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Premium DNA Shows Off 6" Battletoads Figures - But Who Is Premium DNA?


JayC

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This past week, the company Premium DNA started showing off images for their new line of 6” Battletoads figures which actually were first announced back in July 2020.

As I report this, Premium DNA has shown three of the six figures coming in the first wave which includes Zitz, Rat Bones and Porka Pig (see images below).

Besides Battletoads, we have seen Premium DNA has been taking pre-orders for Madballs and Barnyard Commando’s. Beyond that, they’ve announced they have the licenses to do figures for other properties such as Earthworm Jim and Clay Fighter.

So who exactly is Premium DNA? Well, they are a fairly new company started a year or so ago by the guys behind Megalopolis Toys, Ben and Matt Westover.

When Premium DNA was first launched around June 2020, it seemed to be an extension of Megalopolis Toys. All the press releases for Premium DNA products were sent out from Megalopolis Toys. You can even see in their first press release that it was titled MEGALOPOLIS TOYS TO INTRODUCE MADBALLS™ AND BARNYARD COMMANDOS™ RETRO ACTION FIGURE LINE.

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As I understand it, Ben and Matt had been selling toys through their retail business Megalopolis but wanted to get into the manufacturing side of things, so they started Premium DNA to do this. You can hear Ben Westover talk about this in an interview he did with Pixel-Dan last July.

Here is a second press release they put out in July, and note Ben Westover is listed as the Creative Director/Co-Founder of Megalopolis.

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Now, it’s not much of a secret that 2020 was not a good year for Megalopolis Toys. All it takes is looking at the 208 complaints filed against them on the Better Business Bureau website or looking at the Community Section of their own Facebook page to get an idea of what’s been happening. There have even been indications and rumblings that Entertainment Earth, in their capacity as a distributor, is suing Megalopolis. I have no idea what the current status of that is. You can see the docket filing here.

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If you are wondering, Toy Overlord, Inc. is another name used by Megalopolis.

 

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Ben and Matt have made some attempts to publicly address some of the problems with fulfilling orders. They did an interview back in late September, again with Pixel-Dan about it. 

In November, they announced new policy changes being made to their site via their Facebook page. How effective any of this has been, well I will let you make your own determination about that.

Getting back to Premium DNA. In recent days, there seem to be attempts to distance Premium DNA from Megalopolis Toys, a move I suppose you can understand from their perspective. On their various social media pages, they have been telling people simply the two are separate companies.

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I suppose on paper that likely is true. But Ben Westover still lists himself on LinkedIn as being the Lead Creative at Premium DNA Toys. Matt Westover lists himself on LinkedIn as President/CEO at Megalopolis: City of Collectibles.

The Premium DNA website appears to still be run on the same site as Megalopolis Toys.

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So while technically the two companies might be listed as separate entities on paper, they still seem very much intertwined with one another to me, and I’ve seen no kind of formal or even informal announcement that any significant changes with the management structure for Premium DNA has happened.

Does that mean you shouldn’t get any of these new action figures said to be coming from Premium DNA? That is a question only you can answer for yourselves. However, there are other options to secure these figures other than ordering directly from Premium DNA or Megalopolis if you decide you want to purchase them. Places like BigBadToyStore have been offering pre-orders for the Premium DNA products, and from what I understand they will be offering the Battletoads for pre-order sometime in May. Of course, if for whatever reason Premium DNA isn’t able to deliver on the final product for any of these figures, pre-orders would be canceled. If you go with a second-party vendor like BBTS however, your chances of easily getting a refund become much greater. I won’t personally 100% vouch for anyone outside my personal control, but I’ve never known BBTS to not refund someone their money when an order with them gets canceled.

Note for the sake of transparency: Megalopolis Toys has previously been a sponsor on TNI which simply means they purchased ad space to promote their business. They ceased being a sponsor in early September 2020. BBTS is a current sponsor on TNI.

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8 minutes ago, jedicrippler said:

Sounds like Shocker Toys all over again.

Oh man I remember that nonsense. I really wanted that scud figure but all i ever heard was bad things from them and never wanted to risk it. 

I really want premium dna to succeed as they have a few licenses that no one else carries or has ever done figures for that id love to grab. Altho it all depends on how they handle this and how they price their figs. I will also not be buying directly from them as their track record i dont think can be salvaged and i dont really want to risk my money. Ive been very curious about the outcome of these guys especially because i really want those figs! This is the first ive seen Zitz and he looks.. alright. Great accessories tho and he does the job. Rat Bones actually looks really rad. Gives me hope for earthworm jim and even clayfighter. Do right by people dangit! 

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20 minutes ago, Mr_Scary92 said:

They look good, my favorite is Zitz, but after reading all the legal and financial mambojambo that these guys have, I don't feel confident in giving them any money, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. They're in a very difficult situation.

If confidence is your issue, then I would recommend you go through someplace like BBTS.

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Omg shocker toys...Geoff...haven’t heard that in awhile. Glad people remember. I lost about $600...anyway...Mega isn’t much better in my book now. So many false promises and lies. At the new year they cancelled about 6 of my orders. Almost all of which were already way more expensive on the aftermarket. They didn’t give a F#*$. The only orders they didn’t cancel? Theirs, the two mad balls I ordered and they told me I was unable to cancel them or get a refund. I wanted to cancel so I could have no more orders from them and be done forever. I always heard the shadiness about Mega but I decided to try them anyway. They keep claiming all these things would be better because of this lie and that. Don’t believe it. These guys will say anything. The kind of people that will tell you everything is great and how successful they are just to dupe you into buying something. All this premium DNA stuff is going to bomb and people will get screwed over....

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45 minutes ago, Roadpigmaster said:

The BattleToad figure in that picture looks really good... I may order it from the bigbadtoystore... I wonder who are the two giants in the back of him...

The guy on the left is general Vermin. Image   They said the other guy is General Slaughter. 

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Also looks like that Alt head for Zitz is exclusive to buying from Premium dna directly.. XD no thanks. I feel like both heads are off to begin with so thats just extra. 

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4 minutes ago, Roadpigmaster said:

Looks menacing...👹

Its also said that he will be 12 inches and general slaughter will be 14.. wild if they pull that off without asking a crap ton for.. Def a very ambitious project that I dont know if they can pull off. 

That trust gets shorter and shorter. The fact that they are acting like they arent a part of mega but still are is kind of deceiving their customers. I see on their fb page, potential buyers are eating that up like as if they can just be like nah we are a different person bro... yet their page is still tied to mega and they are still owned and operated by the same people. Gain trust back and we ll see where it goes. 

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So since this article went up I noticed Megalopolis wiped the community section on their FB page and all products have seemingly been removed from the Megalopolis website. :huh:

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1 hour ago, ghostbogey said:

Go thru BBTS if your have doubt on this purchase......

Better yet, if in doubt, don't buy it.

Scrubbing their website and claiming no relation between the two businesses (despite the two apparently sharing a newsletter!?!), should be a couple of serious red flags in anybody's book.

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Please don’t buy these, even from BBTS.  
 

The Westover brothers are nothing but lowlife scum.  Besides getting sued by EE for not paying for product they also burnt Boss Fight Studios, ripped off their Start Engine investors and there are still loads of people who haven’t gotten refunds from their Megalopolis orders that never arrived.  My guess is they used part of the money they stole from customers to fund DNA toys in some half assed Ponzi scheme 

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59 minutes ago, CamWV said:

Please don’t buy these, even from BBTS.  
 

The Westover brothers are nothing but lowlife scum.  Besides getting sued by EE for not paying for product they also burnt Boss Fight Studios, ripped off their Start Engine investors and there are still loads of people who haven’t gotten refunds from their Megalopolis orders that never arrived.  My guess is they used part of the money they stole from costumers to fund DNA toys in some half assed Ponzi scheme 

As I stated in the article, its up to each of you individually to decide on whether or not  to buy any of these figures in some way. You may make some valid points, but other things to consider beyond just people wanting the figures, which will likely be the biggest deciding factor most use when deciding. Setting the Westovers' aside for the moment, there were sculptors and people hired to make or are making these figures. People that my guess have no connection to the Westovers other than being hired to do a job. I don't know if those people have been paid yet or not, but there are other lively hoods that could be effected here beyond just the Westovers. I can't speak to the Westovers true motives beyond what is laid out in this article which I did my best to stick to the known documented facts when reporting. I'm not here to tell any of you what to do or not do. I think as some have pointed out there def some red flags here, which is why I wanted to lay out this information as factually as possible. But again I think each of you individually with the information at hand need to make your own determinations and decisions on how to proceed.

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The important take-away here is the Westovers are either outright crooked, or just extremely poor businessmen. Either way, that's not someone I wanna give my hard-earned toy buying dollar to . . . no matter how much I may or may not want the figure they may be selling.

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2 hours ago, JayC said:

As I stated in the article, its up to each of you individually to decide on whether or not  to buy any of these figures in some way. You may make some valid points, but other things to consider beyond just people wanting the figures, which will likely be the biggest deciding factor most use when deciding. Setting the Westovers' aside for the moment, there were sculptors and people hired to make or are making these figures. People that my guess have no connection to the Westovers other than being hired to do a job. I don't know if those people have been paid yet or not, but there are other lively hoods that could be effected here beyond just the Westovers. I can't speak to the Westovers true motives beyond what is laid out in this article which I did my best to stick to the known documented facts when reporting. I'm not here to tell any of you what to do or not do. I think as some have pointed out there def some red flags here, which is why I wanted to lay out this information as factually as possible. But again I think each of you individually with the information at hand need to make your own determinations and decisions on how to proceed.


I’m just happy you addressed it at all. Some toy news outlets and reviewers are turning a blind eye to these scumbags. 
 

Forgot to add Partially to my list of people they screwed over. 
 

And Ben Westover’s response lying his ass off.

 

 

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23 hours ago, JayC said:

So since this article went up I noticed Megalopolis wiped the community section on their FB page and all products have seemingly been removed from the Megalopolis website. :huh:

Your Honor....

No more questions for..."THIS" Witness =^)

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I just hope that I get my Madball figures in the end, really that's all I care about, get me that product, they were made to order so I suspect if these guys want to make anything they gotta use my money to do so.

I did hear them say on Instagram that all of the orders for the Madball figures were going to be fulfilled by Premium DNA, and they had all of the orders from megalopolis and had passed them on, I suspect they need those orders to produce something, so they better honor them.

 

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28 minutes ago, Grimes said:

Two sides to every story, Jay. You better at the very least update with this, or you are looking at some serious libel. 

Sloppy "reporting", per usual. A sleuth, you are not. 

 

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LOL, how so? My article has very little to do with the lawsuit going on between EE and Megalopolis. My article points out the clearly documented connections between the people behind Megalopolis and PremiumDNA, and this changes nothing about that. And Let me guess your the Blanka guy on Twitter?

That being said I am certainly keeping an eye on the lawsuit and if Megalopolis is successful in proving in a court of law their claims here against EE, then I certainly would consider that to be  news worth reporting on. But making a claim and proving it are in fact two different things. So at this point there is nothing to report.

I am not going to delete your documents here and if you have a link to an official site to them that are accessible without having to pay to see them then post it and I will be happy to add it to the article. But there is nothing stated in my article that is false, sloppy or libel, and in fact everything is clearly documented with fact. And I've tried to be as fair and impartial in this matter as possible. You've never heard me speak to the Westovers motives on how we got to this point or call them names.  I believe it's you who seems perfectly willing to omit certain facts, jump to unproven conclusions and has a total bias view on the situation, which is certainly your right, but please save the BS.

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Again what am I leaving out or being untruthful about? The two companies are clearly connected so when someone asks on their social media if they are and they respond with an answer that clearly doesn't address the intent of the question. They aren't asking from a legal stand point if the two companies are listed as separate entities, they want to know if the people who are or were behind Megalopolis are also involved with PremiumDNA.  So when they don't address that, I very much consider that to be disingenuous to their costumers. Especially with the legit trusts issues people have with them. They then deleted that as they have deleted almost any comment on their social media that brings up legit concerns that people have. I am not bias because I am not sitting here saying that the Westovers deliberately tried to rip people off, I have no idea what there intent was. But there is no denying that many people who trusted them have lost money.

 

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10 minutes ago, Grimes said:

Nothing to do with ad revenue, right? Come on. 

You didn't say squat before, now suddenly, all this. A whole article dedicated to trying to discredit and tarnish their reputation. To dogpile on to issues. You shared one side... that was it.

Play the innocent all you want, but that was 100% your intent here. To do harm. 

Ad revenue, really? Give me a break. I didnt say anything until now because in fact I was giving them a chance to fix there problems and hoping they would. I still hope they can turn things around and make things right with their customers, but again there is no denying the clearly documented connection between PremiumDNA and Megalopolis. I am curious what about my article seemingly makes you so mad? Are you suggesting that the connection between the two companies shouldnt be pointed out? Or that people shouldnt have any concerns about buying directly from them right now? If anything I did them a favor by pointing out the alternatives for buying their products for those who have trust issues (and believe me there are many who do). I've even seen them point out places like BBTS as a place to buy their stuff on their social media

I'll tell you what though. I believe you've said on Twitter that you are personal friends with the Westovers. So you can let them know that I would be more than happy to do a video interview with them. We can even do it live if they want in order to give their side of the story or explain in their own words their involvement with PremiumDNA. However also let them know while I will be fair it wouldn't be some soft-peddled interview, that I would be asking them hard questions that the public I feel would like to see addressed. If they are interested, they have my email and tell em to contact me, i'd be more than happy to do it.

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