Exclusive Interview: Peter Santa Maria, Senior Creative Director Of Collectibles At Mondo
Image Source: CultureSlate
Chicago Comic Entertainment Expo (C2E2) happens every Spring in the wonderful city of Chicago. The convention brings together people in many different pop culture spaces, from comics to gaming to anime to movies and TV. There are countless artists, celebrities, and creators to meet and see, and you won’t be able to do everything in a weekend. This year, we saw the return of Funko to C2E2. With Funko came Loungefly, and Mondo for the first time. During the convention, I had the pleasure of speaking with Peter Santa Maria, who is the Senior Creative Director of Collectibles at Mondo. We spoke about his career, collectibles, and Mondo’s time at C2E2.
CS: Can you talk a bit about your background, and how it led you to become part of the Mondo team?
PSM: I actually started working for Mondo as an artist. I did three Godzilla posters, in 2020, right before the pandemic started, and Mondo released them and it blew up. Like I was doing well, getting momentum, and then that blew me up, and I just kept working with them. I was at Skybound Entertainment, and I would do Mondo collaborations intermittently, and they were just so fun. I still believe in the company because it’s going out there, getting the licenses that artists want to work on, and then going and finding the artists, who are not the obvious choices, and so bringing those two together, excites the fans because it’s something that you’re not just going to find anywhere. So when the opportunity came, I had become friends with Hector Arse, the Senior Creative Director of Collectibles at Mondo. I am a huge toy geek first, even though my art is 2D, I love toys. He said, “Hey we’re looking for someone else, do you want to throw your hat in?” I was like “Yes”, and so I jumped over and started working there and now I am Senior Creative director. I oversee the art and design of our posters, packaging for collectibles, and also for vinyl records, and I think it’s just great to be an artist at the company who understands what artists need and go through and be able to make sure when we’re talking business with artists, that we’re also sensitive to what they’re thinking about. So, it’s really been a great place.
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Image Source: TMNT Toys
CS: How do you find the artists that you work with?
PSM: It’s just something I love to do. I am a student of the game, my whole life I have been following my favorite comic book artists, and toy designers, so basically I am always in tune with who’s been great for years, who’s doing something new and exciting, and then I come to a convention like I did yesterday, and I just walk artist alley, and I’ll see what sticks out, and theres so much great stuff. So then the secret is, or trick I should say is, who is awesome, then out of the people who are awesome, who’s ready, and then out of the ones who are ready, who do I think the fans will resonate with, and then who of those will the studios understand. So I have to hit that Venn diagram perfectly, so that’s how I do it. It’s a dream job, but basically, I have a budget to commission my favorite artist to work on my favorite properties. I just sit back and watch it come to life.
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CS: How do you decide which franchise to go with?
PSM: 99.9% of the time, it’s just what we are fans of. So like everything that we work on, we’re fans of. Some things get offered to us, that sometimes we’ll say “That’s really cool, I don’t think I want to sacrifice this thing to do that”, unless we notice this is a major moment and the excitement of people, excites us, and can we break into the noise, with something that would cut through. If we have a great IP and everyone’s doing something for it, what are we bringing to the table? So if have a really good idea for this, then yes. So recently we brought out at Designer Con, retro style soft vinyl figures of the Ninja Turtles, they’re here on display as well, and no one has done soft vinyl Ninja Turtles like the way we’re doing it. In your hand, they feel the way the original turtles felt like you had as a kid. So our mission with that is, there’s Ninja Turtles stuff everywhere you go, and no one is looking for us to do it, or are they? They would be if we came up with something like that. The idea was that they could feel like the original, but also make it feel like it warrants some shelf space next to some other great stuff.
Image Source: Comics And Cocktails
CS: Is there a franchise that Mondo hasn’t worked with that you would like to?
PSM: We’ve worked with almost everything, at least in posters, that I can think of. On the toy side, we’d really love to do things with Hellboy, and Ghostbusters. I’d love to do some Jason Vorhees stuff. Video game stuff we’d love to get into more. We did a great God Of War figure. We’d love to do something with Pokemon. It’s all about where is there room to push. Sometimes other companies are doing things that mass market, so it needs a lot of people. We are direct to consumer, we are thinking of a very specific audience, and we know that audience wants to see what we think and come up with. Thundercats would be awesome.
CS: Do you have a favorite collectible that Mondo has created?
PSM: Well I’ve designed some toys based on my art style. Hector Arse took a chance to say linoleum block print, that carved tile would look good as a 3D figure. A lot of companies told me it wouldn’t. It’s too flat, too graphic, one person said it’s too artsy, and Hector said no we’ll do it. We did a Godzilla and it sold so fast, that it’s allowed us to do Mechagodzilla, which we did this year, and we launched Creature From The Black Lagoon. So, it’s not that I’m saying my stuff is necessarily my favorite, I am biased. The reason I say it is because it represents what we do at Mondo. We’ll take a risk on something we think is cool and see what happens. We did it with Jesse Hernandez, Urban Aztec, on Godzilla, and it blew people out of the water. It’s a very Aztec take on Godzilla, and you don’t see that. It makes me very proud.
CS: I know C2E2 is a smaller con than NYCC or SDCC, how does it feel to be at a con like C2E2? What has the fan response been like?
PSM: It’s been awesome! I told someone else the other day, that ideally you want to go to every city, like a touring band, because there are people who can’t travel to Comic-Con, or if they can, they can’t get the tickets because they’re so hard to get. So I want to take us everywhere. I want to go to Orlando, I’d love to go back to Texas, maybe Dallas, Austin, or Houston. I want to go around the whole country, you know, Arizona, and meet the fans there, and say that we’re so grateful that you guys support us all year long, that we’re coming to bring the party to you.
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