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Maker Of Female Action Figures Sporting Realistic Body Proportions Teams Up With Muppets' Creator

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Mitchel Wu Photography

When we last met IAmElemental in 2016, the New York City-based startup had recently introduced its second collection of female action figures with realistic body proportions. (Think a normal breast-to-hip ratio). Now, founder Julie Kerwin just announced the company is teaming up with The Jim Henson Company to develop an animated children’s television series based on its toys.

According to Kerwin, the company has been approached by multiple parties interested in such a partnership since its spectacularly successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014. (It reached its goal in two days and ended up being 465% funded). But she wanted to tread carefully, the better to stay true to her mission: creating female action figures, all of them designed with realistic body proportions and tied to character traits, instead of X-ray vision, super strength or the other usual suspects. “More heroine, less hooters,” read the Kickstarter page.

In other words, the toys were part of a broader effort to create a platform for imaginative play for both girls and boys, not tied to a particular TV show or merchandising empire. (With that in mind, central to the figures’ design is their higher-than-usual amount of articulation).

Henson, the creator of the Muppets, appealed to her, according to Kerwin, because the company seemed to be on the same wavelength.

“This is an opportunity to take our message of empowerment, that all the superpowers we could want are already inside of us, and translate it to a story-telling vehicle for animated TV,” she says.

The company’s first collection of seven four-inch toys were based on the periodic table of elements, but with each element replaced by a characteristic related to an overall  trait: courage. Thus every figure embodied one core aspect of the over-riding  theme--bravery, energy, honesty, industry , enthusiasm, persistence and fear (because you can’t have courage without fear). Also, a six-and-a-half inch toy embodied all the elements.

Last year, the company introduced its second collection, this time focused on wisdom, with figures personifying creativity, ingenuity, curiosity, logic, exploration, mastery and oblivion. As with the first group, a larger figure represented all seven characteristics of wisdom.

Toys are sold online and in specialty retailers. Still self-funded, the company turned down offers from big box stores, says Kerwin, in order to grow in a slow and controlled way. “We recognize we still don’t have the brand awareness to compete with Frozen on the shelf,” she says, referring to the hit Disney movie. “We want to be smart about how we build the business and not get into situations where we are overextended.”

For the second year in a row, the company is a finalist in the Toy of the Year Awards, in the Action Figure of the Year Award category. Fun fact: Last year also was the first year the awards, which the industry calls the Oscars of toys, didn’t organize products into separate boys and girls groupings, including them all together, instead.

Kerwin says she doesn’t know when the new animated series will debut.