Mattel DC Figures

It would be cool if McFarlane could run alongside Mattel like DCC/DC Direct used to do. With Todd making 7" figures sold in the entertainment/Pop Culture section and Mattel's adult and kid stuff at other scales in the main boys toy aisles.

But I kind of feel like that won't happen. If it does though, I'd likely buy both, just like I did back when it was DC Direct/DCC and DCUC's


But no matter what I will probably keep all my McFarlane figures, the same way I keep all my DC stuff. And whatever Mattel makes, I'd say I will at least buy the Batman related stuff. But who knows. I may collect quite a bit if not all of yet another, DC toy line even though I absolutely don't need to lol.
 
Oh, so...rumor has it Kyle Wlodyga is heading up this line.

He was just recently brought on as a senior designer at Mattel after some shithead over at Super7 unceremoniously fired him.

And yeah, anything that managed to be good that was coming out of Super7 was Kyle. Guy is uber talented, and wants to make cool, fun toys--but was shackled previously by some cheap bastard, who, as an aside, quadruples the cost of their product versus how much it actually costs to make. Seriously, if you knew the margins, you'd realize that waiting out for clearance is the only logical choice. I digress.

Regardless, with Kyle on DC (if the rumors are true), something tells me that we are in for a massive treat.
 
By "heading up" do you mean designing or modeling the figures themselves?

I'm really ready to start collecting some 1/12 scale Legends-adjacent DC characters; is that the kind of stuff he do?
 
TheSameIdiot said:
Apparently, this line isn't scheduled to start until 2027? Yeesh.
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My understanding is that it's going to be a pretty big roll-out, though. Takes over a year to make a figure, so they started winding up earlier this year and the plan is to have a fair bit of product essentially ready for release January of 2027. You may even see it hit shelves in November/December of '26.

Again, JUST my understanding of the situation; Mattel actually gains distribution rights for their own product mid-'26. It's largely a Mattel position not to overlap their big release with the period where McFarlane product is still allowed to be releasing as he finishes up the product he was already working on when the licensing deal changed. It's essentially a 'brand confusion' concern rather than a legal one.



RicksNerdLife said:
Oh, so...rumor has it Kyle Wlodyga is heading up this line.

He was just recently brought on as a senior designer at Mattel after some shithead over at Super7 unceremoniously fired him.

And yeah, anything that managed to be good that was coming out of Super7 was Kyle. Guy is uber talented, and wants to make cool, fun toys--but was shackled previously by some cheap bastard, who, as an aside, quadruples the cost of their product versus how much it actually costs to make. Seriously, if you knew the margins, you'd realize that waiting out for clearance is the only logical choice. I digress.

Regardless, with Kyle on DC (if the rumors are true), something tells me that we are in for a massive treat.
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Yeah - Kyle is a legit toy FAN. He likes action figures that do action figure things. He understands the current collector mentality and what people want. He digs SHF and Legends and shit. I'm very interested to see what kind of fingerprint he puts on a DC line if Mattel takes the gloves off and lets him go for it (but we have to wait and see what Mattel lets him do -- they're not exactly the best toy company right now).
 
Yeah, fourteen months out is a long time to speculate. Mattel is notoriously secretive, notoriously cheap, and has layers of processes and bureaucracy added on to the layers of bureaucracy at Warner Consumer Products. Who are also notoriously difficult to work with. The various members of the 4H talk about how Mattel practically handcuffed them. You’ll notice that David Vonner is no longer at Mattel either.

My attitude is be careful what you wish for.
 
I'm all for a toy line being run by a true toy fan, but it does of course come with its own pros and cons. On one hand he knows what we want, but on the other hand, he knows what fans are sometimes willing to do (and, to be fair, what we're not willing to do) to get our hands on certain things. Hopefully it's more 70/30 or 60/40 good, but still. But I suppose too, if his hands are tied by certain creative decisions from the higher-ups, then it doesn't really matter. I'm expecting them to probably fix a lot of the headaches caused by McFarlane, while also creating new headaches that we haven't had these past couple years. Such is any toy line.
 
Atomic Knight said:
Yeah, fourteen months out is a long time to speculate. Mattel is notoriously secretive, notoriously cheap, and has layers of processes and bureaucracy added on to the layers of bureaucracy at Warner Consumer Products. Who are also notoriously difficult to work with. The various members of the 4H talk about how Mattel practically handcuffed them. You’ll notice that David Vonner is no longer at Mattel either.

My attitude is be careful what you wish for.
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As I'm not collecting McFarlane Multiverse at all, nothing could be worse than what is going on with DC figures right now so I welcome what the future holds, whatever that may be.
 
One thing in Mattel’s favor is that dipshit Toy Guru is gone. Inserting himself between Mattel and consumers led to endless problems for both us and the company. They are well rid of him. However, many of the issues came from well above him. I’m not sure if any of that has been fixed or not. I tend to think not. DC fills a hole in Mattel’s portfolio. That’s about it.
 
Justice said:
As I'm not collecting McFarlane Multiverse at all, nothing could be worse than what is going on with DC figures right now so I welcome what the future holds, whatever that may be.
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Mattel shit the bed once. I fully expect them to again eventually. And I’ve enjoyed what Todd has done and was hopeful he’d keep doing it for a long time. Oh well.
 
Well, if it takes an extra year, I'm fine with that. I don't collect Mcfarlane's stuff and think they're garbage, but I still want to see Shadowpact completed as that's my favorite team comic ever and NONE of them have had figures before. We're currently 3/6, 3/7 if we include Zauriel.

I suspect we'd start knowing about Mattel's DC product around SDCC 2026?
 
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