Ramayana Action Figures

November 25, 2007
KIDS: American Company's Ramayana Action Figures

With the weekend after Thanksgiving being the busiest time for shopping each year, I figured some of you looking for South Asian-themed gifts this year might want to consider something unusual that came to our attention.

From a press release by the Pennsylavania-based Kridana Toys:

ARDMORE, PA: My name is Mahender Swami Nathan.

I am an Indian-American and the founder of Kridana.
We are a toy company focused on bringing the Great Indian Epics to new generations through the power of play.
We've just launched our first products: action figures of Lord Rama and Shri Hanuman from the Ramayana – one of the most popular epics both within India and across Asia – made with the involvement of some of the toy industry's top craftsmen. We've also published our first comic book issues.
These stories bring to life key vignettes for both Rama and Hanuman as first told in the Ramayana 2000 years ago and now retold through the inks and colors of today's top comic book artists, including the world-renown Mike Turner of Aspen Comics who drew our inaugural cover.Check us out at Kridana.com and don't hesitate to call me with pre-story questions for pitches. We're currently selling product in the U.S. and Canada, our first target markets. Our products are currently available at our own website, and in December we expect to be selling through select toy and comic book stores and also general food and merchandise stores catering to the Asian-Indian market.

The seven-inch-tall Rama and Hanuman figures sell for $15 each and are available at the site.
My first question, given all the news about toy recalls from big manufacturers was whether I'd be able to trust a tiny company making its first products. While the Kridana toys are made in China, its site goes out of its way to prove its safety credentials. From its "product safety" section:

Our toys are produced to the highest standards in a modern factory which we have inspected ourselves. They are tested rigorously by an outside, 3rd-party lab: SGS Group of Switzerland (learn more about them). And, when we say we test, we don’t test once or twice; we pull toys from throughout the actual production run to send to SGS, ensuring that the toys which pass SGS’s standards are the same ones your child is playing with at home.

We feel so passionately about safety that we’re taking the unusual step of putting our test results here, on kridana.com, for you to see. It’s true that some of these pages read like a chemistry report, but, we’re an educational toy company!
Take a look at the press release below (Nathan's contacts below, too) and post your comments below. Also see coverage at SepiaMutiny and Ultrabrown.

Press release

Kridana Toys Unveils First-Ever Action Figures Based On Great Indian Epics
Kridana (kree-da-na): Sanskrit, meaning toy or plaything.

ARDMORE, PA: My name is Mahender Swami Nathan. I am an Indian-American and the founder of Kridana. We are a toy company focused on bringing the Great Indian Epics to new generations through the power of play. We've just launched our first products: action figures of Lord Rama and Shri Hanuman from the Ramayana – one of the most popular epics both within India and across Asia – made with the involvement of some of the toy industry's top craftsmen. We've also published our first comic book issues. These stories bring to life key vignettes for both Rama and Hanuman as first told in the Ramayana 2,000 years ago and now retold through the inks and colors of today's top comic book artists, including the world-renown Mike Turner of Aspen Comics who drew our inaugural cover.

In the Ramayana, Lord Rama, an exiled prince, searches the world over for his kidnapped wife Sita. Hanuman becomes his most faithful assistant along the way. As a child growing up in India and the United States, I was captivated by this world of heroes, demons, adventures and intrigue.

While I treasured my Transformers and GI Joes, I longed to bring Hanuman to my friends' houses to save the day. As an adult, I'm excited to finally bring the Ramayana's incomprable heroism, honor, duty and love into childrens' everyday worlds in the ways that they enjoy and understand -- the 3-D play of toys and the 2-D stories of comics.

Our toys are collectible quality but durable enough to stand up to whatever kids can dish out. We choose to manufacture with a 30-year veteran of the toy industry, and all of our production runs are rigorously tested by independent, 3rd-party labs to ensure both the toys' mechanical safety and the absence of dangerous lead levels in their paint. Moreover, both Hanuman and Rama are made from non-phthalate PVC plastic, an environmentally friendly plastic that is safer for our children. (Many European countries, as well as California starting in 2009, mandate the usage of non-phthalate PVCs in children's toys for this very safety concern.)
Sometime in 2008 we plan to bring out another action figure: Ravana, the ultimate demon king. Over time we will expand our products to include not only an ever broader range of the characters from the Ramayana but also those from other Indian Epics.

Check us out at Kridana.com and don't hesitate to call me with pre-story questions for pitches. We're currently selling product in the U.S. and Canada, our first target markets. Our products are currently available at our own website, and in December we expect to be selling through select toy and comic book stores and also general food and merchandise stores catering to the Asian-Indian market. Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,Mahender Swami NathanCo-president & Founder,Kridana.commahender[at]kridana.com610-529-6701