Army of Darkness Palisades Series 2 Complete

[demonknight666]

This is torture. Why does a crappy company like Palisades get to make Evil Dead figures? At least there out of business now and can't cause any more trouble. Don't get me wrong, the figures look kinda nice. The quality though is pretty crappy. I can't count how many deadites I had lose their hands, even after massive amount of dw40 or other lubricants used, right out of the box. Let's see  Soft plastic + super tight joints = broken figure. I wish a Good company like Hasbro, Takara or Hottoys would make 4" versions.

The only good thing is that I now have a lot of rotting corpses for any future diorama. Too bad though, can't bring myself to even touch my pitt or smart ash for fear of breaking an over a hundred dollar item. I hate Palisades.... go out of business right after making hardly any series 2... wish they could go out of business again. I also hope the people responsible for quality either have a change of heart or never again make action figures.

[Names_Ash_Housewares]

Although I agree that other companies should make Evil Dead releated action figures, the figures themselve are not actually that bad, I own all of them and the joints are ok on most of them, the skeleton deadits have the worst joints though the plastic is way too thin.

The trouble i have found is getting the damn things to stand up properly!

[GuruAskew]

This is an interesting thread.

First thing: I hope somebody didn't sell you that Armored Ash as if it's a legit figure.  Nobody has ever made Ash in armor, and if you look the armor is actually Evil Ash armor repainted.  This coupled with the fact that he has two "human" hands indicates that this is just a repainted Evil Ash with an Ash head.  Looks like the legs are probably from one of the knight figures too.  Odds are somebody got a little creative with all the extras left over when they were cracking open 64 figures to get the super-rare ones.

Secondly, you seem to be missing some of the chase figures.  The most obvious missing figure is the Holiday Ash figure.  All told there are 31 individual figures:

Series 1:

Hero Ash
Deadite Scout

Pit Witch
Deadite Centurion

Knight
Deadite Pikeman

Deadite
Deadite Footsoldier

Series 1 exclusives:

Splitting Ash (Previews Exclusive)
Deadite (Previews Exclusive)

Evil Ash "V-1" (MusicLand Group Exclusive)
Deadite Scout (MusicLand Group Exclusive)

Knight (Gear4Games/TimeandSpaceToys.com Exclusive)
Deadite Skeleton (Gear4Games/TimeandSpaceToys.com Exclusive)

Deadite Builder Pack #1 (Palisades Direct Exclusive)
Deadite Builder Pack #2 (Palisades Direct Exclusive)

Bloody Battle Ash (Palisades Collector's Club Exclusive)
Bloody Battle Deadite (Palisades Collector's Club Exclusive)

Holiday Ash (Retailer Exclusive)

Series 2:

Deadite Archer (1:8)

Deadite Captain (1:8)

Deadite Infantry (1:8)

Duke (1:8)

Duke's Knight Infantry (1:8)

Evil Ash "V-2" (1:16)

King's Bodyguard (1:16)

King's Knight Infantry (1:64)

Pit Battle Ash (1:32)

Pit Deadite (1:8)

S-Mart Ash (1:64)

Winged Deadite (1:16)

Now, when Palisades went belly-up a lot of prototypes of unproduced figures popped up on eBay courtesy of ex-employees but they were often noticeably works-in-progress, they were generally pretty pricey and as far as I know they were all just army-builder types and no Ash variants were released.

I have every "Army of Darkness" action figure ever released.  You can see a pic there, including all 31 Palisades "Army of Darkness" figures (plus everything from Sideshow, McFarlane, NECA and Mezco):



As for Mezco and their "Cinema of Fear" license, that has nothing to do with "Army of Darkness".  Mezco managed to get the New Line Horror license, which NECA previously held.  New Line controls "A Nightmare on Elm St.", "Friday the 13th" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and they've essentially built that entire line on those three New Line-controlled properties.  "Army of Darkness" is controlled by MGM (who owns Orion).

In any case, it's a non-issue because as recently as February 29th Randy from NECA posted this on their MySpace Q&A:

I hope we get to a Hero Ash and Possessed Sheila 2 pack but this year keeps getting more and more full

This was hinted at before as a single-figure.  What it would be would be their Medieval Ash re-decorated with the armor, making them the first company to make this version of the character.  They asked fans about it previously somewhere (I think it may have been an earlier MySpace Q&A) and this idea has apparently "morphed" into the 2-pack with Sheila, which would also be sweet because she's never been made in figure-form as well.  They've also mentioned doing the Medieval Ash as a 12" figure, sorta like their 12" Shaun of the Dead figure which is the same as the smaller one but... bigger.

But yeah, it's a slow time for "Army of Darkness" collectibles.  For something that's never been in the "Freddy" and "Jason" league in terms of mass-popularity it's arguably become the most-merchandised horror film these last few years and unfortunately there's really nothing concrete on the horizon beyond NECA mentioning the 2-pack and the 12" figure.  Still, they seem to still have the license this year.

But yeah, the only one you seem to be missing is Holiday Ash and they aren't really super-rare or anything.  There are a couple of them online now for very reasonable prices.

Of course, mine is one-of-a-kind because I got the one Palisades sent to Walt Flanagan at Jay & Silent Bob's Secret Stash.  It still has the mailing label on the box and everything.

[Names_Ash_Housewares]

Come on I aint stupid I bought it as a custom figure as at the time of purchase there was no Ash in medieval armor figure by any company and I thought it looked cool.

Dont forget I have been following all Evil Dead / Army merchandise since 1997 so I would have known it was fake if the seller was selling it as legit  .

Also I know about the Holiday Ash I just havnt picked that one up yet.

[GuruAskew]

The thing about that custom I don't understand is that the seller obviously cannibalized a Series 1 Ash to make the figure (you can tell because the Series 1 head is completely different than the heads on the Chainsaw and S-Mart versions, not that anyone would kitbash one of those anyway) and they all have the metal hand so I don't know why he swapped the head and not the hand.

It's a cool-looking figure, it's not accurate if you actually scrutinize it but when I saw it I was like "I don't have that!".

Palisades should have focused more on making the few unmade characters than making a bunch of deadite variants. I know their plan was to cater to army-builders but there were better ways to do that, they could have offered all the different characters or different versions of characters like Sheila (possessed and unpossessed), Armored Ash, Blacksmith, Gold Tooth, etc. and then did an army-builder pack like Hasbro does with their Clonetroopers and Stormtroopers.  Imagine how well the line would have done if people could have actually bought the versions of the characters they wanted and then bought a bunch of spare skeletons/deadites with a bunch of different weapons and interchangable parts if they wanted to build armies for dioramas and things.

But yeah, hopefully that NECA Armored Ash and Possessed Sheila 2-pack will materialize.  I'd also like to see them do Chainsaw Ash.  The McFarlane one will always have the fact that it's the first Ash action figure going for it but it could be done a lot better today and it simply doesn't look good compared to the Medieval and S-Mart Ash figures NECA did.  I'd also like to see Sideshow do a Chainsaw Ash in the 12" scale.

What I'd really like is every incarnation of Ash in every scale, but that's not really possible.

[Theron]

Well when Palisades was doing the first series I contacted them and offered my help.
I ended up working as an unpaid/uncredited consultant,  I worked with one of their employees on ideas for the figures they were making.  I also sent them photos of all of the film used movie props I own/owned over the years as well as my photo database from the film. 

I pushed and pushed for them to make less of the deadites and more of the human characters, one of the main reasons why we didn't get a Shiela, Blacksmith, Goldtooth was because it is a seperate licensing issue when an actor's face is used. That is why the Arthur toy was not called Arthur even thought it was him.

If they hadn't have gone out of business we should have got a third series with more people,

Several issues I could not get anywhere with,  one of them major hang ups was they were reusing molds to make new figures with some reused pieces and this limited what they could do.

I was able to help with the colors of many items, making sure they looked better and more accurate.
you should have seen the original paint mock ups for these things,

All in all they did a really good job and they wanted to give the fans the best product possible.

[eViL DeAdiTe]

I still can't figure out why they made the Pit Deadite purple?  Seemed like a last minute change since the promo shots were closer to the movie colour scheme.

By the way Theron, I did end up picking up that Deadite Skeleton from you know who on ebay.  I'll see if I can get you some pics!

[Names_Ash_Housewares]

I always wondered why it was purple too? seems strange as they got the Pit Witch almost dead on with the color scheme.

[Theron]

yeah the Pit Deadite was even worse originally,    it was bright purple when it was first mocked up. The palisades employee had to fight with the licencee apparently they had some fabric swatches that were said to be from the original costume fabric, I sent them a ton of photos of the original costume, but they kept insisting it should be more purple,  believe it or not we had to fight to convince them to only make it as bright a purple as they did,

there was other color and costume designs that were just  wrong,  there were not even based off of anything seen in the film,  they were also going from a large photo database of preproduction images many of the costumes and monsters and weapons they were looking at were not even seen on screen,  I helped to steer them in the right direction,

the employee I was working with was a fan of the film and wanted the toys to be as good as they could be, many of the problems with the line were because of the firm that holds the rights to the film,  they don't even know what they are selling.  It was just plain sad,   must be why so many AOD products have so many inaccuracies