When McFarlane Toys launched in 1994 it initially manufactured toys of Todd McFarlane's famed Spawn character. Since then the company has soared to the fifth largest toy manufacturer in America. "McFarlane Toys' action figures rank consistently in the top 5 in the U.S. market," the company profile boasts. And even as anime remains precariously on the margins of the mainstream American consumer market, MacFarlane Toys remains more tuned into its fan base than commercial trends.

In 1999 McFarlane Toys first announced their intentions of making a "3D Animation from Japan" toy line. Though "Princess Mononoke" figures were originally slated for production in conjunction with the film's U.S. release, approval problems forced McFarlane Toys to shelve that plan, steering the company toward other titles for their thrust into the anime industry. Executives finally settled on "Akira," "Trigun" and "Tenchi Muyo," the ultra cool and hyper-realistic McFarlane manifest in Tetsuo, Kaneda, Vash and Ryoko.

"In choosing characters for the line, McFarlane Toys started with 'Akira,' the film that helped introduce the anime style to mainstream America," says the McFarlane Toys 2000 catalog. The popular "Trigun" and "Tenchi Muyo" series offered a huge fan base and, therefore, a profitable market ready to be tapped.

McFarlane Toys garnered critical acclaim for the "3D Animation from Japan" toy line when it grabbed ToyFare Magazine's Best Paint Application award for Tetsuo in the magazine's February 2001 issue. Public Relations Director Ken Reinstein declined to make sales figures available to Akadot, stating that McFarlane Toys, as a privately held toy company, does not release sales figures. "However, I can tell you that the 3D Animation line was one of our top sellers of 2000," says Reinstein. The sales were definitely profitable enough to prompt a second 3D Animation line, ready for release this fall.

The profits enjoyed by McFarlane Toys no doubt increases competition for the Japanese companies also manufacturing anime action figures. In an investigative look at the action figure industry, the (now defunct) online consumer magazine Eppraisals.com talks about the Japanese toy companies "The Japanese manufacturers have done a great job of paying attention to details not only in the production of their action figures but in the packaging too," staff writer Josh Berner notes in an article published last fall. "For a long time, action figures were all produced for an American market. Now Japan is establishing it's own market based on animation characters. Of course, the big push came from Pokemon, but we're going to see more."