Brian Volk-Weiss, who made his name with The Toys That Made Us, has since moved into the world of manufacturing toys and even creating new animated series based on nostalgic intellectual properties from his childhood. With Biker Mice From Mars making a comeback and new episodes of RoboForce on the way, Volk-Weiss admitted to ComicBook that there are still some shows he would love to bring back to toy shelves — and that he’s actively working on some of them right now.
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Volk-Weiss told us that one of the complications is trying to negotiate with the IP holders, who are often the original creators and don’t really want to part with the rights, or let anyone else take point on their legacy.
“At the moment yes, but we have two IPs we’re in contract on now, and two…this whole thing is a dance because frequently we’re trying to get the rights from the creator, and it’s their baby,” Volk-Weiss explained. “I know how I feel about Toys that Made Us, there’s a character in RoboForce called Detonator, he’s my baby. I get it. You have to very delicately make the argument like, ‘Listen, you made something great, but you’re in your eighties, and you’ve had it for like 25 years and you haven’t made anything new. Let us try. Let’s make you some money, and let’s bring it back,’ and very often, those conversations take time because people have to come to the conclusion, if they’re going to, that you can’t take it with you, and hopefully — and this is happening to us now, people are seeing what we did with RoboForce, what we did with Biker Mice from Mars. Toys came out right away. Same thing with Moo Mesa. We announced that we got the IP and less than two months later, we were selling the toys.”
RoboForce: The Animated Series is set in 2089. The latest version of Soraya Aviram’s RoboForce debuted with plans to assist a new intergalactic society on Earth. Unfortunately, the same day as the announcement, Soraya’s rival, Silas Duke, revealed his new Utopia Aegis 101 line of bots, which made RoboForce immediately obsolete. RoboForce split up and was forced into menial jobs for 15 years without hope of ever being heroes… Until mysteriously, a rogue code infected the Utopia Aegis 101’s to turn on humanity, and no one else besides Maxx 89 and the rest of RoboForce has a chance to stop them.
The series will be executive produced by Brian Volk-Weiss, who also is directing, alongside Cisco Henson, Matt Kravitsky, Michael Goodman, Tom Stern and Gavin Hignight for Nacelle. Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia and Brian Gewirtz will serve as executive producers on behalf of Seven Bucks Productions.
