McFarlane Toys has released photos of its first series of action figures based on the enormous catalog of cartoon characters created by animation pioneers Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera. The first six McFarlane Hanna-Barbera Action Figures will debut in July with single figures retailing for around $12 and box sets in the neighborhood of $22 (see 'McFarlane Nabs Hanna-Barbera License').
The first series of McFarlane figures puts a major emphasis on Hanna-Barbera's two most famous properties with two different Tom & Jerry (the duo's Academy Award-winning theatrical characters) figures and two skus based on the patriarch of Hanna-Barbera's long-running primetime series, The Flintstones.
The two other six-inch scale figures included in the first series also come from Hanna-Barbera's long list of characters created for television. The fondly-remember Quick Draw McGraw is depicted in the form of his Zorro-esque alter ego, El Kabong, while everybody's favorite martial arts mutt, Hong Kong Phooey, is presented in full Bruce Lee mode.
The two figures of Fred Flintstone both feature his inimitable foot-powered vehicles, the triceratops-head Chopper and the Deluxe Cruisin' Box Set, in which he appears to be driving a Stone Age version of the PT Cruiser.
Hanna & Barbera created Tom & Jerry for the MGM movie studio way back in the 1940s, and this archetypal cat and mouse duo will be available in an extremely traditional tableau entitled No Trespassing, and in a more modern incarnation, Rock n' Roll, in which Jerry appears to be blasting Tom out of the room thanks to a wall of amplifiers that looks like it is left over from McFarlane Toys' Metallica series.
