Return of the Fly Goes Mego at Distinctive Dummies

As movie monsters go, the grotesque human-insect hybrids from The Fly (1958) and its sequels, remake, and remake sequel rarely appear as action figures. Sure, there are plenty of Fly busts, statues and model kits, but action figure collectors who love all things Fly have been left out in the cold. Fortunately, the collectible figures company Distinctive Dummies (DD) has taken it upon itself to address this unmet need by releasing a limited edition 8-inch Mego style figure based on the monster from the first sequel, Return of the Fly (1959).

As with most Mego figures, the Return of the Fly figure comes with a cloth suit and a carefully sculpted head, hand and foot to match the aberrantly askew creature from the movie. As with previous DD figure releases, this figure is being released with three other figures as part of a themed line called “Killer Bs”. For fans of Atomic Age “Big Bug” movies, take note: a figure based on the disfigured Dr. Gerald Deemer from Jack Arnold’s Tarantula (1956) is also part of DD’s Killer Bs line.

DD previously released a figure of the monster from the original The Fly a while ago, thus making DD the first company to release action figures based on monsters from two Fly movies. As far as I can tell from what I’ve seen, the sculpts of both figures do an impressive job at resizing the original monster designs for the Mego scale. However, in light of how many current action figures include swappable heads and hands, it’s a shame that neither of DD’s Fly figures come with human heads and limbs so that collectors can display what these characters looked like before their teleportation mishaps.

Distinctive Dummies' action figures from The Fly (left) and Return of the Fly (right).

There have been other Fly action figures in the past, but there aren’t many of them:

* The first figure that I know of was released by a UK company called Tomland back in the 1970s as part of its “Famous Monsters of Legend” line. Tomland’s Fly figure also followed the Mego style, but its head sculpt and cloth suit don’t look like anything from any of the Fly movies.

* In 2000, McFarlane Toys released a figure based on the monster in The Fly 1986 remake as part of its “Movie Maniacs” line. This figure’s sculpt does a fantastic job at capturing the likeness of the monster, but it doesn’t have many points of articulation and its insect hairs tend to shed over time.

* In 2003, Majestic Studios released its own Return of the Fly action figure. This 12-inch figure looks almost exactly like the sequel’s monster, has many points of articulation, and it even includes a human-headed fly as an accessory. Check out the reviews of this figure over at the Captain Toy and CollectionDX websites for more details.

Fly action figures from Tomland (left) and Majestic Studios (right).

You can place your preorder of DD’s Return of the Fly figure over at Monsters in Motion here. DD is only making 60 of these figures, so be sure to get one before they all “fly” away.