[Max Toy Co.] Halloween Alien Xam

This Alien Xam is one of thirteen one-off customs painted by Mark Nagata for a Halloween release through the Max Toy Club in 2007. Club members were offered the chance to buy one figure, which would be selected at random upon shipping. It's a shame that Mark didn't take more photos of these Halloween customs before selling them. The promotional group shot from the e-mail solicitation does not do this one justice at all. You can definitely see that he put a lot of care and work into this figure: there is glitter precisely applied along the sculpted ridges on the body and head, and on the pupil of Xam's eye. Even the paint work feels like it's a notch above the normally high quality of Mark's production items. In retrospect, Mark was really ahead of the game when he bridged the gap between mass production designer vinyl toys and vintage kaiju/hero toys with Capt. Maxx and Alien Xam. I didn't learn this until recently, but production of these figures was handled by ThreeZero- the same ThreeZero whose founder would go on to co-found threeA (responsible for the popular World War Robot figures). While Max Toy Co. is well-known among vinyl collectors, I think time has yet to recognize the truly groundbreaking concept reflected in Mark's first few toys.