Sideshow Interview with Tom Gilliland

The quality -- and price -- of Sideshow's merchandise is reflective of the evolution of the collecting hobby overall. As standards have risen, so have costs for manufacturers and consumers alike. Both groups seem willing to push the other in pursuit of quality. Gilliland says, "It's pretty immensely satisfying. It's nice because one of the things I started with in product development was with Marvel models, and now we're operating a pretty good sized Marvel license. In a way, that feel like coming full circle. I just worked out with a sculptor named Moto Hata who's working with Spectral Motion (Incorporated). He did a maquette sculpture of The Thing from the upcoming 'Fantastic Four' movie, and it was Moto Hata whom I originally partnered with in the early Horizon (model kit) days. I would do the paint of the sculptures he would (create) for Horizon. Here we are, fifteen years later, and I was able to do a project with good friends over at Spectral Motion and a sculptor that I had been friends with for all of these years and even worked in product development with."

Asked if it's a challenge to find new ways of presenting the Marvel characters without feeling like he's treading the same ground that others have walked, Gilliland counters, "I think the Marvel license gives us an opportunity to take our more premium edition quarter-scale figure maquettes and apply that model to the Marvel universe so we can create things that are bigger than anything that's been done for most Marvel figure products and bring in that element of clothing and costuming and overall composition to create figures that are unique in their presentation. While the Green Goblin has been done as a statue on a glider before, it's never been done with materials integrated into it. It'll have a lighted feature in the flame on the back of the jet on the flying glider. You look at the Logan and we've got a wonderfully tailored costume onto a body that's really carefully considered for all of its additional details. It allowed us to bring in some metal elements. I think we can give the Marvel fan a stronger collectible to appreciate."

It would seem that Sideshow is focusing especially on heroes and villains that have been featured in movies. Gilliland says, "You know, not really. We're looking at the characters we really like, the characters that are more popular, and what works best for the format. Some of the characters that are just in tights we are trying to find the best way to do them, that representation which has enough scope to the costume to make it interesting, if you will. There are a lot of factors. Marvel's such a huge universe, it's hard to even wrap your head around it without studying it for some time.

"Again, we're still learning, still trying to make better decisions as to what to put our energies towards."

Additional Marvel-inspired goodies will come from Sideshow in 2005, but Gilliland is coy about the details. All he'll say is, "There's this exciting new announcement for us at Toy Fair, another category of product we're going to be putting out, a different scale and different presentation. It's kind of an interesting conceptual idea we've developed. We've created this in-house. It's an interesting twist on an established format. We're not really looking at the Marvel license as something to create lower-cost product in. We really want to establish this as a marquee product for the Marvel license. The other arena is really much more difficult, frankly. I don't know that we could bring anything new to that. If we want to do something innovative, this is the area for us to do it in. We are infinitely more comfortable here than in the action figure arena."

Does he think the mass market is unhealthy? Laughing softly, Gilliland replies, "We started out there and we have progressively moved away from it. It's a scary place. At the end of the day, you have to enjoy what you're doing. In the mass market, we just weren't enjoying what we were doing, and we didn't think our product was being enjoyed in the way that it could be. So, we just moved into an area where we felt more comfortable and felt (was) more rewarding to us and our faithful fan base... We are only in business because of the loyalty of Sideshow collectors."

By Claude Flowers

This interview is a four-part series for our affiliate site, Figures.com . Visit them to read more about Sideshow Collectibles and their other product lines.