The mystery of Doom the Movie's lost action figures

[Revenant100]

With all the hubbub regarding the upcoming Doom: Annihilation film, I went on a small nostalgia spree looking up info on the original Doom Movie and came across the Doom Wiki's Doom movie merchandise article. It lists the First 4 Figures BFG replica and Hell Knight statue, which I've seen both pop up on Ebay several times over the years, but I'm now drawn to the last item in this list: the action figure line. Four figures are mentioned, those being Reaper, Sarge, Pinky and Sewer Imp, and the article discusses them as if they were made available alongside the aforementioned statues, which seems reasonable considering the cited toy previews (Preview 1, Preview 2) indicating their forthcoming release in May of 2006. But here's the fly in the ointment: I have never once over the years come across a single iota of evidence suggesting these figures actually made it to market. No product pages on market sites, no pictures of the packaging, not even pictures of loose figures out in the wild.

 

So, in the interest of at least doing some fact checking for the wiki, can anyone provide any proof that any of these Doom movie action figures were ever publicly sold? More importantly, has my lifelong search for a Pinky action figure been a horribly misguided lie?

 

As part of my comprehensive research into this immensely important and consequential subject matter, I've collected a number of pertinent archived links from the old site of First 4 Figures, the company that was to (supposed to, anyway) produce this figure line.

 

First 4 Figure's Doom product buying pages:

• Doom Product Range (only "Statues" and "Replica Weapons" listed)
• Hell Knight (Regular Edition)
• Hell Knight (Exclusive Edition)
• Bio Force Gun - Mini Weapons Replica

 

First 4 Figure's action figure previews:

• Reaper Action Figure
• Sarge Action Figure
• Pinky Action Figure
• Sewer Imp Action Figure

 

Note that First 4 Figure's own site seemingly never possessed buy pages for the action figures. The above figure pages seem to be solely from a "Toyfair 2006 Preview," and the product images themselves are explicitly noted to only be prototypes. These apparently remain our only known images of the figures themselves.

 

Working images of the items:

• Sarge and Pinky
• Reaper and Sewer Imp
• Hell Knight and Hell Knight Exclusive Edition
• Bio Force Gun Replica

 

And just for fun, a Doomworld thread about the movie figures announcement.

 

In conclusion, does this mean that out there, somewhere, there's a collection of Doom action figure prototypes hidden away that have long been waiting a glorious rediscovery?

Edited July 17, 2019 by Revenant100

[Doomkid]

I'm guessing at least a couple of them were made given that photos exist. Between that and various announcements about the toys - enough even to have made it to Doomworld at the time - I'd be stunned if there weren't a few out there. I hope you find some more info, I love the little archaeological digs into Doom's past you're always doing.

[Revenant100]

After delving further into this topic, I've come across evidence of two more Doom the Movie merchandise items planned to be produced by First 4 Figures.

 

The first is a 1:1 Scale Sewer Imp Head Replica Bust, said to be the first in a line of 1:1 scale monster heads. There's an empty product page for this item archived here with a seemingly accurate SRP of $174.99 as corroborated by this list. This preorder appears to have been quickly cancelled back then, judging by this news post. There doesn't seem to be any surviving photos of what this bust looked like, assuming any were released, but the original item description barely survived and is transcribed here:

Quote

First 4 Figures is excited to be kicking off a series of DOOM 1:1 Monster Heads! Sure to scare even the most hardened of people, this 14" Imp head faithfully recreates the imp that was operated on by Samantha Grim and caught lurking in the sewers of the UAC labs

 

The second Doom the Movie item from F4F I've found evidence for is a Sarge 12 inch Action Figure. This is a different item from the aforementioned 6 inch Sarge action figure. According to a news post from F4F themselves, this statue was publicly displayed at San Diego Comic Con 2006. Amazingly enough, I found actual images of this Sarge figure at this con, but unfortunately, the photographer was focusing on the Transformer statues. As such, here are the only pictures I could find of the 12 inch Sarge peeking behind Optimus' head:

(Sarge's foot on the very left)

 

In that last image, we can see Sarge had the BFG as an accessory at his feet.

 

Ergo, the rabbit hole deepens. Clearly, a lot more Doom the Movie merchandise was planned, and we have photographic proof some of it was physically prototyped. What more is there to discover, and has any of it survived to today?

But, perhaps most shocking of all in my recent research, I've come across a post of someone claiming to have possibly seen one of the elusive 6 inch action figures for sale in a store! It's an old post from an obscure little forum you've probably never heard of, but I'll quote the message here:

On 10/23/2013 at 9:01 AM, 40oz said:

I saw the Sewer Imp in a toy store in California once, if I had known how impossible it would have been to find anywhere else I would have bought it. I don't think I had any money on my at the time though.

 

However, I believe it likely that this person may be have been mistaking the Sewer Imp for the Hell Knight statue. While I would like to @40oz for clarification, he looks to have been banned since then, and I can only assume he's now dead.

Edited July 17, 2019 by Revenant100

[Jason]

There's this guy called Ian Ulmer

his youtube page is EN ulmer https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Xc7g82g1UuSQAOAkMLdHQ
his ebay is mynamesen https://www.ebay.com/usr/mynamesen?_trksid=p2053788.m1543.l2754
his etsy is ENsTrinkets https://www.etsy.com/shop/ENsTrinkets
his deviantart is ENulmer https://www.deviantart.com/enulmer/gallery

he makes custom figures and makes doom figures which he's made like a whole bunch of

you can contact him and see about him making a figure for you :P

[Noob_Master_69]

Guess we'll just have to wait for McFarlane to release future Doom figures.