'Regal Robot', Founder, Tom Spina

0:10Jawad MirWelcome back, everyone, to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams Podcast. I'm your host Jawad Mir. Today, my guest is Tom Spina. He's the founder of Regal Robot. Regal Robot creates pop culture themed art, replicas, and a whole lot more. And today, Tom and I specifically discussed Star Wars, but mainly Indiana Jones, and the products that they have worked on over the years, and that they have worked on in the recent years, and what's coming up next. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Tom Spina. Just wanna make a disclaimer to the audience that this is not a paid video in any way. This is my interest in what you guys do. I'm more of an Indiana Jones fan than Star Wars.

0:58Tom SpinaTo… totally fine. Yeah.

1:00Jawad MirMore so, more so has to do with the fact that I'm a Spielberg fan.

1:05Tom SpinaOh, yeah

1:05Jawad Mir... But ob… obviously I've seen Star Wars, the original trilogy, the '90s one, and the new one. And, you know, before we get started, obviously I went through your website, Regal Robot, and went through some of the products. And I think the thing that really attracted me was, there was two thing, the director's chair, because I'm a director myself.

1:29Tom SpinaThere you go.

1:29Jawad MirWas kind of cool. But the Holy Grail, which was very special. I remember when I saw Indiana Jones Last Crusade.

1:35Tom SpinaYeah.

1:35Jawad MirThat's been my favorite film of the entire series to date.

1:39Tom SpinaOh, yeah?

1:40Jawad MirYeah. And Holy Grail…

1:41Tom SpinaIt's funny, I don't know why that film gets, like, you know, there... I know a lot of people who kind of poo-poo that one a little bit, and I don't get it. I love that film. That's, it's absolutely, like, it's... Raiders to me is still my favorite of the bunch, but boy, Last Crusade is, like, right behind it.

2:00Jawad MirYeah, I think what does it with is the father-son relationship, especially being…

2:04Tom SpinaOh, yeah

2:04Jawad Mir... Played by Sh… Sean Connery, and the, there's a humor, you know, there's all that stuff in there, which really makes it interesting.

2:11Tom SpinaYeah

2:11Jawad Mir... I mean, I've seen Indiana Jones Last Crusade so many times, but mostly from the part when, you know, you see, Henry Jones being, trying to be rescued by, Indiana Jones. Mostly from that point, because the humor and the chemistry between them is just…

2:27Tom Spinahuh

2:27Jawad Mir... Astounding to me. But yeah, so…

2:31Tom SpinaSo, like, just right in with the vase, and then…

2:34Jawad MirYes

2:34Tom Spina... And then on from there.

2:36Jawad MirThat's it. That's it.

2:37Tom SpinaThere's your dropping off point.

2:39Jawad MirSo enough about me…

2:41Tom Spinahuh, huh

2:41Jawad Mir... Which was not the case about this podcast, but more so about you. Tell me how you got started with, you know, what was the catalyst behind Regal Robot, the journey, and when did it start?

2:52Tom SpinaI mean, yeah, f… for me, I, it's, you know, the other company that we have, operating out of the same shop is Tom Spina Designs. And over there we're doing a lot of, sculpture work. We do creature work, like the stuff behind us, which we did for commercials and things like that. We do bronze busts and wax figures. But the thing we're really known for is restoring original props, and co… and doing, like, costume displays and stuff like that, all stuff that was used in the movie. Getting, well, you know, becoming basically over the years, just, like, this trusted source for people who had priceless, one-of-a-kind things that they couldn't just send to anyone to work on. And, like, y… th… this is stuff you can't even send to, like, a typical art conservator. You know? You need someone that has the sensibility of an art conservator, and maybe uses some of those materials and at least that mindset of conservation-safe, materials and things like that. But you still have to have that, artistic approach of an effects person to restore some of these old creatures and monsters that were used in films.

4:00Tom SpinaAnd then when it came to doing, like, custom mannequins and stuff like that, you know, we would see a lot of stuff in museums that were nice, and sure, they were archival, but, you know, they didn't have the life that we wanted to see in them. So, developing that over the years got us with this, a great relationship with all kinds of collectors that were everywhere, from people who just liked replicas and toys, to people that were collecting, you know, screen-used stuff from Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, oh gosh, Terminator, Gremlins, all of these amazing films. If anybody l… happens to like films and watches, your podcast, I suspect there might be a few, they can go to tomspinadesigns.com, search your favorite movie, and I, it's almost guaranteed we've done something from those movies. But we started to then help people flesh out their man caves and their displays and things like that. And that led us into doing some themed furniture, which ultimately led to the Han Solo in Carbonite desk, which we did in the mid sort of, oh, I guess this is probably, like, 2008, 2009.

5:09Tom SpinaAnd that's the, that's the spark of Regal Robot. As much as, you know, ultimately we got to do these great replicas and going into props and creatures and, you know, busts and all of the stuff that I absolutely love to do, the way in was this unique look at decorating. Our sense of, like, how do we take this stuff that we love and bring it into people's lives in new ways? And that is something that gave us, honestly, something that Disney was willing to look at and talk about. You know, we'd worked with Lucasfilm at that point for many years. We have done restoration for the, their archives at Skywalker Ranch. We had done, tour suits for Chewbacca, as we've made creatures for commercials with them, on down the line. All of the stuff we had done. So we had the in on that side, but it was like we had to convince Disney that there was a, you know…...

6:12Tom SpinaCons… like a niche where we could fit in that wouldn't disrupt other licensees and find a way to make something that was uniquely us and that would, speak to collectors in a new way and give them something new to look at and bring into their homes.

6:28Jawad MirI think, I bet it's probably more challenging to go through all the legalities and the licensees than to actually work on the actual, you know, the replicas, the products or... Yeah. W… is that a, is that a fair statement to make?

6:43Tom SpinaThat's a, that's a safe bet. Yeah. I would say this, they're, they're different challenges. I would say one of them is a more enjoyable challenge

6:55Jawad MirYeah. True

6:56Tom Spina... But they are very different. The, you know, doing things the way we do them, especially, in terms of the way we develop product and the stuff we wanna do and how far we wanna take this stuff and not just, you know, slap a label on something or to, you know... We wanna make sure that every product that we do, it's, it's weird to even use the word product because, like, the, a lot of the stuff we make is so limited, and it's hand done and hand painted, hand finished. You know, when we develop something, it's like, it's always gotta be, "Is this us? Does this feel right for our vibe?" For lack of a better word. And, there are a lot of challenges that come with that, and there's a lot of challenges that come with trying to, trying to just meet the standards that we have and also that Lucasfilm and Disney have. You know, Lu… Lucasfilm works with us on the product development side of things.

7:58Tom SpinaDisney handles the licensing. And we've got a phenomenal partner at Lucasfilm, both as a company, but even just in the individuals that work with us when we're developing new product that are always, you know, pushing us in the sa… it's, it's funny. It's rare that we come across other people that are like our people, and I feel like especially with our main partner at Lucasfilm, we've got that. We've got someone that, you know, when we have our weekly and we're bouncing around ideas, it's like, "Yes, this is... We're all on the same page. This is great."

8:31Jawad MirSo cool, man. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing all that information. Going kinda back to what I was asking you earlier, I, you kinda gave me a second part to that question, but essentially the first part, what got you into this? What was the…

8:46Tom SpinaOh

8:46Jawad Mir... Catalyst behind all of it?

8:47Tom SpinaSo, like, even before? Ah.

8:49Jawad MirYeah. The very beginning.

8:52Tom SpinaMan, I don't remember a time where I wasn't making stuff. And I don't come from a particularly, artistic family or anything like that. Very, in fact, very practical family. My father was, he was creative in his own way. He was creative in a mechanical way. People often use,.. And his father was before him. People often use our last name as, like, a verb, you know? It's like, "Oh, someone Spina'd that." And it usually means someone, like, figured out a way to fix a fence using a bunch of zip ties and some stuff they had laying around the garage. That's the way that my father was creative. It was, you know, if something was broken, he found a way to fix it. And so I definitely internalized that, but I just always had this artistic thing where I wanted to create, stuff. I wanted to make monsters. I wanted to make masks. I loved making costumes early on.

9:53Tom SpinaYou know, Halloween was and is very important. And so I mean, you know, that's the spark of it. In terms of actually getting, you know, sort of into the business and all of that's probably a longer story, but I can go as far into it as you like.

10:12Jawad MirGot it. No, that's awesome. Just to, Jared, one little part about that business. Like, obviously, when you made the decision to do this, it's always, I mean, the challenge is always there not only getting your first client, but to ke… constantly building on and building on and making sure you don't lose that client or license. The very first one that you got, what, who was it, and what was the very first…

10:37Tom SpinaOoh

10:37Jawad Mir... Product that you made?

10:39Tom SpinaSo, if we're talking, you know, w… if it's Regal Robot, boy, that's a good question. So we, w… we started, working on the whole concept for Regal Robot and, stuff in the mid, you know, so sort of around 2015-ish was when the notion came about. Probably even a tiny bit earlier. We then worked on it for, from, 2016 was when we knew it was happening, mid-2016, and it was mid-2017 that we debuted to the public. And we debuted at Star Wars Celebration.

11:22Jawad MirAh.

11:22Tom SpinaI, you know, unfortunately, I don't have at the tip of my fingers who the first person to buy from our booth was.

11:28Jawad MirThat's okay.

11:28Tom SpinaBut we had a ton of people come through the booth, and, so it's, it's hard to say who, like, the real first client was. We did do some great custom work for a fella down in Tennessee, who I don't know. He's not super public, so I won't name a name, but…

11:48Jawad MirThat's fine. That's fine

11:48Tom Spina... But what we did for him was he... A… and this was after Regal was somewhat established. Maybe this is a year or so in that we started on this work.

11:57Jawad MirSure.

11:58Tom SpinaAnd he wanted to do a cantina theming for his man cave space where he had his collection and his home theater and stuff like that. So we wound up custom building him some, cantina tables, some cantina, chairs, and a sofa-sized chair. We did, a section of the bar, for him to use behind the table, almost like a console table. Sorry, behind the couch.

12:26Jawad MirSure

12:27Tom SpinaWe also did some cool stuff for the walls, some big wall decor pieces, the Docking Bay 94 symbol, Snaggletooth's belt buckle from the action figure as a, as a symbol, which technically is a holiday special replica. Don't tell Disney that, but it's off the action figure so we're covered. And then what else? I... Oh, we made the sign that goes over the door in the cantina, the SPG-A looking sign, which nobody ever even knew what that was. We actually wound up finding that in a picture that Roger Christian, the art director, had. I... Was he a... Technically, he was a set decorator, not art director on the first film, but, he had this one picture where it showed just enough of it. It wasn't lit, but we finally figured out what the letters looked like, and that was... That's the kinda stuff that, you know, you talk about the challenges but the good kind. We had looked at that sign for a decade, me and, like Pablo Hidalgo at Lucasfilm, we would do these panels at Star Wars Celebration talking about the cantina, going into all this detail and al… we would always talk about how we knew what the first half of the sign over the door was, but not the rest of it.

13:36Tom SpinaAnd the day Roger dug up that picture it was just like, "Oh my gosh, here's the rest of the sign." it's, it's amazing to me that, you know, 40-plus years on, nearly 50 years since they started making the first film, right, we are still discovering stuff. We're still finding things out. I just actually got a batch of photos from an auction a few weeks back, and we discovered new things there, and it's just like how wonderful is it that you have a film that inspired you as a kid, that gave you your livelihood as an adult, and still gives back to you as a hobby just these great tidbits of information that can ma… just spark so much joy every time you see just something new in the background of a photo. I love it.

14:24Jawad MirThat's awesome. I... You know, you remind me of this conversation that I had,.. I'm just trying to remember his name. He was kind of... He's sort of involved in all these books with the Ralph McQuarrie, The Art of Ralph McQuarrie, one of…

14:40Tom SpinaOh, yeah

14:40Jawad Mir... One of the…

14:41Tom SpinaIs, Paul Bateman maybe?

14:42Jawad MirNo. Oh, man. I've spoken to him so many times and I've just lost my train of thought here. Let me look it up. But it, even, like, that to me was... Like, I was going through the book on Amazon, like, just, you know, they have, like, sample pages. I didn't order it or anything, but just to see how much there is and then there's all these Star Wars novels, like, you know. Then there's the making of, now there's all these Star Wars Spin…

15:11Tom SpinaYeah

15:11Jawad Mir... Like it's a cra… I mean, if you ask me now, I think it's, they're now just bastardizing with all the series, but it is what it is.

15:17Tom SpinaRight.

15:18Jawad MirBut it's just amazing that how much there is, and I think people are more fascinated with the older stuff probably more than, you know, near... In, newer just because it relates to their childhood and everything and, you know, growing up.

15:34Tom SpinaOh, yeah.

15:34Jawad MirSo it's cool. It's, i… it's really cool. I gotta find out the name, and I feel so terrible because I've spoken to this person three times, and he also worked on, some Du… a Duel book with Beelzelard.

15:51Tom SpinaOh, wow.

15:51Jawad MirHis name... Holy moly, I'm, we... I gotta look. I…

15:56Tom SpinaGet on Amazon. Find it.

15:58Jawad MirNo, I have to, I have to find it. He's, he's, he's not really an author, I would say he's more of, like, a publisher. But I'll find that out. But going back to your products…

16:09Tom SpinaYeah

16:09Jawad Mir... What is the process of... Take any product, whether it's Indiana Jones or Star Wars, you can pick any example.

16:15Tom SpinaYeah.

16:15Jawad MirWhat's the process of actually getting it made from start to finish? I'm not talking about the legalities or the paperwork.

16:21Tom SpinaOh, yeah.

16:22Jawad MirTalking about just the…

16:23Tom SpinaNo, the fun stuff is what you wanna know.

16:24Jawad MirYeah, the fun stuff.

16:25Tom SpinaYeah.

16:25Jawad MirPlease.

16:25Tom SpinaWe, the... You know, it's funny too, the same thing I was just saying about finding old photos and stuff totally applies with Raiders and Temple of Doom and Last Crusade especially. And I think another reason that the newer films don't have as much of that, I... You know, you mentioned the nostalgia side of it. Huge part of it.

16:46Tom SpinaAbsolutely. But modern films, for Lucasfilm especially, were covered in a different way. You know, you go back to Star Wars and in Lucasfilm's image archives there's a certain number of pictures. But then you start talking to, like, you know, Phil Tippett or Doug Beswick or some of these crew members…

17:07Tom Spina... Who had their own personal cameras and just took cool pictures, and all of a sudden you're learning things that you never knew before because they took pictures…

17:13Jawad MirYeah

17:13Tom Spina... Of stuff that the on-set photographer didn't snap. Whereas by the time you get to, you know, the '90s and early 2000 Star Wars films, Crystal Skull, certainly, Dawn of Destiny, these films are covered when it comes to behind-the-scenes set photography. You have now entered the digital age of set photography as well, you know, where you don't have a budget limitation on the number of photos you're gonna take, whereas back in the day…

17:44Jawad MirYeah

17:44Tom Spina... Every roll of film, that cost you film, that cost you processing, that cost you know, someone to look at, contact prints of it and pick which ones you were gonna print out, whereas now it's like people just snap away. So it's, they're covered in such a way there's not as much to learn anymore. There's not as much mystery, and I guess there's also the computer aspect, too. And I know I'm nowhere near answering your question and I hope you don't mind the…

18:09Jawad MirNo

18:09Tom Spina... Meandering.

18:09Jawad MirThat's fine. No.

18:10Tom SpinaBut…

18:11Jawad MirYou're fine. And I will sort of add something to it. I'm not trying to interrupt you or anything.

18:14Tom SpinaYeah. No, jump in.

18:15Jawad MirBut I think what would be really cool I think in about 20, 30 years... So a lot of studios actually hold onto a lot of material, you know, just so that they can make... Like, for example, Jurassic Park.

18:27Jawad Mir... You know, they held, they released some new books, which I have here, with new photos and everything. But I do think in about 20, 30 years, like talking about Dial of Destiny or Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, especially post-2010 movies, the f… the cellphone photos of…

18:44Jawad Mir... Directors or actors, you know, those personal thing and those videos that people make that we don't see. I think that's…

18:51Tom SpinaYeah

18:51Jawad Mir... What's gonna make nostalgia in about 20, 30 years. But go on.

18:53Tom SpinaOh, yeah. You could... I mean, oh, man. The cellphone, the director's cellphone photo, you know, book, and this could be a digital book too

19:02Jawad MirYeah

19:02Tom Spina... Is a brilliant idea. I would l… I mean, oh, gosh, who wouldn't love to see that? It's almost like, you know, when you get, somebody auctions off a director's script and they've got…

19:11Jawad MirYeah

19:11Tom Spina... Some of their notes in the side or they've got little doodles. It's like, that's amazing. But, like, to see what they thought, you know. What did Spielberg think, "Ooh, I need a picture of that," you know? It's like I wanna know what spoke to him. And it's… just to understand further what he saw through that lens, and then the next time you go and watch the movie, you see it completely differently. That's amazing.

19:35Jawad MirYeah

19:35Tom Spina... But yeah, it'll be very interesting to see what 30 years from now looks like on that stuff. I hope we're here to see it.

19:42Jawad MirI hope so too. I hope so too.

19:45Tom SpinaYeah. But

19:45Jawad MirI…

19:45Tom SpinaAnd now back to your original question about making a product. So generally speaking, you know, we have, we have plenty of ideas. I'll, I'll try to stick, you know, on the Indy side, you know, Star… Star Wars is a much broader universe. There's a lot more to work with. There's a lot more props in the archives and things like that. But, you know, at the shop, I'm, I'm the owner, but I've got, Rob, who's our creative director, works with me on a lot of this stuff. He also does a lot of the research with me at, Skywalker Ranch, at the archives, and things like that. And, you know, we will, we'll go through our photos and our notes, and we'll be like, "Okay, what did, what did we see at the archives? What do we know they have that we can draw from?" This is on the side of, like, a prop replica type of thing. You know, our big thing with the replicas is the archive collection, where we're doing things that are either, you know, sometimes they're cast off an original piece or out of an original mold.

20:46Tom SpinaSometimes they are... Most times they're 3D laser scanned off of the original pieces, high rel… resolution scans, digitally output, and then, you know, molded and cast for reproduction. The, sometimes things are produced either in metal or whatever. It just, it depends on the item. The, you know, I think a good example is the Belloq staff that we released relatively recently. Maybe another one would be even the Thuggee dagger. S… one of the times we were at the archives, we were looking through the Indy shelves, and they had a handful of these Thuggee daggers out, and most of them are, like, soft rubber. I, and I, if you know the one I'm talking about, it's kind of the arrowhead looking one.

21:30Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

21:31Tom SpinaWe sold a small run of them. They're all made in the USA. They hand paint them in the, in the studio and everything. And, I think there's actually, I think it's up for wait list right now, so if anybody does wanna grab one, this is, this is the time to get on the wait list. Otherwise, you know, those are gonna be gone. But, that was one of those pieces where we, I always... I knew the dagger. I had seen one in someone's private collection decades ago, again, one of the originals from the film, and I always thought it was cool. Didn't really internalize how much it's in the movie though, until after we saw that in the archives. We did our 3D scan of it. We brought it back, and it was always in the back of our mind, like, oh, if we ever have a little lull in the Indy stuff, maybe this is a good one to throw in. And when we started looking at the film, to see if we could find some, like, reference photos, some context stuff to show people where it is, it's all over the movie. Like, once they get to Pankot Palace, you know, any of the Thuggee guards have it. There's, like, the sash, and it just sits in the sash, and they've all got 'em.

22:34Tom SpinaAnd then there's numerous times, there's one where they pull 'em out on Indy in the tunnel. There's ones where they're coming in with them on the bridge. When they're holding them, it's great though, because so many of them were rubber. They have these sort of, like, two tines that come off the back of the thing. It's like an arrowhead with these two wings. And the guys are just grabbing them by the wing and start crunching them down. It's like these are supposed to be, like, heavy metal daggers, and they're just... But, so we based ours on one of the resin models, which was one of the hero ones. I don't think any of them were actually metal for the movie. There were a few that were polyester resin and a bunch that were just soft rubber. And the m… vast majority were this rubber material. So we did ours in resin. We use polyurethane, so it's got a little more flex. And, you know, those are the decisions you have to make. It's like, okay, well, so what are we gonna make? Where is it in the movie so that we can see what people are, how people are gonna maybe react to it? And maybe it's something where we, do we educate people on what it is a little bit more?

23:35Tom SpinaYou know, we have lines like our lines of maquettes, which are based on concept work, which is done before the movie. You know, sometimes you have to teach people, like, "Hey, this is why our Bib Fortuna looks funny. It's because it was Phil Tippett's first draft." sometimes we have to introduce them to people. We've gotten to work with, you know, gotten a lot of people from the original crew to work on these editions with us. People like Phil Tippett, Dave Carson, Dennis Muren, John Berg, oh, gosh, Chris Walas, Gene Warren, Judy Elkins, et cetera, et cetera, Tony McVey. Where these are people who were household names to me, because I was obsessed with the making of the movies, but maybe aren't to everybody else. And I love…... Introducing people to those folks. I love sharing their stories. I've got, we've got videos on the @tomspenadesigns and @regalrobot YouTube pages, if you don't mind a plug

24:35Jawad MirSure

24:35Tom Spina... Where, y… there's interviews that I've done with all of these guys. And they're folks that over the years I have become friends, and that I l… l… I… we can call upon. And this is, you know, more of that process. We'll be working on something, and, you know, maybe there's a question that comes up. Maybe it's like, oh, you know, there's a crack here on this thing, and it's been repaired. Was that this way originally, or was it that way? And we'll call up Phil Tippett or somebody and say, like, "Hey, you know, here's some pictures, here's some vintage photos, some modern photos. Which way is right?" And they'll, you know, if hopefully they remember and can give us some direction on it. Going back to the dagger, you know, once we've decided we're gonna make it, we have to look at it for, like, well, what are the challenges of producing this? How and where are we gonna do that? Is this gonna be a cast thing? Is it gonna be, you know, sometimes things are f… more fabricated.

25:36Tom SpinaYou know, in the c… if it's gonna be cast, what's the material we're gonna cast it in? And in the case of the dagger, if it's got those kind of spindly bits that may be a little fragile, do we wanna cast it in a material that has a little bit of flexibility to it so that, it's less likely to break in shipping or something like that? You know, the worst thing in the world is to ship somebody something that isn't in one piece when it's supposed to be. So, we have to outthink that. How is the packaging gonna look? Is there gonna be a foam insert, or is it gonna be packed some other way? In the case of the dagger, how does, how do you display that? Because for me, I would probably put it on a wall, but not everybody does that. So what we tried to come up with is, like, an artifact stand, like you might have for an old medieval dagger or something like that.

26:24Jawad MirYeah.

26:24Tom SpinaAnd usually, those have bent wire, but we figured a way to do it with two little notches where you could then put this dagger, because it has different access points, you could have it facing up, you could have it facing down. You could have it more, you know, one more horizontal or more upright. And I love giving people choices, so that wound up being a nice, a nice straightforward solution. But once you have that, you now gotta think, "Oh, okay, so that's a little welded metal bracket that's totally custom. Where are we getting those made?" We're not making 5,000 of them, so we can't get them made overseas, so we've gotta find someplace in the US that's willing to do, you know, a few hundred of these little things and powder-coat them for us. Where's the wood base gonna come from? What's that gonna look like? How big does it have to be to support the thing? And then, you know, th… then you get into the whole, how do we show this to people, you know? Is there, do we have video content? Is it, how are we doing the photos? What are we doing to show people the scale of it, you know?

27:27Tom SpinaIt's, because it's a weapon technically, you don't wanna really show it in someone's hand in any kind of menacing way. But hands are great for showing scale. On, in the case of the dagger, we actually opted to just put it in photos with our other replicas…

27:42Jawad MirRight

27:42Tom Spina... Rather than have someone hold it, just because of that, you know, possible concern as well.

27:47Jawad MirYeah.

27:48Tom SpinaYou know, we don't want people thinking it's, like, a cosplay thing or a, you know, something they should be, you know, fooling around with. It's, you know, purely replica, display only, put it on a shelf. Please don't wave it around at people like, you know, the guys in the movies did.

28:03Jawad MirYeah. No, that's pretty, that's pretty neat that you shared that. And, you know, it's... Sorry, were you gonna say something?

28:09Tom SpinaNo, that's, that's fine. That's, I... And that's, that's probably where it ends off. You know, after that, it's just about... I, the only other, thing that comes in, obviously you've gotta set a price, which is, you know, for everything we do, my simplest way to break it down is we make it the lowest possible price we can possibly get away with on it. And then from there, it's how are you releasing it? Are you doing a limited edition where it's a number? Is it a timed edition, like we did with these daggers, where you say, "We'll sell as many as people buy in a week"? Or is it, you know, something different? There's, it's, it's a surprising number of considerations, and a lot of, a lot of time and energy that goes into these things on the back end. And ul… and ultimately, even on a small piece, you know, not an inconsiderable amount of, you know, what they would call development costs, just in working through all of that and making prototypes, and then making molds, and seeing how everything is. Because sometimes we'll get 90% of the way through a project and have to go back, you know, five steps because at the end of the prototyping process, we realize, "that mold's not gonna work out.

29:19Tom SpinaIf we're gonna try and make a lot of these, we gotta do this a different way." And boop, you're back to start. So, yeah, all of, all of those various things go into it. And then ultimately, the best part is when we get to actually share it with folks, when it's, you know... We've had it in the back of our heads for months and months, and people are always asking us, "What's next? What are you gonna do next? What's the next Indy prop?"

29:42Jawad MirYeah.

29:42Tom Spina"What's the next Indy prop?" And we're like, "We can't say." so the day when we can say, that's, that's my favorite part of it.

29:51Jawad MirWord. No, that sounds, that sounds awesome. And I, and I think one of the things that I, you know, while you were talking... Oh, by the way, the g… the gentleman's name was John Spalary.

29:59Tom SpinaOh, okay.

30:00Jawad MirYeah. But one of the things that I really, you know, while you were talking about this I remembered, back in the day when the internet was new, there was a com… I mean, they still are around, but there was one company that was really popping out and creating, like, replicas. Was it called Sideshow Toys, I think?

30:19Tom SpinaOh, yeah.

30:20Jawad MirAnd I remember, I mean, now there is so much stuff, right? Like

30:25Tom SpinaYeah

30:25Jawad Mir... Just even for any movie you can imagine. But I remember at the time, there was these two products. Now they go for, like…... Six, $7,000 on eBay because they're rare, right?

30:35Tom SpinaYeah.

30:36Jawad MirThere was a scene from Jurassic Park, you know the end scene where the two raptors attack the T-Rex?

30:41Tom SpinaI know the one.

30:42Jawad MirThey did a, they did a replica of that, and then there was a replica of Russell Crowe, the Gladiator, like him kind of…

30:50Tom SpinaOh

30:50Jawad Mir... Leaning down with the sword in the ground, and also a helmet. And I remember at that time I thought, "You know, wouldn't it be cool to have, like, all these cool, you know, movie replicas, like Gremlins, the future." But obviously those cost a lot of money now. You can't just, you know…

31:07Tom SpinaYeah.

31:08Jawad Mir... It, you know. But I know people online who have, like, you know, rooms filled with Jurassic Park replicas that they buy from companies in Europe. But it's just so amazing that there's such a strong market for that, and it's still going on. I mean, especially for a film like Indiana Jones.

31:24Tom SpinaRight.

31:24Jawad MirI can see Star Wars because they constantly make stuff. But for Indiana Jones, it just boggles my mind at how it's still there, you know?

31:32Tom SpinaIt's, it's an underserved market, you know? And it's something where, you know, Disney's most recent push on marketing was obviously based on the new film for most companies.

31:43Jawad MirRight.

31:43Tom SpinaAnd when we came into it, we were like, "This is, this is a legacy," you know? This is not just a new movie that's coming out, and you'll wanna make some action figures and put 'em on a shelf. Like, this is something we could do for years and give fans stuff that, you know, hasn't really been done in the license sphere, and certainly hasn't been done with the access that we have, where it's like, you know, you'll get companies that put out y… replicas of things, or obviously there's fan-made stuff. But, like, you know, to have the access we have to the original props in the archives, to be able to put these things in our hands, to scan 'em, color match 'em, photograph the heck out of 'em, measure every inch of 'em, you know, to be able to put that into stuff that people can then take into their homes and put, you know... It's, it's like it belongs in your museum, you know? It's like you have to, like, these ar… these are artifacts. There's no, you know, every bit from these movies, Star Wars, Indy, whatever, I think of them all as artifacts.

32:46Tom SpinaI genuinely do. And I collect stuff that way. You know

32:52Jawad MirYeah

32:53Tom Spina... Whether it's monster masks, whether it's film props or costumes and things like that. And when it comes to a replica, like, I want things as close to the original thing that was in the movie as I can get. And to know that what I'm getting has that lineage back to the original, that then, you know, it's, it's like, it's like that link to the movie. It's that link to the production, that link to being on set, that thing we all wish if we had a time machine, you know, w… we would, we would go back in time and, like, hide in a, off in some corner in Venice and watch Spielberg shoot some of that stuff for Last Crusade, you know?

33:29Jawad MirYep. Yep. No, I, you know, it's funny you mention that because I've actually thought about that, the whole time machine thing, and just going back and wa… the, watching the, you know, the masters directing these amazing films.

33:41Tom SpinaYeah.

33:41Jawad MirAnd…

33:42Tom SpinaYou wouldn't wanna get involved because you don't wanna accidentally…

33:44Jawad MirObviously

33:45Tom Spina... Like, you don't want a butterfly effect…

33:46Jawad MirYeah

33:47Tom Spina... The movie somehow. But like, I just…

33:48Jawad MirChange the timeline, right?

33:50Tom SpinaI just wanna be off to the side. I just wanna watch them work. Is that okay? You know?

33:55Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. Have you, y… you know this gentleman named David in, Winnipeg, Manitoba who has an Indiana Jones Museum?

34:03Tom SpinaI'm trying to think.

34:06Jawad MirNot the…

34:06Tom SpinaOffhand, like, off the top of my head, I do not, but I would not be surprised, if I have actually spoken with him. And, is it... I'm trying to think

34:18Jawad MirIt's, it's Les David.

34:21Tom SpinaI'm, I'm sorry?

34:22Jawad MirLes.

34:24Tom SpinaOh.

34:24Jawad MirLes David.

34:25Tom SpinaThen yes, I know him through... Oh, gosh. I think I've seen him on some of the Facebook groups or something like that…

34:33Jawad MirYeah

34:33Tom Spina... If it's, if it's the fellow I'm thinking.

34:35Jawad MirYeah, he, I spoke to him almost a year and a half ago, and as of 2021, he had, like, 9,000-plus items. And…

34:46Tom SpinaOh my God

34:46Jawad Mir... It was rumored to be the largest Indiana Jones Museum. We, he actually gave us a tour. It was like a whole tour. It was, like, 17 minutes over using his phone and just walking around.

34:56Tom SpinaRight.

34:57Jawad MirLike, over, it was Zoom.

34:58Tom SpinaI…

34:58Jawad MirAnd yeah, I was just wondering if you ever worked with him in terms of getting something that you couldn't find anywhere else, because he has some rare stuff.

35:04Tom SpinaI, you know, not specifically. I'm, you know, I would not be surprised if he's picked up our stuff. I try not to, I try not to interfere with, Katie and Christina Ross when they're processing orders. I feel like every time I get my, you know, I put my hand in the inbox, I get in their way. I t… I tend to know customers more through their interactions. Like, we've got a Facebook group. It's called Regal Robot Fan and Collector Showcase. Anybody out there wants to join us, feel free. You get, like, behind-the-scenes photos of what we're doing, and sneak peeks at stuff, and some great conversation with really wonderful collectors. And, but I do, I know of his collection. I, again, I would not be surprised if he's got some of our stuff. We haven't done anything custom for him or anything like that, but, you know, that, it's an unusual thing, doing custom work as a licensee. And it's something we have pushed with Disney and Lucasfilm to always be able to offer where possible. So yeah, if there's something that he's never seen done or is too big to do in some kind of, like, you know, broader release fashion, drop us a line.

36:13Tom SpinaWe can talk. And if we have talked by email or something, I apologize 'cause I'm just not putting the names together.

36:19Jawad MirNo, it's fine. I was just curious. But, you know, it's, is there something, I mean, I don't want you to reveal anything, and you definitely won't. It's fine too. But is there something, two-part question. Is there something that you're working on that will be out in 2025 that… Is there something that you want to do but you haven't got around to it for whatever reason, like a reality

36:43Tom SpinaSo I'll say this. So 2025 we have a few Indiana Jones projects, already in the works. There's... There are, there have definitely been, on the Indy side in particular, a few things we've wanted to do but couldn't for one reason or another. W… those sort of things aren't always final, so I would, I would hesitate to ever name anything like that because there's a lot of times where we revisit things with fresh eyes and, you know, maybe you get a different, a different take on it from someone and you get an approval to move forward. There's, there's a l… there's a lot that we want to do. I think I was actually starting to touch on this earlier. You know, Rob and I…

37:33Jawad MirYeah

37:33Tom Spina... Will often bounce around ideas about this stuff, whether it's like, "Oh, we saw these things at the archives," or like, you know, we'll just watch the movies, not necessarily at work. But you know, we'll come in and be like, "Oh, you know, I had, I had Temple on in the background the other day," and, "Oh, did you notice? You ever see this?" Or, "Do you ever watch that?" And w… we've got massive lists of stuff that we wanna make from the Star Wars movies, from the Indy movies, and it stretches from, like, you know, whether it's a straight up prop replica or like, "Oh, you know what'd be really cool? If you did this," but it was a little desk set and it had a place for your pen, and things like that. You know, things like if you look at our, like, space slug desk organizer where you can put the pens in the space slug's mouth, and it's got the little falcon on the end of it and stuff. Or, you know, where we have skulls of beasts that are from Star Wars. There's a lot of stuff like that where we'll come up with that, like, "Oh, it's this with a twist," or, "It's this, but it's got some function to it."

38:34Tom SpinaAnd the list that we have of stuff that we wanna do just for decor or for desk sets or for, you know, furniture even, is massive. The list for replicas on the Star Wars side, it's like, I w… it would take us a lifetime to make everything that we wanna make with Star Wars. We're gonna try. But... And with Indy, it's a pretty sizable list, too. We've definitely had a few things where we weren't, you know, maybe not permitted to move forward with them or that, you know, partners felt it wasn't the right thing. But f… but we have... Yeah, I would say there's three or four good, you know, kind of replicas that'll probably be out next year. And…

39:20Jawad MirAwesome

39:20Tom Spina... We've got, one of them that is basically fully prototyped at this point, and we're just figuring out some production on it. We've got another two that are digitally prototyped but not physically yet. And then a bunch of others that are kind of ideas. We've got another thing that's kind of, it may be... It'll probably be similar to what we did with the grail tablet. We put out... When we did the grail tablet, we put that out as wall decor rather than a replica. And it made sense because of how it just, it's so much easier to display on a wall. It's so perfect for that. But, it lets us, it lets us take a certain approach with it in terms of,.. Well, on the licensing side, where it actually gets things out at a better price, too. So that was, that was a piece I was really happy to put out.

40:23Tom SpinaI've... That... A… again, I love Last Crusade, and that to me is like, you know, there's your, there's, there's your spark of the film right there. Like, his adventure begins by, you know, reading that and wiping it off with his champagne. But,.. So we have another piece that's in the works as well for the year that'll, at least one wall decor piece that'll be interesting, and may I probably should... I probably shouldn't say much more than that.

40:52Jawad MirNo, that's fine. You know, it... The very first Indiana Jones movie that I saw was Temple of the Doom, right?

40:58Tom SpinaOh, wow.

40:59Jawad MirAnd

41:00Tom SpinaThat's a, that's an inst… interesting intro.

41:02Jawad MirSo, okay. So I did, may, I may have seen Raiders when I was really young, but I…

41:07Tom Spinahuh

41:07Jawad Mir... I just vaguely remember the opening, but I'm not sure.

41:11Tom SpinaRight.

41:11Jawad MirBut Temple of Doom is definitely something I saw when I was probably 14, 15. And the scene that stood out for me the most, and it still does with Temple of Doom, is when they're having dinner. It was a, it was completely over the top.

41:25Tom SpinaOh, yeah.

41:25Jawad MirBut you have, you had the monkey brain and the fly. You know, I would love to see a monkey brain cookie jar or something.

41:31Tom SpinaOh my God, that would be amazing. Yeah.

41:33Jawad MirThat.

41:34Tom SpinaYeah.

41:34Jawad MirYou know, some, something…

41:34Tom SpinaJust, and, like, done in a classic cookie jar style, you know? It's all…

41:39Jawad MirYeah

41:40Tom Spina... Just ceramic and glaze. You know, not realistic or anything like that. Yeah. It's, it's funny. Y… years ago I made a replica of the monkey brains for my collection. Oh gosh, this is 30 years ago now.

41:54Jawad MirOh, wow.

41:54Tom SpinaI used to have a lot of stuff that I had made, and then eventually got into collecting the original props. I did eventually have one of the original monkey brains from the film. I had one of the banquet beetles, too. That was cool.

42:09Jawad MirWow. Yeah.

42:10Tom SpinaAnd a friend of mine had, the snake surprise. Like, the... It's a fiberglass…

42:16Jawad MirYou've gotta go with, yeah

42:17Tom Spina... Snake, but it's amazing. And yeah, we've got a client through the other company that we do restoration and display for and we've, and some theming, and, we've done, oh gosh, dozens and dozens and dozens of projects with this customer. I mean, I can't even... But his, he's got an insane collection of original Indiana Jones stuff. It's just every time you go over there it just, your mouth hits the floor and it's... H… honestly, you know, nothing is like going to the archives, but maybe this is close.

42:53Jawad MirThat's awesome. No, it's, it... Yeah, it's incredible that the type of work that you guys are doing. And I…

43:02Tom SpinaIt's…

43:02Jawad Mir... Honestly, for me, even though I'll be very frank with you, like, I probably haven't, I definitely haven't bought anything. I probably won't. I prob…

43:11Tom SpinaSorry, I've gotta go. No.

43:13Jawad MirNo. I probably won't in 2025. But what it does for me is y… I mean, I even went on your website, it just, like, puts a smile on my face.

43:24Tom SpinaAnd…

43:24Jawad MirYou know? And I think too from, as a business owner yourself, that should be very rewarding feeling, right?

43:32Tom SpinaAbsolutely.

43:32Jawad MirMoney is great and everything, and that's what…

43:34Tom SpinaYeah

43:34Jawad Mir... Makes the world go around. But that idea of having a smile on someone's face that, you know, was part of their childhood is, you know, amazing, so I appreciate that.

43:45Tom SpinaAnd it's, we're doing such niche stuff that we know not... You know, there are pieces we do that we're like, "Oh, this is kind of for everybody thing," and then there's plenty of stuff where we do where like, "This is for about 100 people in the whole world," you know, if we're lucky. And w… you know, we know that going in. But I know for myself, I think the probably the closest analog would be, like, every time I look at a con… a catalog from Prop Store, propstore.com, which does, like, the original movie prop auctions, it's the same kinda thing. I do collect original movie props, but, you know, the budgets that those now have pushed into have kinda pushed a lot of kinda mere mortal collectors out of it. But I'll still, I always go through the catalogs, and sometimes there's a few things where it's like, "Oh, I might try and bid on this." But for the most part it's like, you just love to see it. You l… I love to know that it's still around. I love to know that someone got to see it and handle it and save it from the movie, and, you know, now all these years later, somebody's gonna maybe give that a home.

44:50Tom SpinaLike, that to me, I, it's... I know the exact feeling you're talking about. If we can give people that feeling, that I, you know, that little, you know, sense of joy just looking at the stuff, that's outstanding. And if... I don't need everybody to buy everything we make, but if everybody that gets a little bit of that joy would maybe take a minute and share it with some other folks…

45:12Jawad MirYeah

45:13Tom Spina... That would make me smile. And then I'll have some joy.

45:25Jawad MirOh, can you hear me?

45:26Tom SpinaThere you go. Sorry.

45:27Jawad MirOkay.

45:27Tom SpinaI lost your audio for a minute there.

45:28Jawad MirSorry. I just wanna wrap up with one little question. You talked just very briefly about that how some items are, you know, you make them limitedly let's say 100, right?

45:38Tom SpinaYeah.

45:39Jawad MirAnd based on whatever your research or your, you know, what the r… what the demand is, has there been, once at least, if more, sure, when you made a, when you targeted 100 limited edition and then the demand went through the roof and you had to change that?

45:58Tom SpinaSo I'll say no. If we set a limit, we do stick to it. It's part of the value of the piece i… is…

46:09Jawad MirYeah

46:09Tom Spina... In that limit. And we also would never want to have where, you know, people have, certainly would never change something like that after it's gone on sale. You know, we'd never increase something like that. So if, once a piece has gone on sale, you've now had people who buy it with the idea that there's only 100. You know, that to me is, that's part of the value. So we would never change it there. There are some times where there's room for more than one edition of something. So when we do our maquettes, we usually do two editions. And right now most of those are, we do a signature edition with the artist who sculpted it for the movie, and then we'll do a sketch edition, which we call a legacy edition. And the generally speaking, the sketch edition obviously is more because you've got them doing the... Basically what the original artist who sculpted the thing for a movie comes back and does, you know, 50 or 75 one-of-a-kind hand drawn sketches so that everybody who gets one of these replicas gets a one-of-a-kind sketch, to go with it from the guy who made it for the movie, or girl.

47:21Tom SpinaAnd the, so in cases like that, you know, you might have where the sketch edition sells out super fast. We had that with the Rancor sketch edition we did with Phil Tippett. Sold out in, like, minutes. Like insanely…

47:38Jawad MirWord

47:38Tom Spina... Fast. And it was, I think it was a h… it might've been 100 pieces in the sketch edition and 150 pieces in the signature, and I think the sketch edition sold out in like 12 minutes or something like that. You know, in hindsight, you know, could you go, "Oh wow, we could have made 120 of those and sold 20 more, or 125 of those, or 130"? The trick is you never really know. M… you know, a lot of times when you're talking about really limited edition stuff, most of the ones you sell are gonna be in the first 10 minutes. The difference between the first…

48:16Jawad MirTrue

48:16Tom Spina... 10 minutes and the first 10 hours is generally minimal. It's,.. So I don't know that I would even call that a judge. I would think the one that k… the, there's two that come to mind, though. We did a ReeYees signature edition. This was before we were doing the sketches. It was a maquette by Chris Walas. That sold out really fast, and we had people asking us, over and over and over again, "Make another edition." w… we would never do another signature edition, but in that case we did a numbered edition after it. The original still holds its value. The numbered edition is also very limited. I think it's either 83 or 100 pieces or something like that. And, it gives people another chance at it. And like I said, with most of those, we do two editions anyway, so it made sense. One where we don't have that nice out, though, would be, the Nurhachi urn. Those sold out really fast.

49:17Tom SpinaI forget the time offhand, but it was, it was…

49:20Jawad MirThat's fine

49:20Tom Spina... Really fast. We did 150, if I'm remembering correctly. They were something where we... It was the first prop replica we did for Indy. We did not have a sense of the number of Indy collectors out there really at that point. And we didn't necessarily know how they would react to... You know, let's face it, our stuff isn't, like, you know, cut rate, super cheap, made…

49:49Jawad MirRight

49:49Tom Spina... Quick and dirty. Our stuff is high-end and in the case of those, they're made by hand. It's also, a very unique material that, has a level of translucency and color to it that, causes a lot of runoff when you're making stuff like that, where, you know, you throw away almost as many castings as you keep when you're doing a run like that. So all of this factored in and we said like, "Okay, we can comfortably do 150." A… and in our mind, it was like, "Oh, we'll see if 150 people buy them." We weren't sure. We thought like... And it's Nurhachi. Like, that's not the Holy Grail, you know? I mean, when we c… when it came time to do the Grail, I think we wound up selling 500 or 499 of them or something like that, in a timed edition. But that's the main thing from the movie. That's the MacGuffin. Nurhachi is like, you know, in a quick scene in the beginning of the movie. We loved it, but we love everything. Like, you know?

50:48Jawad MirRight.

50:48Tom SpinaThere's nothing in Temple of Doom that I would not love to make. But when that sold, it sold out so fast, and to this day, people are hammering us just, "Oh, do another edition. Do another edition." And w… that's just not something we're gonna do because we, you know, we have all... Those 150 people trusted us that it was a rare thing, and if we were to just go back and do another edition now, that would just, you know, kinda ruin that. And I... You know, we don't wanna break that trust.

51:19Jawad MirNo, I appreciate you sticking to that sense of, loyalty to your customers, all the same values. I think it's amazing what you're doing, again, and I really…

51:31Tom SpinaOh, thank you

51:31Jawad Mir... Want... And I really love the fact that you, I can tell, and the audience will tell too, you just love what you do.

51:40Tom SpinaI'm, I'm very…

51:40Jawad MirAnything.

51:42Tom SpinaI'm very fortunate that I wound up where, you know, two-year-old Tom, f… f… from years ago, wanted to be. Yeah. All these years later, to be, making props and monsters and putting a smile on people's faces, that's... Yeah, that's, that's a big win for me.

52:06Jawad MirOh, that's amazing. Thank you so much, Tom, for the c… you know, in-depth…

52:10Tom SpinaYeah

52:10Jawad Mir... Conversation and talking.

52:13Tom SpinaThank you.

52:14Jawad MirYeah.

52:14Tom SpinaI really appreciate you having me on, and, I, you know... Anybody wants to check out what we're doing, please visit Regal Robot or, Tom Spina Designs. Look us up on YouTube, Facebook, all of that stuff, if you don't mind the plugs. And

52:27Jawad MirOh, all good

52:27Tom Spina... And come see what we do. Maybe it'll make you smile too.

52:30Jawad MirAmazing, and I would love to have you back on whenever you launch the next Indiana Jones.

52:36Tom SpinaCool. Yeah, let's, stay in touch via email. We…

52:40Jawad MirAbsolutely

52:40Tom Spina... We have something. We don't have a hard date on it. We have... The next thing is lined up. It's, like, in the chamber and ready to go, and I'm, I can't wait to share this one with people. It's very offbeat. It's very us. And it'll be... I think it'll surprise a lot of people, and I'm, I'm excited about it.