General Marvel Legends

[EnigmaticClarity]

What's wrong with Medusa's faceplates?

He said they weren't as functional as he'd like so the next time they do faceplates the engineering will be different.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

Dwight: "Magneto would make a good Maximum figure". He offered that. He wasn't asked directly.

Dan Yun also volunteered this idea at SDCC. The context there was they hinted something in the display there was going to end up in a Maximum release and he was challenging the interviewer to guess what. Dan suggested that the magnetic shield they had in the display would be great on a Maximum figure.

None of this means we're getting it soon, but clearly they're thinking about a Maximum Magneto.

 

[RichardSimmonsRobot]

None of this means we're getting it soon, but clearly they're thinking about a Maximum Magneto.

Or Gamerverse:

 

[Fletch]

Dang. Player 2 getting his ass beat.

 

[JakeEkiss]

We should be so lucky that they put as much love into Balder and the Warriors Three as they did Odin.

I keep imagining a Beta Ray Bill with that kind of effort and hoo-boy yes please.

Or Gamerverse:

That's the one I'm hoping they do. '97 Magneto is very close to my ideal, but he's just a smidge short. If they fix that and give him and unmasked head and some good effects (I kept expecting them to reuse the Havok circle effects for him) I'd definitely pick that up.

 

[Misfit]

Not that Hasbro needs me to defend them, but one reason why they may start a team and not finish it is if the previous figures were received poorly. You generally don't want to double-down on bad bets.

On the other hand, how does Hasbro sell Legends to retailers? Isn't it basically by wave/case? If so, it shouldn't really matter if they think a character might be known enough. Obviously, they'll hear it from retailers if they keep packing unknown and poor sellers into wave after wave, but it's often a given there's a character or two that's in less demand each wave. If they can get the jolly green giant into a wave, then surely they have room for sexy space pirate cat.

 

[Damien]

Not that Hasbro needs me to defend them, but one reason why they may start a team and not finish it is if the previous figures were received poorly. You generally don't want to double-down on bad bets.

On the other hand, how does Hasbro sell Legends to retailers? Isn't it basically by wave/case? If so, it shouldn't really matter if they think a character might be known enough. Obviously, they'll hear it from retailers if they keep packing unknown and poor sellers into wave after wave, but it's often a given there's a character or two that's in less demand each wave. If they can get the jolly green giant into a wave, then surely they have room for sexy space pirate cat.

There's definitely a huge combination of factors. For all the excitable cheerleading some people do about how great BAF waves are for us - the BAF itself eats up some budget from the wave. Which means the characters in the wave have less budget to go around for new parts. Which in turn means characters not expected to sell as well or garner as much interest might not warrant tooling money better spent elsewhere. So if a character is new tooling + potentially unpopular, it basically puts them on the 'maybe don't bother to make this' list. Or it means they have to wait until the right opportunity comes along, like a boxed set or non-BAF wave they fit into.

There's also definitely more art than science involved in figuring out what sells and what doesn't overall. But figures usually scan individually rather than just as all being an unnamed item from X or Y wave. So they do know how many times Warbow rings up at Walmart versus Phantom Rider. 100%. If they see certain things move a lot slower, or not at all, that's going to affect how they move forward.
But so is tooling.

Crystar sold well. AND he has unique tooling Hasbro wanted to get more mileage out of. I guarantee that if Warbow was a 100% new tool character, he would not have been made at all. That was just a way to distribute the tooling cost across more than one figure.

I'd be willing to bet that Hep and Raz are going to be in a boxed set at some point with a repainted Ch'od. Maybe with new feet or whatever people complained about (I can't remember). They'll throw in at least one other no-tooling-needed figure, and split the budget across the new parts they need for our sexy pirates.

 

[Enforcer]

The hands. They really were mad about the hands.

 

[Damien]

What's wrong with the hands? I like space pirates, but I can't say I ever paid enough attention to them to know what Ch'od's hands are supposed to look like. Too many fingers? Too few fingers?

 

[bat]

The hands. They really were mad about the hands.

If memory serves, the crazymaking part was that they largely reused Abomination but resculpted the hands but sculpted the wrong number of fingers for Ch'od in those sculpted-for-Ch'od hands.

 

[fac]

Ch'od has 4 fingers, figure has 5.

 

[Damien]

Oh, yeah.... I can see how that would tweak someone's nipples. But I don't care enough about the character for that to ever bother me.

 

[fac]

I think they have gone to a mix of solid cases of figures even for BAF lines as well as the more traditional mixed cases - which makes it easier for someone like BBTS and Amazon to order and track the figures they need in the quantities they want.

But it may mean there are 25% more left arms than torsos produced, which to me just seems wasteful.

If they wait to see if Team Members A and B sell before greenlighting C and D or E, to me they are hampering sales by creating such a gap. They really should greenlight a team all at once and have the plan for the coming year or so in place to get A to D or E out. I have to believe that when announcing A and B, if they also announced C and D are scheduled for the next 12 months and E will be within 24 months, that this will help sell more of A and B. Even be truly organized and have C and D up for pre-order just as A and B hit retail, and so on.

I am sure the number of people who wait to buy A and B until they are know C and D are coming is not insignificant, given how people may pick and choose what to purchase and what to prioritize.

 

[fac]

Oh, yeah.... I can see how that would tweak someone's nipples. But I don't care enough about the character for that to ever bother me.

It isn't that big of a deal to me, but it is the sort of unforced error that probably shouldn't happen.

 

[Misfit]

There's definitely a huge combination of factors. For all the excitable cheerleading some people do about how great BAF waves are for us - the BAF itself eats up some budget from the wave. Which means the characters in the wave have less budget to go around for new parts. Which in turn means characters not expected to sell as well or garner as much interest might not warrant tooling money better spent elsewhere. So if a character is new tooling + potentially unpopular, it basically puts them on the 'maybe don't bother to make this' list. Or it means they have to wait until the right opportunity comes along, like a boxed set or non-BAF wave they fit into.

There's also definitely more art than science involved in figuring out what sells and what doesn't overall. But figures usually scan individually rather than just as all being an unnamed item from X or Y wave. So they do know how many times Warbow rings up at Walmart versus Phantom Rider. 100%. If they see certain things move a lot slower, or not at all, that's going to affect how they move forward.
But so is tooling.

Crystar sold well. AND he has unique tooling Hasbro wanted to get more mileage out of. I guarantee that if Warbow was a 100% new tool character, he would not have been made at all. That was just a way to distribute the tooling cost across more than one figure.

I'd be willing to bet that Hep and Raz are going to be in a boxed set at some point with a repainted Ch'od. Maybe with new feet or whatever people complained about (I can't remember). They'll throw in at least one other no-tooling-needed figure, and split the budget across the new parts they need for our sexy pirates.

They definitely have access to per figure sales data, but my thinking was more that once Hasbro sells the case to the retailer they don't care what happens - they already got paid. Obviously it's not that simple as they want all of their figures to sell well and not rot at retail, but only if it were to become a trend that figures weren't moving would it become an issue for them. And that's also another reason why I'm down on the BAF waves. Too many releases look phoned in to accommodate the BAF part, but they must still be making enough money to where they don't see a need to just pivot to a different method of delivery that focuses on general releases and deluxe offerings exclusively.

It feels like we're at the point with Legends that the "too obscure to justify the costs," excuse is a hard sell given some of the stuff we've seen and the different avenues for release they've come up with. Maybe they do want to put a pause on things in the short term with prices going up if they're worried about their sales shrinking. And, yeah, totally possible Dwight is just making shit up to offer as an excuse now so people are surprised later. Though I will add, anyone asking him on camera needs to have a ready made retort for such an excuse with their favorite obscure Marvel character that Hasbro has already committed to plastic in recent years.

Ch'od has 4 fingers, figure has 5.

Those bastards!