Comic-Con 2026: Patrick Dennis, Hasbro's Ghostbusters Guy
He ain't afraid of no questions!
While I did not obtain interviews with the Marvel or Star Wars teams at Hasbro this year, I was offered one with the Ghostbusters team, who turned out to be one, highly entertaining guy. You have to figure that if they’re talking about a Ghostbusters team, and offering them up to press to talk to, Ghostbusters is not going away as a priority. Right now, it’s focused on re-dos of the 1986 Real Ghostbusters cartoon-based line, but in the future, there is some new animation coming, as longtime readers know.
Until they show any toys from that, however, the team isn’t going to acknowledge the existence of any such thing. However, the one nuance I might add to the text you see here is that his denials didn’t sound like complete denials. Maybe it depends how the show does.
In the meantime, here’s a look at our conversation about everything relating to the Real Ghostbusters toys being made right now.
LYT: Tell us your official role at Hasbro
Patrick Dennis: I am the product designer for Ghostbusters for Hasbro.
LYT: Is it just The Real Ghostbusters, or like all Ghostbusters?
PD: All Ghostbusters. I am a pan-Ghostbusters entity.
LYT: So the HasLab proton packs as well.
PD: Proton packs, ghost traps, action figures, collectibles, you name it, goes through me.
LYT: Well, I’ve never been offered a Ghostbusters team interview before, so that must make you...
PD: It’s pretty easy. I’m just one guy.
LYT: But it must make you feel pretty good. If you’re being put out here for interviews, it means there’s longevity planned for this line. It’s not just going to be a couple...
PD: Allegedly. One would assume.
LYT: So what do we got here?
PD: Alright, so what we’re looking at, the whole booth overall is a celebration of the last 40 years of real Ghostbusters. So it’s the 40th anniversary, started in 1986 in the fall, and then the figures started rolling out around Christmas time in 1986. So what I wanted to do was do a giant celebration of the 40th anniversary. So you’ve got a lot of retro product in here. Stuff that came out in 1986, 87, 88, 89, all the way to 91.
So in 1991, there was the Ecto-Glow Heroes. It was the last Kenner Ghostbusters set. So what you’re looking at here on these pedestals is the Ecto-Glow capsule collection. It kicked off last year at San Diego Comic-Con with the Ecto-Glow Heroes collector set. There’s four of the figures. You’ve got Peter, Winston, Egon, and Ray in their Ecto-Glo attire.
LYT: Are they wearing masks [that look like their faces]?
PD: They are wearing masks. So all the glow-in-the-dark Ecto-Heroes had glow-in-the-dark face masks to go with them. And then right after that, we did the Ecto-Glow Ecto-1, as well as the Ecto-Glow Classic Ghost 2-pack that has the Stay-Puft and the Slimer. Then, finally, finishing after 30 years of waiting, you get the Glowcopter. So the Ecto-Glow Glowcopter was this mythical prototype that existed in 1991 that never became real until this year at Comic-Con when you can finally get 30 years overdue. But it’s better late than never, right? Right.
LYT: So were the Glow Slimer, Stay Puft, and Ecto-1, were they originally planned, or is that new?
PD: So that’s completely new. It’s from the mind of me, and it was a completely new item. It was kind of a what-if. Like, what if Kenner kept going? What if they hadn’t stopped in 1991? What would they have done next? And the logical answer for me was, you’ve got to have ghosts to bust, and you’ve got to have a car to drive around in. So my goal was to do the Ecto-Glow Ecto-1, as well as a couple of ghosts to go fight.
LYT: And you’ve got Janine and Louis.
PD: Yeah, so these are our reveals for Comic-Con.
LYT: As if these were part of the first wave.
PD: Yeah. So 40 years ago, nobody ever thought to include Janine and Tully in Wave 1. We are here to make up for lost time a little bit. For the 40th anniversary, we wanted to celebrate that with Janine and Tully in all new colors, all new gear. Before that, they’ve never had a traditional Wave 1 release. You can actually see them down here. Yeah. I put them with the firehouse and with all the classic figures, just to maintain that.
So you can see how they all kind of work together in that Wave 1 aesthetic. Now, how are they going to be available? So those are up on Pulse right now for pre-order. There’s a QR code in the booth.But just go to HasbroPulse.com. You can pre-order it. It should be shipping this fall.
LYT: And then we’ve got Ecto-plazms, little minifigures here.
PD: Yeah, so the Ecto-plazms are an interesting thing because they’re completely new and unique. And we’ve decided to wrap them in a nostalgic wrapper for everybody. So, you know, originally in the 80s with the initial rounds of Kenner Ghostbusters, there was the Ecto-plazm cans. It came with slime. It came with little ghosts inside of the slime. But they were a blind assortment.
And what I wanted to do to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Real Ghostbusters was to come up with a new style and come up with a grouping of ghosts from the show, ghosts from the toy line, and then combine that with the five Ghostbusters. So four and then Janine fully suited up and have, you know, ghosts from every facet of the Real Ghostbusters in these really fun colors. So there’s 72 figures total for this PDQ.
LYT: Dang. That’s a lot of collecting.
PD: Right. But I did all the math for you. So there’s 72 total figures. There are 12 different characters in six different colors. One of those colors glows in the dark. You can see here the glow in the dark color. But all you have to do is buy the PDQ and you get all 72. You get the nice little shelf display and everything kind of, it’s easy. It’s already done. The math is already done for you.
LYT: Are they all, is the Ecto-plazm all pink?
PD: So the Ecto-plazm, there’s no slime in any of these cans.
LYT: Ohhhh.
PD: Because 40 years ago, my mom had to clean up all the slime. Okay. Now, I’m the mom. And I’m not going to clean up the slime. Slime is also notoriously difficult if you put it on a shelf for too long. It has a shelf life. It gets sticky. It gets gross. Everybody remembers the smell in a positive way, which is strange.
LYT: So there’s no slime in the cans, it’s just a figure?
PD: Yeah, so there’s no slime in the cans, but that enables us to fit six figures per can. So you’re going to get more characters per can without the slime.
LYT: So I take it none of these Gooper Ghosts [with slime] are in the immediate realm of being re-released or re-done.
PD: So here’s the thing, if you guys want to see re-release stuff, be vocal about it. Write your congressman. No, tag Hasbro Pulse, make posts about it, make comments about it. If there is enough fan demand, I can make whatever, I just need to make sure that there’s demand for it out there. So as long as people want it and as long as people will buy it, I’m going to be able to keep making it.
LYT: One of the things we’ve seen in a lot of other lines is figures that look exactly like vintage figures but have more articulation. Transformers has done it, Masters of the Universe. Would you consider a Plasma Collection [Hasbro’s premium, collector-based Ghostbusters movie figure line] maybe for Real Ghostbusters?
PD: Nothing is off the table, right? Nothing is off limits, never say never. I’ve got a lot of ideas, those are some of my ideas, so who knows? The future is a large and mysterious place and I’ve got a lot of ideas and a lot of stuff I would love to make.
LYT: Are we allowed to say anything about the Netflix show?
PD: I can’t speak to the Netflix show, I’m looking forward to it just like you are.
LYT: I’ve seen clips; it looks amazing, so I think there’s a world of opportunity there.
PD: I think that Ghostbusters is a never ending font of ideas and inspiration, so yeah, I’m looking forward to it.
LYT: Is Plasma Collection dead or just dormant?
PD: As of right now, never say never. Never say never.
LYT: Alright, so what else can we talk about? Oh, well, I’ll shoot you with a hypothetical. Obviously it would be nice to have a place to put all the figures. If one were to materialize, would you be considering doing it in Ecto-Glow or original?
PD: All thoughts have crossed my mind, right? When doing the Ecto-Glow capsule collection, obviously I think an Ecto-Glow firehouse would be awesome. I think any firehouse would be awesome. This is my firehouse [indicates model in the booth display.]
LYT: This is your personal one.
PD: Yeah, so it’s on loan from my museum. So yeah, anything is possible in regards to the firehouse. I got no plans right now, but that doesn’t mean, you know, a week from now, two weeks from now, something might pop up.
LYT: How cool was it to see the hornhead eyeball ghost in the last movie?
PD: I thought it was very cool. It’s uh, you know, it’s always fun to work with our partners at Sony and Ghost Corps. They’re incredible partners. So when they want to do something like that and give a nod to us, it lets us go and give a nod to them. And we can, we can, the synergy between us and Sony is very significant.
And like, yeah, they’re the greatest partners.
LYT: Is there a grail that’s like, not on the schedule, so it wouldn’t be blowing anything to talk about, but a grail that you really want to do?
PD: I want to, I want to do some new stuff. I want to do, uh, I want to do some stuff for kids. All this stuff when we were kids was for us as kids, and we can keep cranking out toys for adults, but I would love to do stuff that hooks kids. And like, if you can, if you can give that same joy to a kid that we had when we were kids running around with a proton pack, running around with a ghost trap, um, I want to be able to give that to a new generation of kids.
LYT: So is it mostly adults then buying this, as far as you know?
PD: As far as I can tell, it’s a lot of people, roughly my age, in here for the nostalgia in here for that, you know, that feeling that they had when they were a kid.
LYT: When Diamond a while back did realistic versions of the cartoon characters, was that something you liked? Was that something you would want to do a take on or no?
PD: Uh, I, you know, I think that, I think that the Ghostbusters space is big enough for all of us to rise to the top. And like, I’ve got friends at Diamond. I have friends at Mondo and the stuff that we’re all doing, it’s a game recognizes game situation where we all leave the convention.
We all go and hang out. We’ll have dinner. We’ll talk. And these relationships with just fans that are making stuff that are cool, like I’m in constant awe of the things they’re able to do over at Mondo. Alex Brewer, their sculptor, is incredible. He’s an amazing talent. That kind of level is something I would love to be able to try and do. So yeah, you know, the realistic Diamond select ones that came out almost 10 years ago now. Um, the ones that Mondo are doing right now. So they all just help work to get everybody to step up their game at the same time.
LYT: But would you want to do realistic ones of the cartoons?
PD: If Diamond already did them, I’ve got to do something that sets me apart. You know what I mean? Like, how many of the same style figure are we going to do? And, you know, what’s my take on it? I don’t want to do something that somebody else just did. I want to do something that’s different, that’s got a little spin on it. So that would be my approach.
LYT: We look forward to it. And if you’ve seen some of the things that I’ve seen from the Netflix show, boy, I’d like to see some of those.
PD: Same.
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