Lord of the Rings has been a literary staple for decades but had been a relatively untouched property as far as toys go. The only real effort at LOTR toys was made by Knickerbocker in 1979 to go with the animated film of the prior year. This dearth of toy coverage was an appealing point to the fledgling Toy Vault in 1998. So the company approached Tolkien Enterprises with the idea of making toys from the three books that comprise the Lord of the Rings trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King). As luck would have it the timing seemed perfect for all concerned and Tolkien Enterprises accepted their offer and Toy Vault was now in business with Middle Earth Toys.
Toy Vault was very specific about choosing the LOTR license to pursue. While the older figures produced by Knickerbocker were very valuable in the secondary market it also took a lack of LOTR toy products as a great motivator for Toy Vault. Significantly, Toy Vault founder Jon Huston had an interest in the books as well as seeing the possibility of a large line that could span many years and cover over sixty characters.
The goal for Toy Vault with the Middle Earth figures, according to Jon Huston, is 'to produce toys that are realistic, conform to the licenses, and are fun'. Toy Vault was keenly aware that these are toys and built as much play value into them as possible, by using light-up features and very detailed (and numerous) accessories.
One of the significant differences between Middle Earth Toys and both the prior Knickerbocker line and the following Toy Biz one was that the other two were based on a motion picture while Toy Vault was based on the literary work. The other two lines had the benefit of a large group of people with access to a large budget to be used to design the look of Middle Earth from the ground up. Toy Vault was in the position of creating a vision of Middle Earth by itself.
The initial contract brought with it a small misconception about what rights Toy Vault had to produce figures. It was clear that they had the right to use any character from LOTR, but Toy Vault also thought it had the rights for 'The Hobbit' as well. It turned out that this wasn't the case, even though some characters from the Hobbit were listed among early plans for the line.
A different approach was taken to establish the looks of the various creatures and characters that inhabit Middle Earth. Extensive research was conducted on the source material itself - the three books - that was used to conceptualize and design the action figures. Information was also used from other sources on Middle Earth, specifically The Hobbit and the History of Middle Earth series of books edited by Tolkien's son Christopher. This involved a detailed search for references to the appearance of the specific character, and then fleshing out some concepts from those descriptions with feedback used to make changes to improve the look of the figure.
To aid this ambitious effort noted fantasy artist Daniel Horne was recruited. Horne has a long history of fantasy art, working for TSR (the creator of the Dungeons and Dragons game) in the seventies and producing a plethora of book covers in the genre. While primarily a painter, Horne saw this as an opportunity to branch into sculpting (which he had taken up only eight months earlier) and agreed to help with the first two figures of Gandalf and the Balrog. Horne would work up the line drawings of the figures and build up a sculpture (complete with articulation) from there. He continued his work on the toys by sculpting the lion's share of the Middle Earth figures, including Gollum (who was a personal favorite). All told, Horne sculpted six of the nine production figures by himself and assisted on one other.
The line underwent many changes over the three years that Toy Vault worked on the figures, mostly changes in the line-up as various characters were developed along the way. An assortment size of two figures was used, with Gandalf and the Balrog as the first two to be produced. Early in the line there were approximately fourteen characters in concept development, including Gandalf, Balrog, Ugluk, Frodo, Elrond, Eowyn and Saruman. The unproduced section is full of drawings and sculptures that were to represent the large number of characters who never made it all the way to production.
Another hallmark of the line was a number of variant figures of each character to help offset the costs of molding and allow the consumer to get different versions of the characters as they may have appeared through the three books. Most of the characters change as the story develops and Toy Vault decided to use that to create appropriate variants rather than the tact taken by some companies to just make variants of a popular character regardless of whether they made sense or not. They also invested some artistic license with a few of the creatures, showing versions of Balrogs that might exist on Middle Earth but did not appear in the LOTR trilogy. Along with the different versions of the same character they included different accessories or in the case of Gandalf, a different head sculpt for some of his variants.
The card art changed through the line as well. For the initial few assortments character specific card art was used, but this was changed for the mass-market figures, which had a common cardback. John Howe (one of the foremost Tolkien artists around) also did an original painting that was used for the card art. After that the line eventually adopted a common theme of card art with the figure blister carded and using a ring shaped cardboard insert to describe the figure and accessories. The change from character specific card art and the common themed ones took place between the mass-market assortment and series three, though the mass-market assortment had the same card art as each other. The cardbacks listed all creator credits.
The first series of figures had hexagonal bases with portions of a map of Middle Earth on them that would glow in the dark. These stands were not used in all variants and were eventually dropped from the figures after the third wave (Gimli and Gollum). Not all figures included the hexagonal bases, and they were absent from all mass-market editions.
The line ended after only nine characters being produced around two and a half years after it began. The largest reason the line concluded was that Lord of the Rings was being made into a big-budget film trilogy shot together and scheduled for release during Christmas in 2001-2003, and the property was licensed to Toy Biz. Even though the Toy Vault line was based on the literary aspects of LOTR, it was felt that it would be best to end the line to avoid any confusion over the products. The line was very ambitious, especially for a new toy company and the level of care and quality put into these figures caused some delays in production. Perhaps we can hope that once the films have run their course Toy Vault might re-visit the line and continue where they left off in the lands of Middle Earth.
Series 1 Sept 1998
The first series line-up consisted of Gandalf and the Balrog with several variants of each figure. Both figures were released with unique card art painted by Daniel Horne and were also re-released (albeit in slightly different form) as part of the mass market wave Toy Vault released in 1999.
Originally Gandalf the Grey and the Balrog of Kazad-dum were to include pieces of the bridge in the mines of Moria that they fought upon in Fellowship of the Ring. The two pieces would be able to join together to recreate the battle, but these were eventually dropped due to cost constraints.
Series 2 Feb 1999
The second series of figures had an early change in the line-up. It was originally going to have Frodo and the Lord of the Nazgul, but difficulties with the Nazgul and the early completion and favorable look of Ugluk caused Toy Vault to make the changes. The second series continues the theme of a good and an evil character and also has several versions of each character. For this series the versions were trimmed to three each and subsequent series kept that number rather than the four that were used in the first series. Variations of these two figures were later released with the first series as a mass-market wave in 1999.
Mass release Series 1 (TRU)
This series consisted of the first four figures done by Toy Vault but released in less decorative card art and sold through mass-market retailers like Toys R Us and KB toys. They are featured more generic names than they had in the regular releases and did not include the light-up features that the first series had. These also had a generic cardback that was common to all figures in this assortment.
Series 3 Sept 1999
The third series of figures had a complete change from its initial line-up to the final one. Eowyn and the Lord of the Nazgul (who had moved from the second assortment) were going to be the third series. The first change was that Gimli would replace Eowyn and then Gollum was chosen for the Nazgul, who would see release as a deluxe figure in the next assortment. This series marked a change from character specific card art to a common style of art which had blister carded figures with ring shaped inserts delineating the character version and accessories.
Oversize figure series 1 Mar 2000
The Lord of the Nazgul was a figure that had been planned from the beginning, but due to the complex nature of his design he was pushed back from his original series (series 2) through the next and into his own one as a deluxe figure.
Series 4 Sept 2000
Series four was the last set of figures from Toy Vault's Middle Earth Toys line and at one time had Elrond slated in place of Galadriel. The final line-up for this was Galadriel and the Barrow Wight. After this series there were plans for another mass market wave of figures which would have been re-issues of the figures that were produced since the first mass market wave, but these never reached fruition.
