King of the Hill/Toycom

## King of the Hill Series 3

* Cotton Hill and Good Hank
* Kahn Souphanousinphone

While not much is known about them, Toycom, later known as Yamato USA,  was a toy company that manufactured toys based off Japanese anime (ie. *Ghost in the Shell*, *Resident Evil*) for the American market, though they also produced two series of action figures based on a sensational animated adult-comedy series that aired on the FOX Channel; which has also been jokingly described by some as the "greatest abime of all time."  One more wave was meant to be made, though it never went through as planned.

## **Summary**

*King of the Hill* is an American adult comedy animated series developed by Mike Judge (*Beavis and Butthead*, *Idiocracy*) and aired on the FOX network for 13 seasons and 259 episodes from January 6th 1997 to May 6th 2010. Much like The Simpsons, the show is a satirical take on the American middle class family and focuses on Hank Hill, an assistant manager at Strickland Propane of the fictional Texas town named Arlen who finds himself in wacky antics involving his family and friends, mainly due to his Conservative values. The show is highly regarded for its sly sense of humour and dialogue, subversive writing, and its memorable cast of characters.

On December 13th 2002, Toycom announced that they would be doing a line of action figures based on *King of the Series* and the lineup for the first and second waves were each revealed that day.  Wave 1 consisted of Hank Hill, his wife Peggy, Dale Gribble, and Bill Dauterive while Wave 2 included Bobby Hill and the family dog Ladybird, Luanne Platter, and Jeffrey Dexter "Boomhauer." Toycom had plans to do Series 3 of their *King of the Hill* action figures, though not much else is known about it except for two characters whose prototypes were shown in a post by Trowa; uploaded on a Spawnies forum thread about unreleased toys.  The first one is Cotton Hill, a WWII veteran and Hank’s father who each have a strained relationship with each other and would have included a figure of his second son (among Juniricho and 270 possible others as he implied in the show) named “Good Hank.” The second one is Kahn Souphanousinphone, one of Hank’s neighbours of Asian descent who has a superiority complex over the rest of the neighbourhood. Both prototype molds appeared in an advertisement for the previews section of Toyfare magazine, yet neither of them made it to the final painting stages.

## **Final Verdict**

Both the prototype molds of Cotton & Good Hank and Kahn were shown in an advertisement for the previews section of an issue of *Toyfare* magazine, though *King of the Hill* Series 3 was never released and it might have been due to Toycom losing the *King of the Hill* license. Its unknown if any other characters were planned for Series 3 and its unlikely that the Cotton & Kahn prototypes were ever finished; meaning these two figures will remain: **LOST**.

## **References**

1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20070718030031/http://www.toycom.net/
2. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20030108184510/http://www.toycom.net/The\_Web/Main\_Pagex.html
3. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King\_of\_the\_Hill
4. ↑ https://toynewsi.com/1-810
5. ↑ https://spawnies.proboards.com/thread/2246/official-unreleased-prototypes-thread?q=king+of+the+hill