BAF Waves - Themed or Mixed?

My preferences are they continue BAF waves, and that those waves are tightly themed. Don’t mix movie and comic. Try not to mix modern and retro. Stop the retro waves and just make them BAF waves instead.

I’ve been collecting since before ML began, and so the concept feels sort of essential to the brand for me. I also remember when they were like $8-12 a piece and could build a fully-painted 16” Sentinel. Eliminating the BAF is just reducing the value of an already overpriced modern figure. While I appreciate the retro waves because of the characters they are making, I would have liked those figures even more if they had a BAF included. The retro waves are actually how themed waves should be done, and the fact that they make us separately buy the deluxe characters around the same time is just the company extracting more of our money.

I don’t personally own many BAFs, but mostly that’s because I either don’t like the BAF or because I refuse to buy 4 figures I don’t want to complete the set. I haven’t completed a BAF since Strong Guy, and that was only due to an overwhelming desire to have that version of XFactor complete on my shelf. Never thought they would rerelease Guido individually back in 2020 (or whenever he came out). Same thing happened with Sauron before that. Those random Deadpool characters are still in their boxes somewhere. I outright bought Xenmu from eBay, but that was more because I couldn’t find Red Skull. But that result is mostly because I’ve been a more disciplined buyer and try to limit my purchases to particular sets of characters I know and care about (and ignore most repeats). I’m not throwing money toward some totally unrelated mort like Red Widow or Anti-Eternia Thor to complete Zabu. However, I would have bought related morts from the savage land, or background mutants.

I have bought almost the full lineup of several retro X-Men waves though, because all of those characters are what I collect. In those cases, I could have been incentivized to buy the extra Wolverine or whomever to complete the wave. That’s why all BAF lines should have a theme that ties directly to the BAF. If we could get the Safari Charles with part of his hover chair, and the other 5 retro figures contained the remaining pieces, that would be preferable to buying each of those characters separately and then paying $60 on top of that to have an extra Charles (that I don’t want) just to get the chair. Same thing with a lot of these non-BAF lines. Gamerverse MvC2 could have been a BAF Shuma Gorath. Secret Wars could have been a BAF (whoever makes sense). A lot of these X-men two packs are the same figures but at a relatively higher price because they don’t include BAF parts.

There’s probably some policy and/or accounting shenanigans on Hasbro’s side that allows the managers to spread the cost of new parts over specific sub-lines, and that’s how they balance the costs across waves, enabling these two packs to have figures with relatively more new parts than the BAF waves seem to. But that’s a Hasbro problem, and one they could easily avoid by having evergreen versions of essential characters rereleased regularly.

[First post here, btw. From Fwoosh (and TNI before, and the old DC Direct forums even before that).]
 
There's a lot working against the BAF formula these days, especially for those who have been in the game long enough to remember the Toy Biz years. Back then, the BAF was a way to get out a figure that Toy Biz would never release stand-alone like a giant, freakin', Sentinel or Apocalypse. And to do it, they basically sacrificed the base all the figures came with and replaced it with a part reducing one giant figure into six different accessories - and it worked! You felt like you were getting a bonus if you wanted an entire wave of figures. The line was also young enough that you didn't end up with a lot of D-list characters coming with extra parts too, so while most of the wave might be themed, the one or two that weren't didn't bother as much. Especially if you were still getting the figures for 6-8 dollars.

Now, the BAF is used to sell us characters that really aren't all that much more substantial than a standard release. Another problem is what do you cut in order to get a BAF part into a figure? Most Legends only come with an extra set of hands, maybe an extra portrait or a weapon/power effect. There's nothing to take from. And with Hasbro constantly reusing BAF tools to either re-release a character previously locked behind the BAF model or repurposed for another, it just feels pointless. Just sell us the character we want at this point. They can still stick the occasional odd-ball release into a wave and cost it out that way. If we have really the era of $30 standard releases, then I don't really want a BAF to take away from the figure I'm buying at this point.
 
I go back and forth on the themed. I get why it would be wanted to have a relevant BAF. However many of the characters that I really want aren't going to easily fit into any of the major themes. They're unlikely to ever show up in a X-Men, Avengers, Spider-Man or Fantastic Four based wave - which I feel like are the major themes they'd go with. Hodgepodge waves is the only way to get some of those more obscure characters that don't fit into the bigger teams themes.

I'm a huge pro-BAF guy but I'll admit that it worked better for Toy Biz back when most of the figures were still first or second time in the line and not being repeated for the 100th time.

The last BAF waves that I didn't complete were Venompool in 2020, Fat Bro MCU Thor in 2019 and Lizard in 2018.
 
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I think at this point, I'd just rather have deluxe single release figures if they're going to be BAF otherwise. If there has to be a BAF wave, then themed. I've never completed a full wave of ML before though, so every BAF I have (not many at that) I got on the secondary market.
 
I've completed almost every BAF and in the rare instances I don't want it, I sell it or the pieces and let my collection make money for me. If you are willing to pay for the character separately, I'd much rather that money come to other collectors than to Hasbro. And that right there may be why the BAF is mostly dead - Hasbro saw a way to get that money.

I never want that aspect to go away or to pay more for the privilege of something that used to be included.
 
I prefer themed. It makes it less likely that I have to buy characters that I don't want. And, it's fun to get a whole shelf full of stuff at one time. Going from no Age of Apocalypse X-Men to a whole set was fun, and I still ended up getting more than I would have if they had come out individually (which is what Hasbro is shooting for.) Every wave wouldn't have to be that narrowly focused, but it's a lot more fun.
 
Schizm said:
If you are willing to pay for the character separately, I'd much rather that money come to other collectors than to Hasbro.
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I mean, the collectors are often charging double or triple what Hasbro eventually does for the single card, and often 4x as much as a single figure from the wave. Is a half decade old BAF worth $100+ after taxes and shipping? Is one that's only a year old worth it? Because that's just the base cost for most of them if I buy from a collector. And it doesn't seem to matter if it's a super popular one or not.

Like, I'm sorry, I don't see that as particularly more noble than buying from Hasbro. Why am I being upcharged by my fellow collectors if they don't want the figure anyway? Why should I feel like that's somehow better?
 
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The only time I've been truly mad regarding BAF's is when they made us buy movie figs for a comic BAF, like with Hyde. I think it was Enforcer back on Fwoosh that helped me out with the movie BAF parts for that. I'm sure it would be the same in reverse for only MCU collectors having to buy comic figs for an MCU BAF, but I don't think that's happened?
 
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