>>11559944
People conflate "designing" characters with "creating" characters. Someone gives him a piece of vintage or concept art and tells him "turn this into a figure with as few new molds as possible."
I'd say 90% of Axel's designs are based on vintage/concept art like Toxoid and Stretch Nek, but he is the one that decides what parts are going to be used, like in picrel. He didn't create the character, but this is his design for the action figure version.
And then there is shit like Golden Rod where Scott wanted him to make C3PO from MOTU parts. We know the idea for the figure was 100% Scott's, but he still designed it.