Throughout his career as a producer, Irwin Allen was the master of promotion of his projects, and worked together with collectible and toy producers to provide memorabilia that fans would carry around, take to school, and wear that would inspire others to take a look at his work. He also produced press books, exploitation books, posters, lobby cards, press kits, and promo reels for cinemas, television stations, and publications to help promote his endeavours to as large an audience as possible. This legacy has continued to the current day with new official collectibles being produced with the oversight of his estate. The availability of the recent range of books (written by longtime fans), toys, and model kits is largely possible due to the dedicated efforts of the late Kevin Burns and his production company Synthesis Entertainment.
If you have pictures of your collections that you would like to share with others, please send them in with the name you would like us to credit the photos to and we will add them on this site.
AUCTIONS
A number of Irwin Allen related auctions which were held in the recent past are listed in the page linked below including Heritage Auctions, Julien's Auctions, Omega Auctions, and eBay.
LATEST IRWIN ALLEN COLLECTIBLES
Released on 12th September 2023 (in the US) was the blu-ray set Irwin Allen: Master of Disaster Collection featuring 7 television and theatrical release movies. The set featured the following movies: The Poseidon Adventure, When Time Ran Out, Fire, Flood, Cave-In, Hanging by a Thread, and The Night the Bridge Fell Down.
Available on Amazon US (#ad)
Available on Amazon UK (#ad)
Great news for Irwin Allen fans, especially those who weren't able to afford or get hold of the original The Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen by Jeff Bond. The cost of shipping such a substantial book overseas will have been prohibative for many. You can now order the re-release of this amazing book which has been re-published with a fresh cover design and a lower price point by Titan Books.
Order from Amazon.com (#ad)
Order from Amazon.co.uk (#ad)
Irwin Allen's wife Sheila spoke fondly of her desire for there to be a coffee table book on producer Irwin Allen and his career, and finally that dream came true with Jeff Bond's book The Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen with a foreword written by Lost in Space star, Bill Mumy.
Creature Features in association with Synthesis Entertainment and Legendary Pictures presents THE FANTASY WORLDS OF IRWIN ALLEN, the definitive coffee table book more than two and a half years in the making!
This deluxe 600+ page limited edition hardback is the first and only book of its kind to take a visual journey through the mind and career of legendary producer Irwin Allen, the "Master of Disaster"—the man behind some of the most popular television programs of the 1960s and the visionary who invented the special effects movie blockbuster format with his 1970s hits The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
Authored by Jeff Bond with the full participation and cooperation of the Irwin Allen Estate, THE FANTASY WORLDS OF IRWIN ALLEN follows the ambitious icon from his early days as a Hollywood agent and radio personality to his lengthy stint at 20th Century Fox, where he produced movies such as The Lost World and Five Weeks in a Balloon and the popular television shows Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants.
Allen employed the studio's sprawling lot and soundstages, its library of movie footage, costumes and props, and its veteran special effects craftsmen to bring vivid color and movie-quality action, miniature effects and visuals to television viewers accustomed to low-budget, black and white programming. Allen's flare for action and visual punch gave audiences some of the 1960s most popular and iconic figures: Admiral Nelson and Captain Crane of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea; the Lost in Space Robot and Jonathan Harris' nefarious Dr. Zachary Smith; Will Robinson and the Robinson family of space travelers; the pop art kaleidoscope of The Time Tunnel; the Jupiter 2, the Seaview, the Flying Sub, the Spindrift.
Before George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Irwin Allen broke box office records with two of the biggest movie blockbusters of all time: The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Wooed to Warner Bros. at the height of his power with the offer of a building named in his honor and one of the most generous studio contracts ever given a producer, Allen faced his biggest challenge: topping himself with The Swarm, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, When Time Ran Out, and a series of ambitious projects for television.
Illustrated with more than 2,000 images including concept and production artwork, storyboards, blueprints, design sketches, miniatures and behind-the-scenes photographs, many of them never before published, THE FANTASY WORLDS OF IRWIN ALLEN is the ultimate guide to Allen's famous productions, from his documentaries The Sea Around Us and The Animal World to his spectacular TV-movie City Beneath the Sea, plus fascinating unproduced projects, all explored in detail for the first time.
This hardbound masterwork will be offered in a standard edition of 1000 copies, and a deluxe signed edition of 250 copies autographed by author Jeff Bond and actor Bill Mumy, who penned the foreword.
PLEASE NOTE: Creature Features was the only authorized source for new copies of this book and will not be offering it thru Amazon or any other retail sellers. The book is now out of print, but copies can occasionally be found on eBay.
Sample pages from the book The Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen
TV SHOW COLLECTIBLES GALLERIES
View the Lost in Space Collectibles Gallery
View The Time Tunnel Collectibles Gallery
View the Land of the Giants Collectibles Gallery
OTHER IRWIN ALLEN COLLECTIBLES
Click here or on the image above to view a gallery from Moebius Models of "test shot" photos.
Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen Trading Cards
Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen Card Checklist
Collectibles from the Irwin Allen movies can be found in the individual movie sections in both the Irwin Productions section and the Irwin Allen Gallery. New collectibles will be shown here as well.
In this 40th anniversary year for Irwin Allen's award winning The Poseidon Adventure, we see this outstanding movie being released on Blu-Ray in the US, France and Germany. In the US, the Blu-Ray version is being released as a Walmart Exclusive. It features the same extras that appeared in the special edition DVD set.
Walmart Exclusive - The Poseidon Adventure Blu-Ray
The Towering Inferno has been released in High Definition (HD) Blu-Ray format.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: 50th Anniversary Limited Edition CD of the 1961 movie soundtrack. Available from La-La Land Records.
We get a lot of enquiries asking about the value of different Irwin Allen collectibles. If you are planning on spending over $100 on a collectible, we recommend researching the prices the item has previously sold at as this will provide the most accurate valuation of an object. For past Ebay "Sold" prices, a good source of information is the subscription service at the Worthpoint Worthopedia. If you notice items sitting unsold on Ebay for many weeks then it is very likely that the items have been over priced, sometimes many times over what they would normally sell for. Purchasing over-valued items means that it will be much harder to sell those items later on and that likely to make a significant loss on the investment. The hardest items to estimate the value for are the one-off items like original props, so the price these will sell at auction for will depend on whether there are multiple bidders willing to pay whatever it costs. The best guide for one-off item values is to find out what similar items from the genre sold for.
Over the past few years we have been collating a list of sold prices for original 1960's toys and collectibles. If you are looking for information on a particular Irwin Allen collectible, we are happy to help if we can. Our research is by no means complete, but it provides a good guide for what items have been selling for. For big ticket items, it would be advisable to seek advice from a reputable antiques dealer or auction house. Remember that an item is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it.
If you are unsure about whether a collectible is original or not, it is worth checking the licensing information on the item. All licensed toys and collectibles will have verifiable licensing, date and copyright information on them. There are a lot of goods appearing online that aren't original or licensed so again, it is worth researching any intended purchase before spending a lot of money on it.
Irwin Allen Memorabilia at Amazon US (#ad)
Irwin Allen Memorabilia at Amazon UK (#ad)
Sources for books, magazines and novels (new and second hand)
If you know of any reputable dealers who sell memorabilia for the Irwin Allen shows, and from whom you have successfully ordered material within a reasonable timescale, we will happily add their details to this page. Please e-mail details including what items they sell, prices, and how long orders take from the time of ordering.
E-Mail details of memorabilia vendors to IANN