises (Transformers, GI Joe, TMNT) to famous Disney brands (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Haunted Mansion, Buzz Lightyear). Super 7’s ReAction line truly does it all, and then some.
In fact, more than 100 different brands or licenses have been turned into 3.75″ action figures, thanks to Super 7. The good news for collectors is there are no signs of slowing down anytime soon, as new waves continue to get cranked out each month. Much like Funko’s Pop bobble head figures, if you can’t find a ReAction figure that speaks to you, then you really aren’t even trying.
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