#two-face monster

It’s been four years since my posts on OverTop Man and the Mannix Connection. The personal KOllection’s been growing over the years. So did the KOmmunity, and the knowledge. After the splitting of Rocklord’s old Mannix KOllection, it seemed that the world’s biggest Mannix archive was lost forever. But thanks to the dedicated effort of KOllectors like Billy DeWitt aka waywardmonk, some sort of order came back into the completely clusterfucked Mannix thing. Billy put together a very good overview of Mannix related releases. In this post I want to focus on a particular one, called Two-Face Monster, of which I recently got four figures MOC in a trade.

Two-Face Monster figures basically are fantasy themed, recycled Mannix bodies, sporting weird two-faced heads with a monster, and a human face. The line consisted of four characters. 

It seems their makers didn’t have enough time to come up with any names. That’s why I’ll call them Owl, Boneface, Dragon, and Boar. Now guess who’s who!

What I like about the packaging is the Yin-Yan themed piece in the top right corner, showing a dragon and a knight circling around a green orb. That’s actually the whole backing story you need. The man and the beast, finally fused as one? Unfortunately what the packaging isn’t telling us, is when Two-Face Monster was made. It must have been after the initial Mannix Wrestlers release, though. Probably around ‘93 or ‘94. What we do have, is a company logo.

Although I’m not sure if this represents a real toy company, or just some fake brand. The packaging also tells us, that the figures were distributed in Europe. As you can see on the European CE and the Green Dot recycling symbol... Wait. A Green Dot recycling symbol? Didn’t I just say Two-Face Monster was probably made around ‘94? Actually this particular Green Dot symbol hasn’t been created before 1999. Which means, Two-Face Monster is infact a very late 90s or rather even an early 2000s release! Which would place them right in the era of the first Lord of the Rings movie (2001). Makes sense, huh? I’d say that’s exactly what the fantasy styled Yin-Yan symbol is knocking off. The everlasting battle of good and evil, and the ring (or the eye of Sauron?) in the middle.

This wouldn’t be about Mannix styled figs though, if there wasn’t also altered, smaller Two-Face Monsters around. And their creators didn’t stick to the same paint scheme all the time, either.

The smaller Two-Face Monsters are around 5″. They’re in scale with previous MCT releases (OverTop Man, Monster Warriors). Unlike the MCT figures, they don’t bear the “MCT Made in China 1993 UK USA China” stamp. Unfortunately I’ve never seen any of the smaller figures carded, but it makes perfect sense to place them in the same era as their taller counterparts. But since we’re talking KO’s, you can never be sure until a carded sample shows up. Maybe they belong to another line, from another year, and Two-Face Monster is just a bootleg in the vein of the emerging LotR mania? According to my theory, they were just smaller editions though, just like we had bigger and smaller OverTop Man figures (going under slightly altered names such as Top Man, and Top Warrior).

The head sculpts of the taller Two-Face Monsters differ slightly from the smaller ones. But I’d still say that they have the same handwriting. They’re not as smooth as the MCT figures, but you can clearly see how the modeler was influenced by previous Mannix styled figures. 

Splendid! you think, order restored, Middlearth is saved? Haha, foolishness! Never forget that we’re talking KO’s, which mystically sounds pretty much like Chaos. Amor fati! Just when you think order has prevailed, stuff like this