Ask Matty
April 2nd, 2010
You weren’t worried Mattel would leave us hanging after their April Fools Joke, were you? Well, fear no more! Toy Guru and the folks at Mattel have sent along the real answers for our April 1st edition…
1) SilntAngl asks: It’s awesome that Zatanna’s hat is removable. But how will it stay secure when you want to leave it on?
Magic. (okay, its a snug fit!).
Editor’s Note: We completely walked into that…
2) Manekochan asks: Since Battle Cat was more expensive to ship due to his larger size & weight, will the Weapons Pak ship any cheaper since it’s lighter?
Every item’s shipping rate is based on the size of the order. There is no one set rate.
3) Mr. Rant asks: Will Digital River keep the level of bandwidth used for Moss Man for future releases?
We are always looking to continue improving bandwidth and digital resources to improve the buying process!
4) Vault asks: There were cool swords on the flag that came with the original Castle Grayskull. Has the idea to include that weapon in the Classics line ever been brought up?
Yes, this is something we have talked about!
5) Noisy asks: In the last two reissue cases of DC Classics, Dr. Fate, the Parademon, Steel, Mr. Terrific, and Vigilante have all been produced for a second time. These packouts have left even more fans with incomplete Gigantas and caused the two pieces that come with Gentleman Ghost to climb as high as $70 on eBay. Can Mattel throw fans a bone here and find a solution to help get those Gigantas completed?
Right now, there are not any plans to re-release past Collect and Connect pieces. It is something we would have liked to do on Mattycollector.com, but fans showed very little interest in the DCU and JLU items we sold online so our resources have been shifted instead to brands like Ghostbusters and MOTUC, which are selling well online. Fans really do vote with their purchase in this case!
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I love that Mr. Terrific is staying silent, but begging for Fair Play with his sleeve.
Begging for his predecessor or begging for a COMPLETE GIGANTA??
dun-dun-DUNNNNNNN!!!!!
(I’ll take either, as well as prices from this time last year!)
I’d be very happy for them to get a Terry Sloane in the line.
I really liked the way the picture setup. A lot of times I have a loose idea that the dialogue has to work around, but this one turned out great.
Can we get the 8-Ball back on the job? I liked those answers better…
Agreed.
LOL
Well, if nothing else, we’ll have 8-ball graphics for awhile. 😀
Great picture. Mattel going out of their way to rerelease everyone except Craddock just shows how out of touch they are.
I think it’s a communication issue. It takes so much effort/work to get a point across, or at least acknowledgement that you got the point across.
They have a pattern with the refresher cases that they’ve followed, so I don’t think it was on purpose to drive seconday prices, they just neglected to correct an issue that they may or may not be aware of.
It’s sad when we have to choose between incompetence and intentionally encouraging scalpers. I’d rather have them refuse to answer the question, with a summary excuse, than regurgitate a non-answer that makes them look like buffoons. Of course, if I said that to them, they’d probably read it as me asking them to stop answering questions entirely.
If they stick GG in a refresher case and he winds up pegwarming after the initial rush, that’s our fault. Otherwise, quit blaming us. And retailers, and etailers, and factories. Take some responsibility and meet people halfway.
That’s really depressing about Giganta. How many more ways can we ask? I want to finish her, but I don’t want to pay that much money for just two BAF pieces.
We keep asking until we get it done, right?
These answers aren’t that bad. The first one was cute, the flag sword would be cool, and the last one tells us they at least considered selling BAF parts online separately. That would’ve been nice.
No, the Giganta answer is total crap. They’re telling us they won’t sell the pieces online because “we failed them” by not buying enough Alex Luthors and Ultramen. There’s a reason that fifth tier DC characters don’t sell as well as He-Man. They’re morons to not make that connection.
Unfortunately this is true. It’s right there in their answer: “the crap no one wanted didn’t sell, so we took it as a sign that stuff people want will rot in our warehouses too. Too bad, so sad!”
It’s just another case of “keyword answers”. Our question triggered the response about the DC sales at Matty.
I do agree that they’re irrelevant though. 1) You can’t compare the main characters pushing the other two line to the tertiary characters pushing DC and 2) DC sales are primarily at retail – a place where Mattel made little or no push to advertise.
Speaking of, I was happy to pull a Matty flyer out of a JLU package the other day, but it doesn’t do much good when there is no JLU to buy. They need to advertise Mattel Shop too.
And you know what’s worse about the DCUC box sets for the future waves on Mattycollector? In another Q&A they say because Wave 12 took several days to sell out, Wave 13 could be the last new wave they offer online unless it sells out fast. The same answer as the DCUC 2 packs becoming discontinued online. And then there was some further comments from Mattel about how they are pumping all their resources in to MOTUC and Ghostbusters online and easing off DCUC. Good way to add a vote of confidence for consumers!
I don’t know what this means for the Wave 5 re-release in May on the website, but it won’t be around longer than a few hours with how much its been going for on E-Bay. And a good number of those buys will be scalpers. The “fans” have once again spoken lol! You still have to wonder about other rarer waves being reissued online, if ever.
TG has updated us to say that they’ve agreed with retailers to only sell them for 2 weeks. I don’t care one way or the other, but I’m curious why Hasbro can offer nearly everything online and Mattel, the larger company, is more beholden to retailers.
I think DCUC5 will do just fine. I kinda think Mattel wants to see what would happen with rare, older reissues too.
On the upside, DCU is still at retail. ML’s on life support, so it makes no difference to 6″ diehards that there’s plenty of Marvel product on HTS. Maybe they have a better relationship with retailers because of all the exclusive product (or the lack of lead controversies, or more proven sellers in boys’ toys). ML was completely exclusive before the break. Couple that with the TRU-only Arcee, and Hasbro haven’t made anything I want that they’re allowed to sell online since the “end” of TFA.
Lol, “you guys don’t like our JLU products and don’t want to buy the lame DCUC 2-packs, so we’re not giving you any cool DCUC figures as punishment”
Brilliant! xD
Whatever keeps us quiet, right?
Shame nothing does. 😀
I love the Mr. Terrific protest!
Thanks!
I have her complete but I still know what its like to think that you’ll never complete a wave/baf and its awful (wave 2&3). I think theres something else going on with this Gentlemen Goast problem. It does not make sence… Hope they do rerelease it.
I do have to admit that I also have her complete and had to carefully disassemble her, but I know there are a lot of folks out there. Waiting six months on Brimstone ticked me off plenty and he’s nowhere near as a good a C&C as Giganta.
Relase the Ghost!
before the nest swarms, let me add two things in here:
1) personallly, i think maneko’s answer is more patently offensive than the GG one… they are pretty much saying “we’ll raise the shipping cost when we like, but we’re not going to lower it.” that’s pretty ignorant right there.
2) i have this theory that the internet fandom of toys accounts for a much smaller percentage of consumers than we believe. why? because all of us frequent toy new sites and chat boards and essentially, we have an artificial idea of how many “fans” there are… for example, how many of you out there frequent the fwoosh OR the org OR facebook OR IAT or poeghostal? how many of you visit ALL of them? what i propose is, because we tend to frequent more than one toy board, we create the illusion of size because we’re running into the same guys again and again out there… this is why when mattel or hasbro or whatever makes these comments about fans not supporting a line, we get all up in a kurfuffle, but the truth is, we’re not out there in the numbers we think we are.
MOTUC is a great example, because despite all the chatter, i suspect a VERY LARGE percentage of motuc fans are NOT chatting online about this… the Q&A’s do big page hits for the guys who put them up because we all are rallying to sites we normally skip, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing CRAZY page hits. this would also explain mattel’s difficult time in judging demand, because the larger portion of buyers aren’t talking on the boards, thus, they are not an indication of fan interest in the larger sense.
now, of note, i still think mattel’s attitude “what, it took longer than 5 days to sell out, screw ’em, pull teh lien!!” is crap… hasbrotoystore seems to quite well with the traditional notion of stock and sellthrough times… why mattel MUST liquidate TODAY and only TODAY to be considered a success is their own fucked up business model, not our fault… but perhaps, just perhaps, despite the constant resonance that we wanted DCU available online too, there weren’t that many people who “needed” it online… i mean, between additional shipping charges, and improved distribution to the B&Ms, i have no need to go online to get DCU… they’re overpriced at 15 bucks already, added in shipping and you’re bumping them to almost 18 bucks a pop… that’s a crying shame, not a “solution.” doesn’t there come a point where bitching about better distro AND requesting online access are at cross purposes?
word.
I agree.
Mattel’s never been very good at promoting Mattycollector outside of the small circle. I think they got lucky with He-Man, I like to use the shoving an elephant through the eye of the needle analogy, on why his online sales are so wildly successful. If MOTUC were sold primarily in stores and thrived on a mix of casual sales, and out of nowhere Matty offered up, without much advertisement, a Flipshot/Sweet Bee 2pk – would it blow out like we’re seeing?
HasbroToyShop is always the headscratcher. I’m not a fan of the random times they put some stuff out, but everything there works pretty well without restrictions. Pre-orders with monthlong expected windows, no retailers demanding short availability, etc. Does Mattel forget it’s the bigger toy company?
Though, I do suspect that DC lines in general not moving as many units as Hasbro’s big guns is possibily to blame.
Regarding the answer to Manekochan’s Q: Does that mean that the Weapons pak on its own would be $8.70 for continental US? now that’s f’ed up!
That’s what we were trying to get at. Battle Cat was overall more expensive and they could tell us that, but they couldn’t tell us that the pak will be overall cheaper or the same.
I wonder how many fans will pay $20.70 for 1 weapons pak? Eww.
Probably enough to satisfy Mattel’s insane criteria for success, which is the only way they’ll make Weapons Pak 2.
I don’t understand Mattel.
what part of ‘SELLS FOR SEVENTY DOLLARS ON EBAY!’ do you NOT get Mattel? You know why your previous DCUC figures didn’t sell well? Gee, I don’t know, could be due to you picking the absolute worst canidates to open the line (I’m looking at you Ultraman) and then made it even worse by essentially cheaping out with them.
Here’s a hint- check Ebay. Whatever is going for absurd prices- rerelease THAT. Also, if you’re going to rerelease 90% of a line, common business sense says you keep your customers happy by finishing the damn set- especially if owning a complete set is, in the case of the BAF, ESSENTIAL.
Idiots.