Mattel DC Figures

I'm just saying PR wise. They are leading with the least appealing things for the loudest man baby portion of their market. Doesn't seem ideal.
 
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I don't disagree, especially since there will be some people who will see that initial product and think that is what is directly replacing the McF product (rather than the Spin Master stuff which it really is), not knowing about the six month wait on the collector stuff. You know that's going to happen and the reaction will be poor. I agree they'd be better off introducing their premium stuff at least at the same time, but that's not what is happening.
 
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Another way to look at it is:
1) Mattel isn’t in control of the timeline, and some product is better than no product.
2) kids product is (perceived as) the biggest and most necessary push
3) collectors will maybe buy these and then also buy the collector product, something they might not do if both were released simultaneously.

Disclaimer: fuck “business” and fuck “business strategy”, I’m not endorsing this, just positing some possible motives here.
 
There are perhaps a few thousand people on action figure message boards scattered throughout the world. Fewer when you consider only the English language ones. There are tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who collect action figures. We’re probably not a representative sample.

Marvel fans have had Marvel Legends, essentially since 2000 with the introduction of Spider-Man Classics. One continuous line with two vendors who, for the most part, handed it off seamlessly. DC has had four separate vendors, and five different handoffs, and DCD/DCC running parallel almost the entire time. All I’ve wanted is what the other guys have.

My work experience has never been with large companies. Never dealt with retail products. Never dealt in the various metrics and algorithms pertaining to retail sales and products.

So my question for those who have this experience and knowledge, do you think Mattel Marketing has done all its due diligence in taking this license back? How much of the base has eroded over all the changes in the last 25 years? No plan, no consistency, just a hole on a shelf that needs to be filled. And a hole in a portfolio marked “Boys Toys”. Forget McFarlane, I’m asking a general question.

I understand Superman and especially Batman are evergreen. What about the rest?
 
Chooch555 said:
the dark ages
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Not just the dark ages, but those several years where there were effectively NO Marvel Legends at all, just the Marvel Universe 3 3/4 figures.
Hasbro had to literally print “THE RETURN OF MARVEL LEGENDS” on the Zola wave to get collectors to even consider jumping back on.
 
Atomic Knight said:
So my question for those who have this experience and knowledge, do you think Mattel Marketing has done all its due diligence in taking this license back? How much of the base has eroded over all the changes in the last 25 years? No plan, no consistency, just a hole on a shelf that needs to be filled. And a hole in a portfolio marked “Boys Toys”. Forget McFarlane, I’m asking a general question.
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No.
Mattel is a uniquely bad company when it comes to serving the interests of its own customers with an eye toward the greatest ROI/engagement, and Mattel is also uniquely bad at outreach and presentation. They are a bad company run by incredibly stupid, clueless people. I've argued several times that Mattel is too rich and stupid to understand how much richer it would be if it weren't stupid.
 
AceofKnaves said:
Oh dear, that is absolutely not what happened with Marvel Legends AT ALL.
🤣
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From the outside looking in, that’s the way it always appeared to me. I do understand that there were a number of speed bumps over the years, but I’d accept a single scale/style for 2 decades over what we’ve gotten.
 
Damien said:
No.
Mattel is a uniquely bad company when it comes to serving the interests of its own customers with an eye toward the greatest ROI/engagement, and Mattel is also uniquely bad at outreach and presentation. They are a bad company run by incredibly stupid, clueless people. I've argued several times that Mattel is too rich and stupid to understand how much richer it would be if it weren't stupid.
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Thanks for the unvarnished answer.

How would you think Mattel would define success going forward?
 
I suspect success to some folks at Mattel would be that no one else gets the DC license. So long as they don't lose money and no one else makes it surely there are executives that would call that a win. I'd also bet that there are creative and product people working their asses off to get out the best line they can that would define success very differently.
 
Atomic Knight said:
but I’d accept a single scale/style for 2 decades over what we’ve gotten.
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It literally wasn’t a single scale OR a single style.
You must have been waaaaaaay outside looking in to miss the half decade where the scale essentially went away entirely, and the massive MASSIVE style shifts from early ToyBiz to transition ToyBiz to early Hasbro to NO LEGENDS AT ALL to Return to the start of ‘modern” ML in 2012 with the Bucky Cap body and particularly the Ultimate Goblin/Mandroid BAF waves.

Seriously; it wasn’t like what you think. Some of those 6inch Spidey figures had action features, man, under ToyBiz AND under Hasbro.
 
AceofKnaves said:
It literally wasn’t a single scale OR a single style.
You must have been waaaaaaay outside looking in to miss the half decade where the scale essentially went away entirely, and the massive MASSIVE style shifts from early ToyBiz to transition ToyBiz to early Hasbro to NO LEGENDS AT ALL to Return to the start of ‘modern” ML in 2012 with the Bucky Cap body and particularly the Ultimate Goblin/Mandroid BAF waves.

Seriously; it wasn’t like what you think. Some of those 6inch Spidey figures had action features, man, under ToyBiz AND under Hasbro.
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I think it is fair to say that ML showed a continuous trend, so figures varied from year to year in style and even a little bit in scale, but you can see the line on a graph and it's all still Marvel Legends moving from the beginning to where we are now. It's also fair to say that plenty of people still seem to be content with displaying old TBML with modern ML, so there must be SOME cross-pollination in the format.
Whereas it's virtually impossible to say the same two things about DC figures. There's no trending line in the process. Just huge peaks and valleys where each company and style gets sway for a little bit, and nothing can really work with anything else even if you squint and take your fancy monocle off.

But yeah, some people (especially maybe outside of actual ML collectors) might overstate how ML has been one consistent/continuous line since 2003. That's certainly not strictly true.


Atomic Knight said:
How would you think Mattel would define success going forward?
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I wish I knew. Mattel seems uniquely able to shoot itself in the foot on what 'success' means and how to achieve it. MOTUC was undoubtedly successful, for we heard constantly that Mattel barely even cared about the line and basically let one really stupid guy run the entire thing. They did basically the same thing with DCUC. Then those lines went away, presumably because Mattel didn't see them as being profitable enough to bother with.
My guess would be that Mattel's success with DC is going to be largely focused on how well it can sell kids' toys, not collector toys. But if the MOTU lines are anything to go by - Mattel won't commit to fans on anything and will always be looking for a way to 'refresh' the idea and start over. My GUESS would be they're more interested, even in the collector line, in re-hashing Superman and Batman 47 times in 4 years. But we shall see.
 
Damien said:
But yeah, some people (especially maybe outside of actual ML collectors) might overstate how ML has been one consistent/continuous line since 2003. That's certainly not strictly true.
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The big issue is the gaping hole of zero MLs.
Ask someone about the arc of the line in 2009, and they’d say it’s dead. I had years of agony in there with no 6inch product.

I’m not saying Mattel is better, just that ML is hardly a shining city on a hill.
 
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