Kenner Man From Atlantis Prototypes and Concept Sketches

The Man from Atlantis was always one of my favorite shows growing up and I'm bummed to find out we came close to getting toys. It's even worse when you find out how cool these toys would have been. Below are some examples of what we missed out on.

Above is the sculpt for the Mr. Schubert action figure, courtesy of Chris Georgoulias of the The Star Wars Collector Archive. For those not familiar with the series, Mr. Schubert was Mark Harris's main nemesis on the series, played with gusto by Victor Buono. Buono was character actor best known for playing King Tut on the the 60's Batman series.

This is a test shot for a 12" Mark Harris action figure also courtesy of Chris Georgoulias , as you can see it's a Kenner Steve Austin wearing the familiar yellow trunk of Mark Harris.

This page detailing Kenner's design objectives for the Cetacean Sub include mention of including both Man From Atlantis and Dr. Merril action figures. When the Man From Atlantis line was scrapped, Kenner tried to market the Cetacean in it's Scuba Squad line. Thanks to Chris Georgoulias for the image.

Concept Sketches by Steve Hodges

The artist on these sketches Steve Hodges dropped me a note to tell me these characters were intended to go with playsets, the figures themselves would have been 3 3/4" inches.

The alien characters seem to an attempt to make the show more "toyetic", this was quite prevalent and also can be seen when Mego added kid friendly monsters to their Star Trek line.

The Undersea traveller kind of reminds me of a Mego Micronauts vehicle and with good reason, artist Steve Hodges produced concept artwork for that series as well

Yet another neat vehicle design, seeing this stuff makes me wish the series would have lasted long enough for this figure line to be produced, they look like fun! I am almost certain that there are more concept sketches out there that show the human characters and the sub, if you have any of these, drop us a line!

More Man From Atlantis at Plaid Stallions

Man From Atlantis in the Kenner Spring of 1978 Catalog

Kenner tried to recycle the Cetacean for a line called Scuba Squad in 1978