Random Krystonia trivia:
- The photo in the collector booklets of a few painters in the 80’s sweaters in a single factory was faked. Panton outsourced painting to avoid labor costs.
- In 1990, Hanna-Barbara was in talks to produce a Krystonia animated series. Nothing ever came of it however.
- 502 "Dragon's Play" was originally called "Pook Ball". The krystal was actually a small furry pook. They (literally) hacked it off and replaced it with a krystal because it was decided it looked "cruel" (even though the dragons do play pook ball in the book, and they later released "enough is enough" which was....pook ball).
- The first printing of book one (1987) only had the illustrations in color by Mark Newman. The second printing had the black and white drawings by RS (Rob Sampson) in 1991 added. Noticably lower quality.
- Books 2, 3 and 4 were ghost written by someone in England. I'm not sure who did the artwork for these books but compared to book one it looks like a high school student did some quick sketches.
- Panton allowed employees to buy pieces at wholesale cost. Many employees took advantage of this and bought figures to re-sell to collectors.
- Even though the rubber molds were destroyed when pieces were retired, the original resin sculptures were kept around so new molds could be created if needed. I have no idea if they ever did this.
- Pieces were retired randomly and had nothing to do with the number of pieces sold or produced. For instance, 1701 Large Rueggan was a first year retirement even though the piece was not very popular (unlike the other two retirements 1012 and 1091 which had sold very well).
- Very early pieces had red, white or tan felt instead of the standard green.
- The warehouse workers had a secret fort in the back built out of empty boxes of waterglobes. Inside the fort was a chair, some pillows and a small TV set. Management was never aware of this! They had cleverly rigged up a "door" that would slide up and down, and when in place it just looked like a large stack of waterglobe boxes. It was hysterical!