For the first time ever, an official Carl Kolchak action figure’s coming in 1/12 scale, and fans of The Night Stalker have a chance to back a Kickstarter and impel Kochak and his chief adversary into breathtaking existence.
Indie toy company Wandering Planet Toys is partnering with publisher Monstrous to create the licensed action figures of Kolchak, originally played by Darin McGavin, and his notorious nemesis the vampire Janos Skorzeny, portrayed in the first Night Stalker film by Barry Atwater.
Since his 1972 debut in an ABC telefilm scripted by the legendary Richard Matheson based on real-life Las Vegas reporter Jeff Rice’s novel, reporter Carl Kolchak has become one of the most enduring characters in weird fiction, starring in TV movies The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler as well as a weekly TV series that followed.
Now, a deluxe, collectible 6-inch figure will be available. Fans can support the figures on Kickstarter this minute!
The Kolchak figure features 22 points of articulation, two heads (with hat and without), and interchangeable hands. “With accessories like Kolchak’s typewriter, camera, tape recorder, and a crucifix – fans can recreate all of their favorite scenes from Jeff Rice’s classic book,” according to Wandering Planet.
There’s also a variant, the Blood-spattered Kolchak versus The Night Stalker two-figure pack. The Blood-spattered variant and the Skorzeny figure capture the moment the two faced off in their final duel.
Wandering Planet will also be releasing an exclusive Kolchak collectable metal lunchbox, described as Kolchak’s first ever retro style tin lunchbox, featuring art from Monstrous’ Kolchak comic book series by Colton Worley.
Recently, Wicked Horror posed a few questions for Wandering Planet Co-Founders Chris “Doc” Wyatt and Gavin Hignight.
WH: Before we get into the figures, what’s your Kolchak origin story? He’s been with us a while now, and it’s always interesting to determine the discovery point.
CW: I didn’t discover Kolchak until the early 2000s, when my friend, the horror artist Bill Rude gifted me a DVD box set (remember those?). His pitch was, this was X-Files before X-Files, and I binged the whole thing.
GH: Hi Sidney, thanks for having us! Like Doc, it was somewhere in the early 2000s for me. Even though I am a HUGE classic TV fan, it was just a series that evaded me. It was never on in syndication where I grew up in Denver. I think I probably heard about it as being an inspiration for X-FILES, and then living in LA we had a great broadcast channel called MeTV, which I think exists now as a digital channel… Anyway, I caught the TV series and TV movie first thanks to them. And then all these years later I got to read the book it was all inspired by Jeff Rice.
WH: Now, fill us in on the action figures. How did this deal come about?
CW: Gavin and I have worked on a lot of projects together. We met when we were both writers on an animated TV series called Iron Man: Armored Adventures, and we created a web series together and a bunch of other stuff, but in one of the first conversations we ever had about started a little indie toy company (which was Gavin’s idea), he said to me “and maybe we can do Kolchak.” And now, 5 or 6 years later, we finally are!
GH: We just love making figures of cool characters who haven’t gotten the toy treatment. The Prisoner, Nancy Drew, these are beloved characters that for some reason or another never got their action figure due… We wanted them on our shelf, we assumed there are other fans out there like us, so we started putting it all together. At the same time Monstrous has been doing really cool things with Kolchak in print, so we reached out. And here we are.
WH: And for some specifics, fill us in on the Carl Kolchak figure first. I understand he’s based on the Jeff Rice book version?
CW: Everything is based on the Jeff Rice version, the TV movies, the TV show, the comics. It all comes from Jeff Rice.
GH: And so that’s how we approached the figure. It’s the same Kolchak we all know and love, he was really cemented in, in the original book. Jeff Rice has such a clear vision of who Carl Kolchak is. One of my favorite aspects of the book compared to other media is that it takes place in ’70s Las Vegas, which I feel like is a character to itself. Such a moment in time, a place that doesn’t exist anymore and a place you can easily see Carl Kolchak chasing leads in, during the late night hours. The color palette of 70s Vegas at night, influenced how we approached packaging, etc.
WH: Tell us about the variants and accessories. Two heads are better?
CW: Everything is better with a little bit of blood splatter.
GH: LOL, like Doc said. Blood Splattered Edition… YES. As a collector I really like having options, it breaths new life into a figure after you’ve displayed it for a while. So yes, Kolchak includes hands in many different poses, and two heads, one wearing his iconic hat, and one without the hat. So you can switch up how you display or do toy photography with him.
WH: And what about the vampire, Janos Skorzeny?
CW: We couldn’t do Kolchak the Night Stalker without doing the Night Stalker. People forget that the original was only named “The Night Stalker” because that was what the press was calling the mysterious killer in the first book, the killer that Kolchak tracks down and discovers to be Skorzeny… and well, spoiler alert, but Skorzeny isn’t in subsequent Kolchak stories. But when the TV show started the producers still called it Kolchak: The Night Stalker as if Carl was the Night Stalker. But he’s not. So yeah, in our Night Stalker toyline we thought we’d include the actual Night Stalker. As a side note: Something similar happened with the “Thin Man” detective movies in the 1930s and 1940s, where the first movie was named after the villain (this unknown murderous “Thin Man”) and the movie was such a hit that they had to keep calling the movies “Thin Man This” and “Thin Man That” even though the actual Thin Man was only in the first movie. At one point they titled a movie “Song of the Thin Man” which is wild.
GH: Nothing better than a good monster toy… other than a cool character like Kolchak to fight your monster toys. We had to make an iconic monster for Kolchak to fight… and Skorzeny aka The Night Stalker, is not only a fun vampire figure, but he’s also Kolchak’s origin. Kolchak’s pursuit of Skorzeny is what plunges him into the world of the unknown.
WH: I understand there’s also the item fans have always needed and may not have realized it. A Kolchak lunchbox. What will that be like?
CW: It’s the perfect way to store the wooden stakes that everyone should keep handy on the night stand or under the bed. Better to be prepared for a visit from Vampire Night Staker, because you never know.
GH: As we’ve approached toylines that have a retro vibe, or retro property, we started getting interested in the metal lunchbox. I think if we were making a toyline from a character that is contemporary I wouldn’t even think to do it… But who didn’t have a metal lunchbox in the ’70s when Kolchak was out protecting us from the forces of the undead. We felt the same for The Prisoner (our other line) and Nancy Drew and the results have been amazing. So when plotting out Kolchak, we couldn’t resist. And the gorgeous artwork provided by our licensor Monstrous really makes the optional add on lunch box pop! (a good place to store the figure and accessories too!)
Wandering Planet has previously crowdfunded collectible action figures for comedy legends Laurel & Hardy, the cult classic television show The Prisoner, and the first ever officially sanctioned Nancy Drew action figures.
To support the campaign, visit Kickstarter, and follow Wandering Planet Toys on X, Bluesky, Instagram, and Facebook for more updates.