Bleeding Edge Dolls

Founded on Friday the 13th, 2003, Bleeding Edge Inc. has remained true to the spirit of its birthday by introducing a singular line of Goth fashion dolls and figures-called BeGoths.

All springing from the fertile and intensely creative mind of company founder Steve Varner, the artist behind the design of a host of celebrated action figures, from some of the original (and extremely valuable) Star Wars characters, to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to Simpsons characters, to Strawberry Shortcake, to the foul-mouthed third graders from South Park, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Laura Croft, among others. Early in his career, while working in the film industry, his achievements included being one of the artists who sculpted a 40-foot King Kong for producer Dino de Laurentiis's 1976 remake of Merian C. Cooper's classic 1933 movie (more recently re-imagined yet again, this time by director Peter Jackson).

Bleeding Edge is an independent outgrowth of Varner Studios, which Steve launched in 1979, after leaving his native Minneapolis, MN, for Los Angeles. In addition to the above mentioned projects, he served a stint at Mattel, where he worked on "a lot of Barbie dolls" among other creations and gained an invaluable education in a specific method of production that demanded "you sculpt things so they looked fantastic, but you had to engineer them so that they could come out of steel molds. There were all the technical requirements; it was like having to do jigsaw puzzles for a living. I enjoyed working like that, but finally I wanted to do something on my own."

The artistry Varner and his crew bring to each BeGoths doll is stunning in its attention to the precise details of, well, everything from body types to facial structure, to eyebrows shaping, to hairstyles and hair colorings, and
especially to footwear, fashion and accessories-the care and precision that go into crafting the tiniest, most subtle aspects of Goth couture and attitude show a respect for the audience that is not always apparent in more mainstream products.

"That's really important to me. What I want to do is have fun with people, not have fun at somebody's expense," Varner says. "People tend to think of Goth people as having no sense of humor, but they certainly do."

And the craft apparent in the figures' design and production? "It's my training. That's what we do. And that's the way I train my people too. It comes from a long history of doing this."

The Bleeding Edge commitment to excellence in its designs and respect for the Goth subculture is evident in the BeGoths mien has not been lost on the marketplace. Collectors are flocking to the BeGoths; and even though "it's not the kind of high volume business that Barbie dolls and some mass market items are," sales are picking up, even beyond the first initial surge upon the dolls' introduction three years ago. "So that says something. A lot of people doing these type of things may start off doing really well, because they're new and different, but then they fall off and go away. But our business isn't falling off at all. We've got the same collectors who keep collecting them, and then we've got new collectors that are brought in all the time. And we have a certain amount of kids who like them too."