Ask Matty – March 15th Edition
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MOTUClassics.Com: Were the Palace Guard and BA He-Man chest plates made not interchangeable purposefully? Will Skeletor’s chest plates be a third non-standard size? This limits their use in any future weapons paks.
The plates were design by the Horsemen to work with there respective figures – not as universal plates. This is something we can look into for future figures where applicable.
MOTUClassics.Com: Will the secret accessories coming with Megator and Man-E-Faces be best used with them respectively or are they intended for other characters?
They are intended for use with those figures.
DCClassics.Com: The Super Friends Wave Eighteen doesn’t appear to have a variant slated. Will this be normal going forward or will variants resume with Wave 19?
The variants will still be in waves, but may change to a head pack out swap or a deco change vs. new tooling parts to help keep the figures affordable and at $14.99 SRP.
DCClassics.Com: The upcoming Batman: Legacy line doesn’t have C&C pieces and appears to make heavy use of existing tools. Will these have a lower MSRP or will something be added to make them closer to the same value as a regular DCUC figure?
They will be plus’d up with some neat extras and packaging executions in lieu of a Collect-and-Connect piece.
ItsAllTrue.Net: During Toy Fair, a design meeting was held that included feedback directly from collectors. Are there any interesting discussions or cool stories from that meeting that you would share with the fans?
We did review all of the feedback. Some of it was items we can take action on, others (such as removing “Made in China” stamps) are not actionable due to legal and logistical reasons.
One item that came up a lot was asking for more articulation. This is always a sticking point. Due to rising costs over the last few years some articulation has been phased out. Therefore, it is always a toss up. We can add in more articulation but that would cause the end cost to go up and we are trying to hold at $14.99 as best we can!
The feedback was truly appreciated and we are looking into it with all of our resources.
I don’t really have a good strip that’s applicable to these answers other than picking on the guy who actually asked Mattel to remove the “Made in China” stamps. So here’s a (slightly) older Amusing Articulation from the IAT Archives…
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You could pick on how in lieu of c&c figs, you’ll be getting some extra special packaging. Wowee! Just what I always wanted! A better package to throw away!
Unless it’s a reclosable clamshell, that’s kind of a waste of money and even then it’s not exactly a fair trade.
(Don’t know why I’m bitching. HELLO, not having to buy the entire wave anymore! Now Vault will have no excuses. 😀 No… extra ones anyway. )
Well, since adding more articulation will raise prices and since DCUC16 proved Mattel couldn’t execute more articulation without sacrificing quality, I vote to stick to the initial artic models!
That may mean that your Jay Garrick can’t do Spider-man-like poses, but I’m willing to deal with that instead of figures breaking at their joints.
I really don’t want to see more articulation, but I also don’t put these guys in super dynamic poses. I never got into marvel legends because I thought they looked like crap, and that was because of all the joints, and for me DCUC has very useful articulation that looks great (except for that thigh cut, I always wished they could put that somewhere else, even higher on the leg might look better).
To be honest I’m fine with “variants” like Bronze Tiger. Two heads is just a single buy for me so it saves me some cash. A different costume (even if requires no new tooling) is something that I do tend to buy though, especially when the costume represents a different character. Why they haven’t done a Wally Flash I don’t understand due extreme cheapness of it. Or Dick Grayson Batman.
“plus’d up”?? and AFI got “tool’d”?
ya Matty R crazy hip with the kids, using their lingo, daddio.
seriously.
not.
It’s the fact they used “plus’d up” in the same sentence as “in lieu of” that made me chuckle…
“A pox upon’t, Knave! Let us play at ninepins!”
ok… so they’re towing this “we want to keep to 14.99” line, despite telling stockholders that they’d be implementing a 10% price hike on their products across the board, and the fact that we’ve seen kmart and now tru start price jacking on their websites, and for TRU at least, this is usually precedent to a real price hike… but ok… so, how did azbats and mercury and such get new articulation and stay at the target price? plus, since they now have those molds, can’t we keep using the existing parts?
and then, using the transitive property, in motuc, they’re trying to keep costs for us steady, and they do by not thinking to use an interchangable chest plate in the shell armored guys? seriously?
the key to both problems, SMART REUSE, seems so obvious, it’s amazing it hasn’t bitten them already.
wanna add something here too… figures.com asked about a head pack and was told that a pack of heads would cost as much to tool as 2 or 3 figures, so the idea got nixed… but again, wouldn’t fall under smart reuse? the hair pieces/helmet pieces are separate bits from the heads, IF this had been thought through the first time, that slot system could have been standardized to ensure swapability of the bits so that something like a bow head w/ a MAA helment, or a he-man head w/ randor’s crown would have been easy, no-new-tool executions? and couldn’t we now make that change with minimal new tooling cost? why does it fall on the fanbase to think of this kind of stuff?
Wouldn’t it still cost more to produce new figures using the newly-tooled extra artic rather than the older styles, given that more articulation generally equals more pieces and more pieces equals a more involved assembly process? I’d imagine it’s not just the cost of sculpting the bits and making the moulds to consider. But yeah it does seem like a waste, especially if those extra pieces aren’t really character specific. Why bother with them in the first place if you’re not gonna make the most of them?
(Unlike the MOTUC chest plates which they can’t really reuse, unless we want the eternian guards branded with He-Man’s ‘H’ logo or flat plates with painted-on detail. It would have been nice to make them compatible, though)
That question asking about removing the Made In China date stamps was directed specifically toward the Weapons Paks, not the action figures themselves.
I still find it ridiculous that they have to put that stamp on EVERY single weapon, sometimes on both sides.
I’m ok not having the double joints because they tend to get warped alot easier.