Dungeon Crawler Carl toymaker Playmates teases Samantha plans at Toy Fair

In the post-apocalyptic world of Dungeon Crawler Carl, all of Earth’s resources have been used up by the alien-owned Borant Corporation. Life has also been devastated, with only a handful of human survivors who are forced to compete in the intergalactic game Dungeon Crawler World. Among those survivors is Carl, a Coast Guard veteran and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut.

This is the world of Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl which has taken the literary RPG world by storm with his best-selling book series. Now, even before a movie or TV adaptation, Carl is being realized in three dimensions by veteran toy company Playmates, best known for its decades of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures. Venturing into the adult-collector space for the first time, Playmates is offering up several different lines of Dungeon Crawler Carl toys, which will debut at San Diego Comic-Con in July. The line will be available in specialty stores like Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Hot Topic after that.

At Toy Fair 2026, I caught up with Playmates marketing manager Lydia Torres, who filled me in on the line and explained one big, sex doll head-sized gap in what they’ve shown off so far.

In the action figure space, Playmates is starting off with three six-inch figures, each with a swappable head, interchangeable hands and character-specific accessories. The first figure, of course, is Carl with Princess Donut. There’s also Carl’s frenemy Prepotente and Mordecai, the dungeon guide. For the latter, Torres explained that, while Mordecai has a number of different forms, they decided to go his incubus form first mostly out of personal preference as she does count herself among the many Dungeon Crawler Carl fans. The hope is, she explains, to get other forms of Mordecai in future releases. She also notes that the toys shown off at Toy Fair are only prototypes and that the releases will be fully articulated.

Playmates is also releasing a series of small plastic statues which will be sold in blindboxes, starting off with “iconic scenes from the first three books,” explains Torres. The scale on these vary, as Torres said “we wanted these to be as big as they can be and still fit in the box.” Some fans in the Dungeon Crawler Carl subreddit weren’t too keen on the blindboxes for these releases, but Playmates explained that it’s simply part of the business.

“We’ve been asked to do more blind boxes both by retailers and fans across the properties we represent. Retailers appreciate that they can offer larger character assortments without risking certain character styles potentially sitting longer than others on shelves, and fans have enjoyed unboxing experiences,” Torres says.

Playmates will also offer up a line of collector cards featuring the characters from Dungeon Crawler Carl featuring art by Luciano Fleitas, who has done the cover art for the series’ audio books. There’s also a series of blind boxes with Princess Donut in a variety of hilarious poses. They’re even working on a Princess Donut plush, but Torres notes that the one seen at Toy Fair is very much a work in progress as they haven’t quite nailed the tortoise shell cat look yet.

Image: Playmates

The big question on the minds of the diehard Dungeon Crawler Carl readers seems to be: “Where is Samantha?” referring to the decapitated sex doll head which holds the spirit of a minor deity. While the booth featured a picture of the character (above), there were no actual products of her.

“We are currently working on sculpts for her, but we didn’t love anything enough to show yet,” says Torres. When I ask for which line, Torres teases “a new one, a new scale.” I pushed a bit — is it life-size? — and Torres relented, saying “Yes, that’s what we’re working on.” At that point, Pat Linden, Playmates’ VP of boys marketing chimes in and says she’ll be “Life-size with real rooted hair and we plan on having her talk as well, so she’ll be a talking sex doll head.”

Having interviewed Linden before, I know him as a veteran of children’s toys and I ask him if selling such items is weird for him. He laughs “This whole book series is weird, but we love it. Plus, it gets us more into that collectors space, which we haven’t really been in before.” That, as Torres explains, is part of the reason why these toys are being sold under the Borant Corp logo instead of Playmates’ classic logo, which is more associated with children’s toys.

Finally, Torres concluded our chat by saying, “We want people to know that this line is for fans, by fans as everybody involved in the line is reading the books and loving them. This is definitely just the beginning.”