Back in 2001, there was no entertainment property with more excitement attached to it than Harry Potter. Already a literary phenomenon, on November 14 of that year, the first movie in the series, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, hit theatres and propelled this property to even greater heights. Of course, with a popular movie series the merchandise was not far behind, including a wide variety of toys.
Mattel held the license to create action figures from the Harry Potter series and they had a series of basic figures, as well deluxe “creatures”, planned to coincide with the release of the movie. This was a time when we had just opened Four Horsemen Toy Design and our relationship with Mattel was just beginning. The 200x Masters of the Universe line was about a year away, so Mattel decided to hire us on Harry Potter, specifically to design some of those aforementioned “creatures.”
A Giant, a Troll, and a Three-Headed Dog
As visually magical as the Harry Potter movie is, the main characters in the story were really just normal looking people. Sure they were in wizard robes, but they really were not the most interesting characters to turn into toys. This is why we were so happy when Mattel called us not to work on figures of Harry, Ron, or Hermoine, but rather some of the coolest creature designs form the film – the three headed dog Fluffy, the lumbering Troll, and the half-giant “Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts” – Hagrid.
As one of our studio’s early projects, these trio of figures hold a pretty special place for us. It was great to have the trust of Mattel for them to put us on such a high profile property like Harry Potter. In fact, these three figures are still floating around our studio as a reminder of this incredibly cool, early project from Four Horsemen Toy Design.
Published on 10.06.20