Mattel DC Figures

Since I seem to be slowly warming up to the idea of the Mattel takeover as inevitable, I’m starting to wonder about stuff. Stuff we clearly have no way of knowing yet. But I speculate nonetheless.

*How much of the secondary stuff Mattel has already done will get a redo? Doom Patrol, Metal Men, New Gods, etc?

*Will Mattel address the lack of female characters? They didn’t really do a great job of it the first time, except for the fact that they got to the top tier females quicker than Todd. But out of around 335 figures produced in DCUC and adjacent lines, less than 50 were female.

*Is there a strategy in place to complete teams over time. DCUC did a decent job of constructing the JSA, but a pretty 💩 job with the Titans. Mattel got the license back and are apparently hell bent on never letting it go again, it’s time for a long range plan for a fan driven lineup. Featuring villains, females, supporting characters, and outliers along with Batman and Superman. Assume you have at least 20 years. Plan accordingly.

*Elseworlds: It’s truly something I loved about DCD and Todd’s approach. There’s lots of great stuff there and helps keep Batman and Superman up front. But even outside of the Big Two, there’s some really fun, cool stuff there. I’d shave my head with a cheese grater for the Gotham by Gaslight League of Justice. Or Justice Riders. Or a full spread of Kingdom Come characters. Or Dark Knights of Steel.

Anyone else want to wonder out loud?
 
I wonder how Mattel will approach the DC license in the 2020s when their greatest success with said license was in the 2000s with a line that was based on a popular DC line from the 1980s that featured characters and costumes that had changed very little since the 1960s.
 
Damien said:
I imagine they're just gonna make whatever figures they think people will buy.....
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secondwhiteline said:
They're going to make Batmen and Supermen and squeeze in whatever fan favorites they can when they can, and hopefully whoever's running the line isn't such a raging narcissist that the line becomes a tribute to their dream figure collection.
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That was just my humor falling a little flat, but yes, that’s what I would expect.
 
Atomic Knight said:
Anyone else want to wonder out loud?
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I'm curious what eras are prioritized for world and team-building. DCUC felt very bronze age-y, Marvel Legends is sweeping enough that it's covered at least a bit of everything (Golden Age notwithstanding, sorry SD). Like, what version of the Justice League will we see them try to build out/ finish first?

And I'm curious if DCUC is used as a yardstick for "new" characters -- will the approach to B and C-listers be making characters who didn't get a shot in DCUC? E.G. Shining Knight, Greg Saunders Vigilante, Vixen, to name a couple of my personal priorities.

Will I finally get a Beast Boy who can be displayed with either team he belonged to, rather than being modeled off his appearance from a cartoon?
 
Xavion2025 said:
I wonder how Mattel will approach the DC license in the 2020s when their greatest success with said license was in the 2000s with a line that was based on a popular DC line from the 1980s that featured characters and costumes that had changed very little since the 1960s.
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This is pretty accurate. Default is post Crisis, roughly 1986-2011. I think this is probably the comfort zone for most fans and creators alike. My personal preference would be to use Rebirth 2016 as the baseline.
 
I do think Mattel is going to have to win fans over with the figures as opposed to the character choice. That’s how you sell an Absolute Superman or Batman to a collector like myself who is firmly entrenched in Pre-Crisis DC. Sell me a cool toy that’s going to pique my interest in the source material.
 
Classic/iconic will obviously be the baseline, not because it’s “better” but because it is instantly recognizable. I don’t know that that means 1986-2011 specifically, mostly because I doubt they are thinking about it like that. *We* care about teams, eras, accuracy; *they* care about the product being something that kids/parents see and go “ohhh yeah THAT GUY!! I want to buy that!!”
 
I think initially it's going to be a heavier split with modern than we might expect, if only because Absolute is such a massive success and the demand for the figures is both large and underserved. And obviously characters that appear in modern media are going to get more attention, but Gunn loves using obscure characters in cameo spots, so that might work out for classic fans in the end.

I don't know if DCUC is going to have any bearing on what they do here, but I'm guessing not much from Mattel's end. It's like whenever new Simpsons product gets released and people reference Playmates - these are 20-year-old lines. They're the most ancient of history. If it has any impact on Mattel's character selection, it's going to be indirect: collectors are probably going to campaign most strenuously for figures they don't have in that scale.
 
Yeah they aren’t going to be all “ohhh we can’t do Two-Face because McF did him a couple years ago and we did him a couple of times back when we had the license before”. They’re gonna be all “OK Two-Face is an A-/B+ tier Batvillain, he’s on the short list for when we want a character like that in a wave.”
 
That's one of the exact mistakes they made with DCUC, like, "We can't do Two-Face in a normal format because our own much less popular line just did him a couple years ago," like that's a sane way to be at the same time as a major film with Two-Face in it.
 
Mattel has held the WWE license since 2010. They’ve built it bigger and created a global merchandise franchise. Mattel held the DC license from 2003-2019. And nearly tanked it. Batman is obviously immune, but not the rest.

If Mattel intends to hold this license for a generation, they need to start thinking generationally. In 25 years I’ll be an old man. But I’d love to think that a strong, comic accurate line of DC action figures will still be up and running parallel to Marvel Legends. I’d like this new DC line to be where Marvel Legends is now. I hope Marvel Legends is still going in 25 years.

You can still plan for the future while navigating cost constraints and revenue projections. I hope there is a long term plan.
 
Reportedly the figures we're seeing now are from the "kid-friendly" line. So we won't really know anything until we see the upcoming "collector line", which I assume will be targeted more to adult collectors. But that's not coming out until next year, so I'll personally hold my opinions until then. Because those are the only figures I'd would be at all interested in.
 
Xavion2025 said:
That was just my humor falling a little flat, but yes, that’s what I would expect.
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No, I got you and was trying to bounce off that and be droll. So it's actually my humor that fell flat, if it makes you feel any better.



Ninjak said:
Reportedly the figures we're seeing now are from the "kid-friendly" line.
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Ninjak coming in with the factoid we've been discussing for 396 pages.
:) Haha.
 
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