Ask Matty – March 1st Edition
DCClassics.Com Asks: At NYTF, nearly everything for the DCIE subscription looked fantastic. The character choices were great and the figures looked sharp on display. That said, we’re somewhat puzzled by Rocket Red. Since Mattel opted to use the short-lived Geoff John/Ivan Reis version of Rocket Red, he should’ve received a standard size figure. Instead he’s been given an incorrect 8″ oversized slot. Is this an oversight that subscribers are just going to have to live with?
He is the correct scale as advised by our licensor partners.
DCClassics.Com Asks: For Waves 17-20, 26 of the 40 figures were based on Geoff Johns work, as are the first handful of subscription figures, and four of the first six 2012 DC All-Stars. Is this an intentional focus on Geoff Johns work?
No, this is just a coincidence and likely due to Geoff’s heavy involvement as a writer. It is not intentional that we said “lets focus on Geoff characters” or anything like that.
ItsAllTrue.Net: What articulation will be featured on the Dana as Zuul figure?
She will have a swivel waist.
MOTUClassics.Com Asks: In the last Q&A, the reason for Fisto not having interchangeability was given as “the 4H didn’t design him that way”. Mattel representativess have made comments in the past that the Four Horsemen aren’t responsible for engineering the figures, so is interchangeability considered a design aesthetic? Should we be lobbying the 4H for future interchangeability or should we continue to lobby Mattel so we can get that feedback to Terry Higuchi and the rest of the MOTU team?
It is always a good idea to post your ideas on the Four Horsemen’s site as they often make these choices when designing the figure.
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Dana is just going to be a statue with a waist cut joint 🙁
I’m not buying her, not at full price anyway. One, she’s just not worth the $22 and, two, seeing RTBY Peter on Matty’s March Madness sale just confirms that I should be waiting for some type of year-end sale for my Ghostbusters purchases.
(That said, I probably won’t be able to wait on the Rookie, but I can definitely want on an in-action figure of Dana).
So Dana is a statue, and according to Mattel and based on the artwork you have provided Batman and Superman took some Pym Particles to be the same size as Rocket Red. hm.
Nope. No Pym particles were involved in that art. If you check the panel previous to that one, however, you can clearly see Supes and Bats saying “Enuch Chuck”. I’ve been trying to get my fig of Barda to say the exact same thing…
It’s getting clearer to see that they have various different people answering these questions, as the amount of info revealed, and the extent of excuses for errors vary greatly from one session to the next. Oh well. Thanks again for posting the Q & A’s, and for the handy-dandy round-up of links! Always appreciated!
It’s nice to get all the links in one place, it helps to see the same questions multiple times and get all the stinging answers out of the way at once! 😀
Well, at least I know now that I WON’T be buying Dana… A statue!? Really!?
But the Horsemen didn’t screw up the Sorceress wings… that was Mattel’s “engineering team”…
I’m curious on the Sorceress wings as I slept through that particular issue. How did the 4H plan on having the wings done?
Apparently the Horsemen were going to use a design based on some art by Emiliano Santalucia, where the wings were attached to the bicep. It seems that the design with the wing on the bicep didn’t work for Mattel… cause the 4Horsemen are great sculptors but they don’t work the articulation and engineering involved with making an action figure… :rolleyes:
Theories are:
-They couldn’t find a way to attach the wings based on the design.
-Too much new tooling.
-The whole Mattel hates anything that has to do with Emiliano thing.
Personally I believe it’s mostly #2…
Just though I’d point out that the link to Critical Mess leads to their 2/15/12 Q&A session.
Thanks! Fixed.
So do the 4H share design duties with Mattel? I don’t even know what’s real in the Q&A’s anymore.
I can’t believe the Four Horsemen get so much leeway when it comes to the design of the figures. You would think that Mattel would design them and the 4H would have to follow said design, but apparently the Four Horsemen have complete freedom to do whatever they want.
to be real here dude, i don’t why mattel gets in their way. they designed better figs than we bought in 200x, they designed better figs than we’re buying from motuc now, and their in-house toys are literally leaps and bounds better than the dreck mattel passes off for toys. mattel would do best to completely drop the in house team and leave this line to the experts in the first place. the horsemen have done a lot more for motuc, even down to the writing, than you seem to realize.
to put this another way, mattel is contracting 4H studios to do this work because their guys can’t and won’t. why else do you hire a job done? hell, the whole damned motuc line is the horsemen’s idea in the first place! 😉
On this particular issue either the 4H sculpted the glove to fit over the standard Tri-Klops arm and Mattel let it be or Mattel opted to do it this way because it was cheaper (being one piece).
The odd part of the whole thing is that Fisto’s bracer is still painted underneath the fist which means it would’ve been more expensive to not paint it, right?
wow… dana has a whole swivel waist joint… singular. excellent work mattel! exactly what we’ve come to expect from you guys.
and i LOVE the horsemen site direction on this… i guess corporate decided it’s better to toss the horsemen under the bus than their in-house team.
bigbot- it’s my understanding that duties are shared on a case by case basis, the horsemen are the lead team, but they work closely w/ the in-house team. it’s a tough call on our end to determine who did what, cuz they co-mingle work on a lot of figs… but matty’s way of thinking is “if you like what got done, that was our in-house team, if it wasn’t successful, that’s was the horsemen’s call.” which is complete crap.
It definitely seems that way. It’s kinda similar to how bad news is released in Q&As and good news is saved for Mattycollector, no?
The funny thing is that we’ve seen, we know for fact, that Matty will tear into the 4H’s “Design” if they want to, the Trap Jaw interchangeability came at the expense of getting to use both of Roboto’s arms for that very reason. He-Mullet mentioned the Sorceress wings, another example.
Even if the 4H missed the opportunity to make Fisto that much cooler, Mattel could’ve jumped in. That’s what Terry’s paid to do.
she will have a swivel waist….lol
good on Mattel for at least not dodgeing that one but sheesh
It was bad news. Bad news is the easiest type to get in a Q&A! 😛
I just find it weird that they didn’t mention Terry was the one who designed the fist for Fisto. I remember when it was first brought up when Fisto was revealed last year, the answer from Mattel was that they would pass it onto Terry to see if he can incorporate the Trapjaw plug.
I can believe it’s on a case-by-case basis, depending on how much time the 4H have to work on these figures along with their other properties.
I’m not sure how it went down. More annoying than Mattel missing this opportunity for Fisto, is the inane answers about how “that was never intended” last month and this month (you guys did notice only four answers, right?). It’s like we never repeatedly hounded them over it for months before Fisto was even sculpted…
So, delayed and delayed,questions like crazy about how Dana was going to work out as the sculpt shown implied so much (like Revoltech-crazy ability to pose or maybe swapping out parts) and now, we learn…it’s a plastic statue. I suspect the only reason it has a waist joint is because they have to attach the upper part to the lower.
I am having this really sneaky feeling they may actually pull the plug on this and not release it. Without the Club and the implied contract, there’s no real reason to go forward with it.
I guess Matty heard all the recent gruff about Ghostbusters III and Bill Murray and all that ugliness.
…
Really Mattel? Just a waist swivel? Really? wow.
“That’s a byproduct, not an articulation point!”
This’ll will come out, so will the Rookie, but I’m really starting to wonder about that 4th figure. RTBY Peter is already on sale for $19.80 just six weeks after his release…
Hi, my names Nik and I am a Ghostbuster fan.
:'(
Hi Nik!
If only NECA had the power to get the likenesses or Mattel the operating budget to do it like NECA, right?
NECA would’ve never done Vigo most likely, though.
Pendragon’s – link is bad, but Q&A still on front page of site.
“3) You showed us a Plantinum and Tin figures for the DC Universe Club Infinite Earths Subscription. When you get to Lead, will he be a new tool?
We don’t have plans for Lead right now so that is up in the air.”
Mint Condition: ANY of their answers.
or here.
all I can say is: ………..seriously?
and did anyone read Paul Nicholasi’s blog about his treatment at Toy Fair?
http://idlehands1.blogspot.com/2012/02/geek-is-still-dirty-word.html
Guess what happens when you piss off the people who help earn you a paycheck, Mattel? @_@
That’s…wow.
I’m not surprised of course (in re. Paul’s bad Toy Fair), I’ve seen and experienced this first hand. It’s called ‘useful idiot’. Sometimes it’s useful to be seen with great crowds of ‘press’ and there’s just not much actual ‘press’ anymore, just like there’s so few retails left to sell to. But the machine grinds on and deep inside Mattel it’s still bygone days when Sears would come to them and ask for an exclusive, then Penny’s would do the same, then Wards…
The only real retaliation that could happen would be boycott Mattel, not cover things like Toy Fair and SDCC, but THAT is NEVER going to happen. The fannish burning need to be first in something will far overcome any thought of unity or sending a message.
Man, that whole bit with changing appointment times, super, SUPER d**k move.
I can’t figure out what’s wrong with Pendragon’s link. It’s a copy/pasted URL, but it just doesn’t work.
I just skipped over to Idle Hands and read his article. I had to laugh about the Mr. Freeze portion considering Mattel originally stole that pic from IAT (and we couldn’t even get an ‘our bad’ out of it). The next part about the treatment at Toy Fair doesn’t surprise me, we’re of little to no value to them – which is fine, I don’t do this to be valuable to them, but to get it smacked into your face like that is total crap.
It strikes me that what we’re seeing is the collective failure of Mattel to find another way for publicity for their product now that Toyfare Magazine is dead and gone. Always seemed to me that Toyfare was most about pushing the ‘RARE!! COLLECTABLE!! GOTTA HAVE IT!!!’ aspect (even as many articles seemed to decry that thinking, rather being all about how cool things were), and that feeding frenzy thinking is surely what drives Mattycollector.
How does one even find out about the site now? I dunno!
Good grief. No wonder Ghostbusters is dying.
The cart before the horse, right? Not “if you build it, they will come”, but rather we built it shoddy and didn’t tell that many people about it, and then no one bought it so we made the next one shoddier…
Okay, first off: Holy crap! John Harmon’s here!!!
Second: A swivel waist? Does that even count?
When it’s a byproduct of the swappable base? Nope.
Do you have an area set up for possible submitted “Ask Matty” questions. I wanna know what Mattel is planning to do to advertise their clubs, besides letting us do all the work.
Why, yes, I do have better things I could be doing with my time. Thanks for asking.
HAAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!
Brilliant!
I bet 5000 Quatloos that if that was sent to Mattel they would stare and stare at it and mumble “I don’t get it” 🙂
🙂 Sadly, the Matty Q&A is like a crash course in how to deal with a certain boss I know…
Rule number one… use bullet points.