If you’re at Comic Con, and you want to get the low down on what’s coming in the vinyl world at Disney, there is no one better to talk to than Disney Store North America director of toys John Balen.

There are a ton of items on display, classics, frankenweenie…

We have a lot going on, this is actually the first year that we brought vinylmation here to sell at comic con, So we’re excited. We did our first comic con exclusive which is our So Tasty series. We did 8 unique flavors, which the only place you can get these 8 are right here at comic con. If we have any left over, after comic con is over, we’ll sell them at disneystore.com. They’ll premiere at $10 each.  We have Carmel Apple, Pizza, Soft Serve Ice Cream, Super Nachos, Orange Soda, French fries, Cherry Freeze and Cotton Candy. I personally love the Orange Soda, its nice and refreshing. Each one is scented, so they smell like that food, and they’re really fun. We had a few available tonight, we sold out immediately. We’ll be releasing two a day over the next four days, so we’ll have some available all weekend.

Are you going to have any of the Artists available to sign?

We do have Artists here, but we don’t have set up signing times with those artists, but they may periodically pop by so you never know.

Last year, special edition…

This year we did blocks. Monsters Incorporated. These are some great takes on Sully, that was taken from the Art of Pixar Book. These are some of the early color renderings of Sully, what Sully could have looked like before they landed on the final design. So we did 480 pieces of each one. These are only here just at comic con, and once they’re gone they’re gone. We also have some great pop figures. We sold out of tonight’s allocation already. We have this great Sully and Boo set that’s exclusive, we had this great set with Sorcerer Mickey and Chernabog, a glow in the dark Oogie Boogie. He’s like really great. And those are available here at comic con, first and foremost. If we have any left we’ll sell them at disneystore.com, but we think they’ll go this weekend.

I know a lot of the special editions went immediately last year.

We were surprised at how enthusiastic the reception was at what we had to offer. It was like what can we do to make it more special this year, so we brought a few more.

We were stuck in the booth trying to get over here to you, and it was absolutely insane.

It is swamped. We’re so excited over how much traffic we’re getting.

Last year I came to interview you I did it in the booth, and it was no problem.

We just did it against one of the walls.

Right, but this year, we’re in our own separate booth away from everything.

I know. We can’t even fit in there anymore.

Tell me about this guy

He’s one thing that we are really excited to present, we’ve got the first piece of Frankenweenie product that we released for the new Tim Burton Film Frankenweenie that comes out this fall. We’ve done this vinyl exclusive with funko, it is $40, limited edition of 1000 pieces. Available here exclusively at comic con. This is Sparkysaurus.

Do I have to stand in that crazy line to get one?

You would, even I would have to stand in that crazy line to get one, I know! It’s crazy I know. We’re releasing a quantity every day, so if you get to the Funko booth first thing in the morning, it’s your best bet. I keep telling people to come back early, so this is really great. It’s the first Frankenweenie item we’ve got. It’s the only iteration of him as Sparkysaurus and once it’s gone it’s gone. It’s pretty special and we love this one.

And what about the rest of the beauties in this case?

We have some fantastic previews on display here. Like Starwars 2, which is coming out this fall. There’s a great preview of that series.  One of the items that I’m love with is here, on the top shelf. It’s a part of the online exclusives that correspond here with comic con. There is a different item available everyday online. Here we have the cosplay boy and girl set, this one is available here today.  The pixar series, Carl and Ellie is available tomorrow.  That’s the first art we’ve done from Up. They’re online exclusives that we’ll have available until we sell out.

Can you tell me about anything that’s coming up that you’re really excited about?

We’ve got so many things coming up.

Okay how about the number one most exciting.

Okay,  my number one exciting program that we have coming up is,  the Disney Villains designer collection. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about that, but it’s pretty amazing. It’s a unique stylized fashion twist on classic Disney villainess’

Is it going to be similar to the Disney Princess Designer Series?

It is! It is a counterpoint to the Disney princess series. It’s going to be released in August, released online. We have a full collection of dolls, 6 dolls, limited edition sized. We’ve got cosmetics, drinkware, stationary, lithographs, we’ve got a whole product line of apparel and accessories. We’ve got cosmetic bags that look amazing, lots of bling, lots of glitz and glam. These villains have definitely taken a fashion twist so they’re a fun stylization of characters that everyone knows and loves.

And is there a number 2?

Number 2 has to be the Cinderella Collection. Cinderella is coming out on diamond DVD and Blu Ray is October.  Cinderella is coming to Blu ray for the first time, and it looks unbelievably good on Blu Ray. We’ve designed a whole line of items for that collection. But my favorite, favorite is the limited edition Cinderella doll. 17inches tall, covered with crystals, she’s like blinged out to the max. She is the most beautiful Cinderella I have ever seen in my career of designing Cinderella products, and I’m thrilled to be able to offer her. That one will go on presale when the blu ray does, later this month.

Great, and now I’m sure I know what my daughter will want this fall. Thank you so much to John Balen, for taking the time to speak with me at the chaotic Comic Con. And a special thank you to Katie Western, Nina Ronstaldt and Marissa Martinez for setting up the interview.

Be sure to keep your eyes on disneystore.com for that lovely Designer Villains Series, and the blinged out Cinderella. 

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I had a chance to talk with John Balen on Preview Night of San Diego Comic Con, and he was more than happy to share a little about this exciting new line of toys from Disney Stores.

So tell me a little about the pop vinyl line and how it kind of came to be.

It was a year and a half ago, that one of the designers from our pixar studios who we’re friends with and we work on a lot of projects with, including the design projects for all the movies. He saw the pop line for the first time at the toy fair in 2010, and we, he was like you’ve got to go see this line, like we love this line, I think it would be amazing, for our characters. And like, he never leads us astray. So we went and saw Brian at Funko, and we fell in love with the whole Pop line, and we were like we have to do these in Disney characters. So we did. We came out with Series one, which is actually there on the top shelf, all series one is available in Disney Stores, and Disneystore.com starting last, in May. So that’s our very first series that we had out of those 12 characters, and we just loved having them, and what we wanted to do is to bring them out to comic con to really introduce them to the comic con guests, whose gonna get that connection of art and vinyl and the toy collectable movement. And to really be able to identify and say ‘hey this is the Disney store, like I wouldn’t expect to see this at the Disney store, so we wanted to introduce some special editions here for that guest to be able to discover what we have in our stores.

And then you guys just put out a release today about the new robot Mickey line.

 

A whole new robot vinylmation line comes out Friday, and its actually, we have this great signing happening at the fashion valley store Friday and Saturday nights with all the artists that worked on the line so they’re there to do signings and its going to be so much fun. That line is really near and dear to our hearts and its only the second vinylmation that Disney store artists designed, it’s the whole vinylmation line is a collaboration that started at the Disney theme parks. So Disney Theme parks started the whole vinylmation line and then Disney Stores designed villains and so that was our first series that came out in the spring. And then robots come out this Friday, and we’re super excited about this one.

Is that connected to any kind of movie or anything?

No. It is wholly inspired,  our idea about this retro 50s art style. We’ve got an amazing viral video that you’ve got to check out. Its like a whole retro throwback to 50s monster movies, that’s so cute and we just love it. We’ve already gotten an amazing response to it so far. And we’re real excited to launch that line. I think it will probably be our fastest selling line. I think we’re really excited about that one.

We’re do you see it going from here? You did the villain line, now you’re doing the robots.

So at Disney Store we’re committed to doing a new vinylmation series as often as we can crank out some art work or come up with a great concept, so we’ve got vinylmation plotted out for the next couple of years, all new series, some in collaboration with the parks, some on our own, some are Disney Store exclusives. So we’ve got lots of crazy things coming. It’s all a really fun job for our artists to do, because really they can think of anything they want, and when the designs look amazing and really click, its like a winner, which makes us really excited.

Well yeah. It’s great for kids, and the big kids.

That’s the thing. It’s the whole pop line has an amazing design aesthetic sensibility because it does appeal to little kids, but it does also appeal to like collectors and adults. Like I’m seeing adults come out of here with armfuls of them and you know what it’s not just kids who love them, so  like it’s great for us because we can introduce this whole line to this guest who may not be in the Disney Stores.

And then there’s also the Wizard of Oz series that is displayed here.

Funko actually has licenses for multiple lines. So they’re doing lots of properties, but the only ones you’ll find at Disney Stores are the Disney characters, though I think we may be introducing the Marvel characters soon.

Let me actually describe some of these to you, they’re really fantastic. There’s, my favorite in the line, the flocked Sully. The regular line features a painted Sully, but this one is flocked. He actually has a texture to him. There’s only 480 pieces to him and once he’s gone, he’s gone. And then his companion is a glow in the dark Mike Wazowski, which is amazing and there’s also only 480 pieces of those. Also there’s the chrome edition of Mickey, and a Mr. Incredible that’s actually in his retro costume. When this comes out in series 2, he’ll be in his regular Mr. Incredible costume, but this is the only place you can get him in his retro costume.

Are they going to have the other Incredibles or just Mr. Incredible.

We are going to introduce them in future series, so that’s a little preview to you. We started with Mr. Incredible, and we’re introducing other Monsters characters too. So they’re all an inkling of series we’re planning, we’ve planned all the way to series four. So we’ve got series 2 coming out this fall, series 3 coming out sometime after that, and series 4 is still in the design concept stage.

Are any of the Cars characters planning on crossing over to vinyl?

We are working on it. That is the biggest design challenge right now for our Pixar designer, Ben Butcher, whose actually gonna be here signing tomorrow. He’s going to be here doing a signing in the booth tomorrow, and Friday morning, and he is working on it. It’s a tricky aesthetic to convert into a four wheeled car, let’s put it that way. I’m like good luck Ben, go for it.

Do you think that the Cars are the hardest to convert, or was there another one that was more challenging?

They all have their unique challenges, but the cars are definitely hard, we still haven’t figured out how to do Lightning McQueen as a pop character yet, but we’re working on it. We’re working on it. I’m always like where’s Ben, because if Ben was here he could tell you how its going.

Maybe I’ll come back and ask Ben.

Exactly! Ask Ben tomorrow while he’s doing the signing. Just go, so how are you gonna come out with a Lightning McQueen in pop. That’s what I want to see.

So he can go, “Ooooo, Hmmm.” No they are adorable though, I’ve seen them in the stores, but they never have them all in.

We have the 12 here, but none of the series one are available. They’re available online at Disney Store and disneystore.com, but its starting to sell out. We’re real excited because it’s going real fast. 

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