FAQ

Blow-Molded is not a retailer and does not sell any products directly. Our website is for historical and information purposes, although some products may still be in production and available through a retailer of your choice. We try to include purchase links where possible.

While many blow molds within our archives are no longer produced, several companies remain in business. This currently includes Blinky Products, Cado and Pan Asian Creations to name a few. Many do not sell directly to consumers. Some retailers, such as Ace Hardware, Home Depot, Lowes, Menards, Target and Walmart tend to carry a limited to large selection during various holidays. You can often find blow molds for sale on third party resale sites, such as eBay, ShopGoodwill or Mercari.

1938, however, it didn’t come into common use until the early 60s. Prior to the 1960s, injection-molding and vacuum-forming processes were mostly used. They continued to be used after the blow-molding process became popular as well.

No, this is the year the aluminum mold was manufactured and more often than not the figure would not enter production until the following year. In some cases, a company would begin manufacturing the figure several years after the creation of the aluminum mold or later restart production, introduce alternate paint schemes, or sell the mold to another manufacturer. If your figure still has a barcode label attached, this will often have the manufacture date (month/year) stamped on it. This is the only way to date a figure conclusively, excluding exceptions where a figure was only manufactured for one year.

Value for these is basically determined solely by availability and quantity made. Many figures are considered valuable, but are in fact not. People are often led to believe a figure is rare and worth hundreds of dollars, when in actuality it is readily available and had a long manufacturing run. More often than not, one will see an expensive two hundred dollar figure and believe they will never see another again, so they purchase it. Not a day later in many cases you will see the same figure show up for twenty dollars. This is not to say there are not rare figures, there are many that are quite rare and valuable. The best advice is be aware, reasonable, patient and use our introduced and discontinued dates when available as a basic guide on how much to pay for a figure you want.

Although "blow-mold" is commonly used to refer to a figure due to ease of use, this is technically incorrect. The blow-mold is the aluminum mold used in the manufacturing process. The technically correct term would be "blow-molded figure", yet it is rarely used.

To avoid the licensing fees required to use the trademarked "Styrofoam" name, Poloron Products introduced a similar material under their own trademarked name: vacucel. The vacucel name is unique to Poloron Products, however the two names are commonly used interchangeably given how alike both materials are.