Creating Custom Action Figures & Custom Dolls

Action Figures & Dolls:

Just The Basics

Design & Creative Decisions

Prototyping & Manufacturing

They’re collectible, heroic, playful and engaging. Action figures and dolls are mini plastic tributes that bring brand celebrities, creative characters, corporate mascots and business heroes to toy life.

Just the Basics

Happy Worker strategically designs and creates original toys that become lasting brand collectibles and treasured desk keepsakes.

We collaborate with brands & fans, companies, and agencies. And we don’t make just any “old” toys…

Each order of retail quality toys we make - whether they're action figures, dolls, designer vinyl figures or figurines - are designed and manufactured from scratch to best suit our client’s needs and to excite their fans.

Together with our client-partners like Yahoo!, Blizzard, McAfee, Safeco, Apartments.com and Merrill Lynch, we’ve created exciting results through the toy superpowers of custom dolls and action figures.

 

What Happy Worker is Passionate About
Great Design and Great Toys. Client and Fan Happiness.

We work together with our clients to design and produce original dolls and figures that embody the spirit, energy and character of their brands.  And we include our passion for design, happiness, and getting all the little details right in each and every batch of toys we make.

Timelines
Creation-to-Delivery

Creating and producing new orders of action figures normally requires 20 to 26 weeks to design, prototype, manufacture and deliver. Some figures that have complex designs or that mix different materials or production techniques can take a bit longer.

Faster delivery timelines may be possible depending on the design and current production capacity. To achieve shorter production schedules often review & approval stages are minimized and additional “rush” charges will apply.

 

Order Quantities
Ideal Order Sizes

Happy Worker manufactures action figures in the thousands of toys at a time. Our smallest starting orders are 2,500+ toys for designer vinyl figures, and 5,000+ toys for plastic action figures and dolls. We have experience with large complex projects and can readily support orders in the hundreds of thousands to millions of toys.

Orders of 1,500 - 2,500 toys:
A great option for an order of 1,500 or more toys is resin figurines. Contact us to learn more.

• For smaller orders of 1,500 or fewer toys, Happy Worker may not be able to help with your project. To consider ways to increase your order quantity, see popular uses for toys.

• A happy note about Personalized One-Off Action Figures

 

Pricing
Setup & Per-Unit

Pricing varies based on:

• Size of toy
• # of Accessories and joints
• Painting and detailing
• Packaging
• # of toys created at a time
  
  

Most orders of action figures we produce in quantity are priced at wholesale prices, or typically two-thirds to half of what the figure’s suggested retail price would be if they were sold at retail stores.

Budgeting for custom action figures includes two parts:

• Per-unit

As a general pricing guideline, most 6-inch action figures with accessories range between $6/ea and $12/ea at the minimum order, while pricing for mini figures (less than 4 inches high) can range from $4/ea to $8/ea, or less in the hundreds of thousands or millions of figures.

• “Start-up” Investments

Design, sculpting, prototyping, tooling and molds are on top of the per-unit pricing, and can range from a little over $10,000 to $25,000 or more depending on design, the number of toys developed at the same time and the reference artwork available.

• We Design to Budgets

Because Happy Worker designs and produces original toys from scratch for our clients, we work backwards from budget targets and program objectives to select the best toy characteristics to achieve all key goals. Please contact us and our happy team will help recommend the best figure format.

Mini Marketing Superheroes

Often we’re asked to create collector action figures as toy tributes to all kinds of professionals. We’ve created toy superheroes for IT experts and geeks, managers and executives, HR and recruiting experts, financial types, working moms and insurance pros. Each order is designed from the ground up - just our clients’ brands, messaging, and audience. These branded toys are then gifted by our clients to their prospects, customers and employees – always with exciting results.

Custom action figures are always a hit - and they hit big. Here's why:

• They’re instantly recognizable.
  They remind people of themselves and people they know. When toys take on human forms, people connect with them.
• They’re heroic.
  Traditional action figures celebrate comic and movie heroes like “G.I. Joe”, “‘Wonder Woman” and “Superman”. Many of the figures we create celebrate heroic workers, people and professionals.
• They’re collectible.
  The toys we make are designed to be played with over and over, and displayed forever.
• Action figure branding goes deep.
  Your marketing messages and brand are embodied in every part of the finished product: the character, the toy’s name, bio, accessories, and packaging.
• They’re provoking.
  The toys we create with our clients are engaging, unusual and provoking. They’re designed to stay in their recipients hands, on their desks and most importantly, in their minds.
• They're retail quality.
  All of the action figures and custom dolls we create are retail quality, because we make toys for retail too.

 

Next Steps

 

 

 

 

Our Work

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Super Leasing Pro Action Figure

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Fun Facts - Yahoo!

Yahoo! and Happy Worker created the Super Recruiter character and launched the first action figure in the line in 2005. Since then, these mini HR heroes have been adopted on HR pros desks across the US, and continue to organically generate regular, unsolicited inbound calls to HotJobs' sales reps.

We've been on hand to help Yahoo! launch their custom action figures and original promotions at HR trade shows in San Diego, Washington, DC, Las Vegas and Chicago.

See the work...

• Figurines
• Plastic Figures
• Dolls
• Designer Figures
• Vinyl Toys
• Mini Figures