NK: In those days, you used little paint masks made of paper and you couldn't keep them together, then we went to copper and you just couldn't get it fine enough and today that's no longer a problem but in those days it was a problem.
Museum: So in the factories even on the 8" figures you would have a paint mask that went on each one?.NK: (Each worker) would have a different spray, one guy would have black, blue (etc) You had these little mounted heads and they'd apply a little copper mask and the spray gun would go by.
Museum: Were all the outfits done by hand?.NK: Yes, by young girls, today it would be all over the front pages, 12 year old girls but they were the only ones that could put those little dots on the eyes. They were the only ones with steady enough hands; they were all done by hand.
Museum: Was there automation involved in creating mego figures?.NK: Yeah, we had some breaks, first of all the screen printing, nobody had screen printed outfits before. So it was a new method, using the stretching material, which was all new.
Actually the material didn't even exist, we found it because our agents were making ladies pantsuits and leisure suits for men out of that material, it was great and it stretched and you could sew it
(Today) there isn't much demand for the material, so it's hard to find
Museum: The silk screening is brilliant, I think.NK: I can't tell you who came up with the idea to that, it was some production guy. Our major domo (Sid Noble) actually got stranded in Hong Kong when the company went under.
And Larry Usdin, lived (in Hong Kong) and ran the accounting for us for years. We realized we needed an American over there to oversee things.
Museum: What about Planet of the Apes?NK: A friend of mine (editors note: I can't make out her name) she has the original hand made prototypes, she made them.
Museum: She designed all the costumes?NK: Well they were taken as faithfully as they could from the film, so that's where the designs came from but in terms of the implementation, yeah she has them. She's got the first offs in terms of printing and they are absolutely perfect, perfect mint condition, the dump displays everything.
She's got the first Superheroes blister cards, she's got a storehouse, a treasure load.
Museum: Was there any consideration into trying to do a Charlton Heston Figure?NK: No because we would have had to pay him, he had that kind of a contract, so we just used a character; the helmet comes from Action Jackson, the jumpsuit too. We never made a new tool if we didn't have to.
Museum: Do you recall the 12" Captain America doll and his head seems out of proportion to the body? The theory is that it has the wrong sized body, any truth to it?NK: I remember the doll but I never noticed it. Anythings possible, in the moulding those days (rotational molding) we used to figure from the original clay, around 16%, first an 8% reduction then another 8% reduction.
Sometimes it turned out 10% other times 5% depending on the material, it may have just been a bad sculpt a lot of those heads were sculpted in the orient.
When we needed real likenesses, we used guys here but when it was not for cost savings we used somebody in Hong Kong.
Museum: To actually do the sculpting?NK: Some of the Sculpting yes, for instance, Star Trek characters were done here, Sonny and Cher, Starsky and Hutch were done here.
Museum: But if you needed something more generic looking it was done in Hong Kong?NK: When it had a hood over it and you couldn't see the face, it was done overseas.
Museum: The sculpts on Mego heads are extraordinary, the facial details are all there.NK: The first guy that did them for us, a guy named Ken Sheller is in my mind a genius, he went from getting $800 a sculpt to $10,000 to $15,000 a sculpt.
Museum: For Mego?NK: No not with Mego, later on he went on to do work for other companies. The stories of Neal Adams doing packing for us, we visited his studio, we had conversations, his prices were just totally out of whack, for us.
(Adams) was already a star in the comic trade and we didn't need him the artwork was all supplied, I was very close to Sol Harrison, he was publisher for DC for quite a few years.
NK:He did all the likenesses and then later on when his prices (went to high) we used various people but when you needed a good look, in fact I used Ken for the Brook Shields doll after I left Mego.
Museum: (switching gears back) to Marty Abrams, how was he to work with?NK:He was a great executive, he gave us free reign, I fought for months to get Star Trek, he finally acquiesced when I got the advance for $5,000. Once he made a decision, he backed you up and let you go.
I was treated royally, I was one of the highest paid people in the business but when I left, (things weren't good).
Museum: What do you think of the Mego presence on the net?NK:I rarely use the net, what I am surprised at is the two greatest products Mego ever I've heard almost nothing about.
Museum: What are those?NK: 2-XL and Magna Doodle, both came from the outside, both started off in a place that was unrecognizable today. We developed both of those and they stayed in the marketplace until there patents expired..