Forgotten Lore is a feature focusing on toys that were planned but never produced.

Whenever action figure fans wax tragic about the action figures that never got the chance to see the light of day, you can be sure someone will bring up Ra from Stargodz.

Stargodz was a short-lived comic book published in the late 1990s by Dean Zachary, Scott Clark, and Dave Beatty. It last just two issues before going the way of most independent comic books of the time, but in the heady, hype-filled world of the Boom Era when venture capital flowed like wine, there was a prototype figure created of a character named Ra.

Having never read Stargodz, I have absolutely no idea what this guy’s story is, but I do know an awesome action figure when I see it. Given the comic’s quick death, it’s not surprising Ra never made it to the production stage, but in his vanishing a legend was born.

Ra may look a bit tame by today’s standards. Stylistically, McFarlane in particular has produced a number of figures that look a lot like him (I’m thinking of the various manga and robot figures from the series 10-25 era, a.k.a. “the good McFarlane years”). In terms of articulation, we’ve seen work like this on many Marvel Legends. But in 2000? This was hot stuff, arguably something collectors had never seen before, and thus Ra is, for many fans, a hole in their collection that can never be filled.