So, I’ve mentioned some of the issues we’ve had with our Peanuts holiday figures, especially with Peppermint Patty. It is rare that we have any problems with the factory on this product. Sure things happen here and there but they are pretty dependable.

Last year we were getting ready to include her in our Halloween assortment at CVS. I got the painted test shots back and was horrified. She had blonde hair! I thought it was a practical joke. Turns out the joke was on me as I had picked up specs for Sally and rewritten over them. I missed correcting the spec on the hair. Luckily, it wasn’t too early to correct it. (occaisionally, we get “test shots” and they are actually production pieces- Yikes!) Here’s a look at bleach blonde Patty. One of about ½ dozen in existence.

Our most recent miscue has been Patty packaged in Christmas packaging. She was not in our plans for this year but somehow the one shown ended up on the shelf at Meijer. Sure it is a little beaten but it is still factory sealed in spots. Closer inspection shows that she was actually placed in a Franklin inner blister. Notice the lack of an insert- it doesn’t actually say Peppermint Patty anywhere. I’m guessing that the factory had to do some planning for something packaging oriented and they sealed a few of her in the package. (Franklin may have lagged behind in production because parts of him are new) Somehow, she got put in cases and out she went. There is no way of knowing how many are out there. We would never have known about her if Bob hadn’t actually found her in our local Meijer store. What are the odds?

The witch has been a part of folklore since… well, it goes way back… to um… Okay, I’m no historian but I know there were witches in Greek mythology. Maybe they started there but the idea of a witch has been around for along time. When someone says “witch” a mental picture comes to mind, a creepy old crooked lady bent over a bubbling caldron with a pointy hat with its wide brim. She always has her trusty flying broom by her side. Well, that’s what I see anyway.

So building on our theme for this year’s Peanuts Halloween poseable figures, we have Lucy as a witch. I hope she doesn’t take that as an insult. In fact I’m sure she won’t as she appeared in the famous cartoon special dressed as a witch of sorts. The mask she wore in that special reminds me of the masks I used to where for Halloween. Oddly enough, I went out as a witch at least twice, both times in those old vinyl suits with the vacuformed plastic masks. Ah, the good ol’ days.

Keep an eye out for Lucy as a witch this coming Halloween.

Some of my earliest memories are from when I was a little kid when my dad worked late. I’m not sure if he was working second shift or just overtime. Anyway, I remember begging my mom to let me stay up late on Friday nights to watch CREATURE FEATURE. The funny thing was that I could rarely keep my eyes open long enough to see the stars of the show. I’m sure what I did get to see gave me nightmares. Boy did I love it though. Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, you name it. I’ve always had a love of the classics. I’m glad that we got to take some inspiration from those classics to freshen this year’s Peanuts line.

This gives you a little peak at our Peanuts Halloween poseable figures, which will be available at CVS pharmacies. We love them and hope they make a fun addition to everyone’s Halloween décor. Charlie Brown as a vampire is just the start.

Fat Santa Claus is one of this year’s Forever Fun product offerings in the deluxe poseable category of Rudolph figurines. As the story goes, Mrs. Claus is concerned that she might have to alter his coat if he doesn’t start eating and fattening up. And Santa is Casual about the whole idea. This deluxe product includes our poseable Casual Santa with a fabric coat and hat. Put it on and he’s fattened up and ready for his Christmas ride. Press the fabric toy bag and you’ll activate sounds from the classic show. Baby Rudolph with a light-up nose is also included. This is a soft good mockup of the suit, which the factory will emulate for the production run. He looks so happy — it almost seems his tummy shakes… like a bowlful of jelly!

Yikes! We have been nurturing the birth and progress of a new line of figurines to add to our Forever Fun line up of holiday seasonal products. Sculpts and sales samples for this line up recreating the characters in The Little Drummer Boy holiday classic have been warmly received. Test shots have been reviewed and packaging samples received and approved. The next step would be reviewing painted test shots. Jamie received an email loaded with turn around images of the anxiously awaited painted figurines. Image by image, front view, side views, back view, three quarter views, each figurine was revealed. Things were looking pretty good. Image by image we were feeling more and more confident that the factory had understood our specifications. Scrolling toward the end of the images…. YIKES! We have a problem with Aaron, the star of the show.  Everything was looking so good up until then; we decided that folks at the factory were playing a little joke on us. So Jamie decided to return the favor! We are very happy to announce the addition of this new license to our roster of Forever Fun holiday classics.  Little Drummer Boy holiday figurines premiere release will be at selected retailers for the 2009 holiday season.

It’s almost July — less than half a year away from the holidays. Test shots of our Forever Fun holiday offerings are arriving almost daily here at Round 2. Some of them are far enough along to have test deco applied for approval. I find it exciting to see figures and accessories that were a figment of our imagination just a year ago, turned into tactile objects with all their deco glory. Sometimes the factories need specific direction, and there’s no better way than to show them! In the photo, you see Jamie applying paint to Franklin’s winter cap. Once he achieves the look he’s going for, he’ll snap a photo and email it to the factory. The finished image is in the top right corner. Franklin is a new poseable figure that we’ve added to our Forever Fun Peanuts Christmas line of products this year.

Round 2’s Creative Team consists of a small, fiercely dedicated group of individuals who juggle a variety of responsibilities. As most folks know, we don’t just make great holiday figures (Forever Fun), but we also produce models kits (AMT, MPC and Polar Lights), have a slot car line (Auto World), a 1:18 die-cast line (American Muscle) and a custom die-cast line (Auto World Custom & Premium). As you can imagine, with such a variety of projects, there’s never a dull moment at Round 2. (Maybe our mascot is a kangaroo because we’re always jumping from one project to another!)

In any case, I’d like to introduce you to the people behind the products. (In future entries, I’ll plan more detailed individual biographies of my fine cohorts.) As seen in the photo above, from left to right:

Jamie Hood is Art Director for Forever Fun and Model Kits, and on occasion contributes to Auto World as well. Jamie’s primary focus is product development, and he has a particular talent for reviewing sculpts, test shots and dealing with production-related issues. (If you’ve been following Jamie’s excellent entries on our model kits blog, you already have a fair idea of Jamie’s many talents.) With our Forever Fun holiday lines just starting to get under production, Jamie has been reviewing test shots and pre-production samples of Rudolph, Peanuts and Little Drummer Boy on an almost daily basis the past month or so. In addition to those responsibilities, Jamie is an accomplished artist; his most recent contribution, art-wise, at Round 2 was his stellar illustration of the Enterprise-E for our Star Trek model kits line.

Bob Plant (that’s me) is Creative Director at Round 2. Mostly that seems to mean that I get loads of e-mail and sigh a lot. (For variety, some cursing is involved occasionally, as well.) Other than that, well, I guess describing my job is a little tricky — mainly I try to make sure that things keep rolling and that I provide any support the creative team needs to get their job done. My background is in graphic design, so I still design some of our packaging as well, and recently have particularly enjoyed working on model kit boxes and instruction sheets. I’m a Trekkie/Trekker from way back, too, so it’s been a thrill being involved with the Trek kits. I can’t tell folks how exciting it is to be bringing back some of this vintage styrene — the Mr. Spock kit and the UFO Mystery ship are particularly thrill-worthy and absolutely make my geek heart jump for joy.

Terri Rach (that’s pronounced “rock,” and she, indeed, does) is Art Director for Forever Fun, but she also contributes to our other lines as well, particularly in a graphic capacity. Terri’s background in graphic design and advertising has been invaluable — she’s equally adept at designing a poseable holiday figure blister card as she is putting a model kit ad together. Terri ran her father’s ad agency, Impact, for many years, before striking out on her own as a freelance designer. Among her many clients were Playing Mantis and Round 2. At last, we convinced her to come on board full-time, and, in addition to her fine graphic skills, she’s proven herself to be an excellent conceptualist and product developer, working on Peanuts, Rudolph and Little Drummer Boy, developing both product and packaging.

Mike Groothuis is Art Director for Auto World, American Muscle and Custom & Premium. Mike’s focus is packaging design, but he also has his hand in the development of product as well, and is responsible for much of the beautiful and highly accurate pad print artwork that can be seen on our 1:18-scale American Muscle die-cast, as well as our Custom & Premium vehicles, which cover a wide range of vehicle types, from vintage delivery trucks to dragsters to funny cars. Mike is a fantastic photographer, and recently completed photography and packaging design for our line of classic automotive kits. Mike also specializes in photo-realistic renderings of automotive subjects; his illustrations have graced packaging art for Playing Mantis, RC2, and Greenlight. Be sure to check out Mike’s Auto World progress reports (and his excellent product photography) at www.autoworldblog.com.

John Greczula is Art Director and Brand Manager for the automotive segment of our model kits. A styrene kit fanatic from way back, John knows more about the history and the many permutations of MPC and AMT car kits than anyone I’ve ever met. His knowledge has been invaluable in restoring (“backdating”) these classic kits to their vintage glory. John’s obsessive attention to detail has helped ensure that the kits we release meet even the most serious model kit fan’s expectations. John is also a graphic designer who handles his own packaging, having a particular knack for accurately recreating vintage model kit boxes. John’s obsession with styrene car kits is nearly equaled by his peculiar fascination with the Gorn, from Star Trek the Original Series.

Tony Karamitsos is Brand Manager for Auto World, American Muscle and AW Custom & Premium. Tony has serious real-world experience with automotive restoration (specializing in muscle cars), which makes him perfectly suited for our automotive lines. Tony’s unparalleled attention to detail and intimate knowledge of many makes and models of cars have helped ensure that Auto World’s die cast and slot car lines are the most detailed and accurate on the market. Tony is one of the hardest-working individuals I’ve ever met – Tony runs a successful business as a DJ on weekends, restores cars in the evenings, (and occasionally drag-races them!) while still finding time to spend with his wife and three sons. (Three weeks ago, I saw him doing some serious partying with his wife in Vegas, but perhaps that’s a story for another time…)

Andy Jewett is Art Director Web Services and manages our many websites and blogs, from Forever Fun to Custom & Premium to Model Kits and everything in between. Andy is the most recent addition to our team, and his sardonic wit and enthusiasm helps keep us entertained. Andy is one of those multi-talented individuals who can handle the intricate inner-workings of our many websites while still making sure that everything looks pretty on the outside: he’s a true tech with taste. Andy has a great sense of design, and is also an accomplished comics artist, whose work has a distinctly indie (as in “independent comics”) bent. In the jack-of-all-trades department, Andy recently completed a couple of illustrations for our Rudolph packaging.

There you have it folks – a small taste of the personalities behind the product, and a big, big part of the reason why I look forward to coming to work every day.

Proofing a pile of press proofs promises to be repetitive, particularly because they are all from our 2009 Peanuts Halloween product offerings. Lot’s of pumpkin orange, vine green, harvest yellow. Please, don’t get the wrong impression. I happen to be tickled pink with our Peanuts packaging design for the last few years. The point is, today is bright and sunny. It’s the kind of day for grass green and sky blue. There’s the smell of mowed grass in the air with the perfume of flowers wafting through.

OK, back to work. Paying a particular bit of attention to print quality, how do the patterns hold up from piece to piece? Is there proper ink coverage; too heavy to weak in one plate or another? Is everything present? Did any part drop off, (i.e., are all the pieces of data in the proper place)? At this point in time, the printing looks proper; all but a few minor parts are approved to proceed with production. The Forever Fun Peanuts Halloween packaging is ready to go, but for me, summer is just starting and can stay around a long, long time.

Most of the Forever Fun Christmas holiday products are in production. Final approved packaging files have been sent to the printers. Here at Round 2, LLC, a steady stream of test shots of the poseable figures and PVC figurines are being reviewed and painted deco samples are being scrutinized for quality. Printed press proofs of packaging files aren’t expected back for a while. That said, production samples of Forever Fun 2009 product items DO NOT exist!

However, our various customers still need something representative for their planning purposes. These buyers have rooms where they actually set up shelves with the products they have chosen for the season. This simulates their store aisles for management to walk through and review. What we do to satisfy this need is shown in the image. You see fake representations of our 2009 items: boxes of Peanuts Deluxe Figures, a Mini Figure Pageant Set and trays of Peanuts poseable figures and Rudolph poseable figures. This is done with color printouts of the packaging pasted onto heavy board. The packages are cut and/or scored, folded and taped together. The figures shown are flat pictures and cardboard cutouts. The cart represents a good part of a days work. Maybe from far away, you might be fooled into thinking they are actual product. From REAL far away!

The calendar at the Forever Fun department at Round 2, LLC is fast-forwarded one year. All 2010 VALENTINE and 2010 EASTER product proposals are due to our sales reps. – for spring seasonal presentations. And back to today, we are in the middle of production of our 2009 HALLOWEEN product and beginning to release 2009 CHRISTMAS product specs and packaging to the factories.

Within the next week or two we will be setting our plans for our 2010 CHRISTMAS products for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Little Drummer Boy, and Peanuts - Charlie Brown Christmas. From planning product to actual product samples, there are multiple stages of things going on in this department — all happening at the same time!