ICv2: Maybe you could start out by telling us a little bit about how you came to acquire this family of properties that you're currently developing.
Brian Volk‑Weiss: We make a TV show called The Toys That Made Us. By making that show, we got to meet a lot of the people that make toys, design toys. It really put us front and center in the toy business, but as documentarians. One day, I got an email, but I ignored that email. Then I got a lot more emails.
ICv2: [laughs]
This guy, Michael [Goodman], kept trying to get a hold of me. To be completely honest with you, I just respect what I call polite tenacity. I was like, "You know what? Let's do a half‑hour Zoom." This was about three years ago.
He was a toy agent. He would represent designers and inventors and get them deals at NECA, or Hasbro, or whatever. Maybe, at the most, two months later, I called him up. "I need you to be an employee and start our consumer product division." That's how it all started.
So we bought the rights. Then we hired a designer. The designer designed it. Michael found a factory in China. We sent them the plans. Probably overspent by 100 percent what we needed to. There was this very steep learning curve. That was it.
I sure as hell didn't invent this. There's a company called Marvel, I think, beat me to it by about 100 years, but we're just combining the properties. I guess the one thing we're doing a little different is we're taking… Garloo was invented in the late '50s, Biker Mice in the early '90s, but they live in the same world. Example: RoboForce, which is coming out next year (see "Show Open for ‘RoboForce’"), hopefully in April (we're doing that with The Rock and his company, Seven Bucks), you'll see there's cameos from all the characters. Garloo is a prominent character in RoboForce. Biker Mice from Mars has two cameos. The fourth or fifth lead of the whole show is a Sectaurian.
I'm sure there's a better word for this, but we've smooshed everything all together.
We did a deal with Oni Press to be our comic book company (see "Oni Comics and Nacelle Company"). We've had no better partner, first of all; whenever you have a good partner, you really need to brag about it as much as you can. We've been working with them for over a year.
What's your company's involvement in the creation of the narrative? Where does the narrative come from for the Oni stories?
From a business creative standpoint, RoboForce was our Iron Man. In the Nacelleverse, we know the next 50‑year plan. We actually know going back about 50 years as well. We have about 100 years figured out. We know where we want to end up, and it's no secret.
We have Biker Mice in production now too, with Ryan Reynolds. Each show is basically helping to put this whole world together. RoboForce is season one of RoboForce, but it's also season one of the Nacelleverse. Biker Mice is season two of the Nacelleverse, even though it's season one of Biker Mice.
Like I said, this is all what I've seen Marvel do. I did not invent this theory. We're doing it with TV shows, what they did with movies.
You laid out the broad arc of the story, and then Oni fills it in?
Yes. Basically, we have a bible that has a beginning, middle, and end. It shows where we want everything to end up and basically has a list of rules. Like, "This character can't die because she'll be needed in the Sectaurs season," etc.
We give that to the writer. We meet with the writers. They come in for an actual old‑fashioned meeting meeting (our first meeting is in person). We explained to them what we're thinking. We give them an idea that we like, and then they make it their own.
Sometimes they take and flesh it out. Sometimes they’re like, "Thanks for your idea. What do you think of this idea?" If we like the other idea better than ours, which I would say 80 percent of the time we do, we go with their idea.
Yes.
Are they sold?
Yes. RoboForce is sold. I can't tell you where. That comes out in April. Biker Mice from Mars is sold to Fubo. It'll premiere on Fubo, and then it goes everywhere else about a month later. That'll be Amazon, and Paramount+, and all that stuff.
What's the connection between the narrative in the shows and the comics?
We use the comics initially as prequels. I was a big comic book reader when I was a kid. I don't know if you ever read Dark Horse's Aliens Vs. Predator.
Familiar.
They put out this great series. In my opinion, it was groundbreaking. One of the things that made it groundbreaking was a year, maybe even a year and a half after Aliens Vs. Predator came out, they put out Aliens Vs. Predator #0, which was the prequel to the comic book they had already put out.
That's what NacelleVerse #0 is for us. It sets up the whole universe. By the time you get to RoboForce next year, hopefully you've read the comics, and it sets it up, but if you haven't read the comics, it doesn't matter. That leads directly into RoboForce, the first three issues. That is literally a prequel to the series. Same thing with Biker Mice.
RoboForce the comic takes place 10 years before the cartoon. Biker Mice from Mars takes place five years before the cartoon. Those are in sync with each other as well. What's going on in the RoboForce comics is completely in sync with what's going on in the Biker Mice comics. They refer to each other.
What's the target demo?
In my mind, I think it's three quadrants. It could even be four. The example I always look to (and I've been saying this for years, not since it came back) is X‑Men, or as it's now called, X‑Men '97. I watched that show when I was 12. Loved it. Now, I still love it. When I look back, it worked for me at 12, and it works for me at 48. That's what we're trying to do. In RoboForce, there's more lasers in that show, more shooting, more gunfire, more action than almost any other… I cannot think of a cartoon that's had more action, but it's also got a lot of comedy.
I told you we're doing this with The Rock. There's a lot of comedy. His head writer, Brian Gewirtz, definitely probably made our show five letter grades funnier than it would have been. There's also a lot of comedy.
There's also (in this, again, I allude back to X‑Men) a tremendous amount of pathos. There's some very serious topics in the show. Basically, the whole premise of RoboForce, we took from what really happened. Do you know the story behind RoboForce?
Not really.
It’s so funny, I tell this story all the time, but I've never told this story where it actually happened [the interview took place in the Javits Center in New York City]. RoboForce is announced on a Tuesday at Toy Fair. It was the biggest launch ever for a first‑wave toy. Toys "R" Us ordered two million units. That was the biggest order for a first‑wave toy in the history of Toys "R" Us for the entire time they existed.
What year was that?
1983. Huge. I don't know if you knew toy chain KB [Toys].
Sure.
KB ordered half a million units. They had a 50‑episode cartoon in production. It was on CBS, this whole thing. Do you wonder why no one knows what the hell RoboForce is?
Go ahead.
Can you guess what was announced, in this building, on Thursday?
You mean in that same year, 1983?
Same year, two days later, 48 hours later.
I don't know. Power Rangers?
Transformers. The Toys "R" Us order went from two million to 250 thousand units. The KB order went from half a million to 50,000. It destroyed RoboForce. It's like the Ishtar of the toy business.
There was no RoboForce. They canceled the cartoon. They didn't even finish what I guess you could call a pilot.
We took that story and put it into… That's the canon for RoboForce. At the beginning of RoboForce, they were supposed to be the most badass robots on the planet. The same day they're getting announced, even more badass robots get announced from another company.
The cartoon takes place 15 years later when they have been losers. All these robots that were supposed to be the heroes of Earth, they're plumbers, they're janitors, they're selling timeshares. They're losers. Of course, guess what happens? The other robots go crazy. Only RoboForce, of course, can stop them.
It's very dark. It's all about these losers who are given a second chance to be heroes. The cartoon starts 15 years after they got messed up. The comic book takes place five years after. The characters that will be the villains in the cartoon are still friends with the heroes in the cartoon.
Basically, next year, when the series comes out, it's going to show the gradual destruction of RoboForce, which leads to a civil war amongst RoboForce.
You also have a toy launch at Walmart?
Yes. It's in about 2,700 Walmarts. It's the Nacelleverse. It's an end cap. It's what they call a feature, only for our products. First shelf is RoboForce, second shelf is Biker Mice from Mars, then Sectaurs, then Garloo, then Barnyard Commandos.
That's really unusual, for Walmart to do something like that without any media.
We thought so as well, but it worked.
How's your POS? What kind of data are you getting; are they selling?
All of the lines are selling above expectation, except for one. The one that's not overperforming is performing.
Are they going to roll it out wider when the shows come out?
Yes. The short answer is yes.
Are you selling the toy line into the comic stores?
Absolutely, yeah. We distribute ourselves. We built our own DTC. Then we built our own, what we like to call our mom‑and‑pop network.
Your DTR?
Our DTR. There you go. I'm going to use that. I like that. That's what we did. We were selling toys for two years before we did our deal with Walmart.
How's that going, the direct‑to‑retailers?
Phenomenal. Every toy we've made is profitable. I told you I had a lot of friends in the toy business before we got into it. They all told me the same joke. You know how you become a millionaire in the toy business?
Start with two million?
You start off as a billionaire. Close. Very close.
That's the comic business, the two million, one million version. [laughs]
I would argue that's a tougher business, based on what I've seen.
It's a classic flywheel. That's what we've tried to build, and I think it's working. The comic books support the toys. This is one of the things I'm the most proud of from 2024. We knew Walmart wanted an exclusive RoboForce. We were making the comics while that information came to us.
We were able to say to Melissa Flores, the writer, "Hey, we're doing a gold Maxx 89. It's gold. That, to me, feels like maybe he's fireproof. Can you write a scene where you see Maxx hit a button and becomes fireproof Maxx?"
Melissa, being Melissa, was like, "Yeah. I'll figure it out." She wrote this… It's one of the best scenes in all three books, where he turns on his fireproof suit and does his thing in a lot of fire.
You can go to Walmart. You could leave here, go to the closest Walmart, you can buy fireproof Maxx that you read about in the comic book.
