49 thoughts on “2012 Club Ecto-1 Cancelled
Update: Toy Guru Speaks…”

1. So… two months ago Dana wasn’t done being sculpted and didn’t have licensor approval and now she’s already tooled? Yeah, right.

   And the receptionist? Her name is Janine and they best get to her! They team isn’t complete without her!

   Is it dumb that I’m sad we won’t have all the Courtroom figures or a plainclothes Winston? I would’ve even taken more Marshmallow guys if they had had sculpted marshmallow instead of crappy paint.

   1. What I want to know is, how are they going to get her to pose like that using Mattel joints? What is her clothing made of?

      Or are they going to do a major cheap-out and make her a PVC statue?

      “Actual product may not reflect the look of this promotional image” anyone? 🙂

      1. We know she has alternate legs, not sure what they’re doing on the arms. I really don’t know about that figure…

   2. Marshmallow Ray was a poor idea for a figure that was even more poorly executed – no doubt about that. The Rookie wasn’t a big draw either.

      They handled the MOTU sub exclusives so well, but the GB ones weren’t done with success in mind.

2. @Adrian. None of the teams are complete. It may be a small thing but Venkman having gloves when the others don’t drives me crazy. The line is going out and the only subset they managed to get done on Mattycollector was the RTBY figures.

   1. That bothers me too. I’ve been tempted to try and swap out their elbow joints and fix that.

3. “Looking back at the last three years of GB, I really think we did an amazing job. Multiple versions of each busters, Dana, Louis, Movie 2 villains, a giant Stay Puft. Really, with a few key characters like the receptionist and movie 1 villain, there isn’t that much more to do (Terror Dogs, Yanosh (sp? I’m sure, it’s late…). Do you really think the mayor would sell that well?”

   And in that Line-up I see the biggest problem:
   Multiple versions of each of the busters, yet we don’t have: Janine, Gozer, the Terror dogs… We don’t even have a TRUE Louis figure… (either non-possessed or the rather obvious “Tool sharing” Louis dressed as a buster…) I get that they have a tooling budget, BUT what Mattel did NOT get was that too many busters will kill teh lien… (See the early 200X Batman, 200X MOTU which were plagued by too many variants of the main character and too little of everyone else)
   Was I the only one who found the mayor comment a bit dismissive?

   1. Not really – I don’t think the Mayor would sell, but I also think Mattel never really had a grasp on what Ghostbusters fans wanted (and it’s not easy to glean either as no major toy site or Ghostbusters site really covered the line). There was likely more money to be had in packing the Scoleri brothers together than putting them with silly versions of the ‘busters we didn’t need – now maybe Mattel couldn’t have afforded to tool that either, I don’t know.

      For a company that trades so heavily on toy nostalgia – SP for DCUC, MOTUC, etc. it boggles the mind that they’re so convinced a movie line could outsell an RGB line.

4. I called it. I called it.

   The main motivator was the promise of Ghostbusters III, and since that’s in development hell, the management has gotten cold feet.

   I’m sorry for all you that are into this.

   Um, wait. What does this do to that awesome ghost trap role-play toy?

   1. OK, I clearly can’t read anymore, the ghost trap is done and will be on the Halloween sale. d’oh!

      Ya know, given how Mattel seems to have the most Byzantine accounting concepts I’ve ever seen, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ and shifting development to Club IE. Why? I dunno, maybe DC/Warner Bros feels what’s been done is a tad on the sketchy side and there’s ‘push’ to keep those particular masters happy.

      I dunno at all. Mattel makes my head hurt as much as the goings-on at Bandai in Japan. And that’s saying something, brother! 🙂

   2. GB III was always the reason behind the acquisition, for sure.

5. I find TG’s comments totally befuddling. You have to spend money to make money, and it was clear from pretty early on that they were doing this thing on the cheap. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Those are the cards they were dealt. But the resistance to being creative was mindboggling. Fans have been clamoring for RGBs, and I think most would have been glad to have them in the form of the repainted movie masters with new heads. But TG kept saying no. Yet you look at how well their vintage-inspired lines do compared to those based off of movies and it seems pretty obvious that RGB would have been a gateway for new collectors who don’t like the movie master style. Matty’s reluctance to even test the waters with a quick and dirty RGB repaint just frustrates me. And the retro action figures just aren’t a good gauge of fan interest. There’s just no correlation between RGB and the Mego style. Different eras.

   1. Yeah, I don’t get the whole ‘Gotta make some Megos’ aspect. Oh, it’s fun in a retro way and no question Toyfare magazine and the antics of Twisted (Mego/Toyfare) Theater put Megos in the face of many folk (until they decided to not be funny anymore and not try to make ‘new’ Megos for characters) but that’s over, that’s done. No magazine, no promotion, no meta.

      OTOH I see how the Mego style appealed to Mattel. One body, one pattern for the cloth clothing, one tool for boots, one tool for backpack. Just pop a new head on and YAY PROFIT.

      But what do you DO with them? There’s no Ecto-1, there’s no ghosts to bust, there’s sure as heck no Firehouse. You leave them in the bubble and put them in the plastic storage box, that’s what you do with them. *sigh*

      1. I have the retro action Supes and Batman because I had them as a kid. To my collecting mind, they make sense because they were actually Mego to begin with. But Mego and RGB are just two different eras. I’ve almost pulled the trigger on the retro action RGBs out of pure desperation, but just couldn’t.

         You’re right about the appeal, although I really don’t understand why they have that attitude with retro action and not 6″ plastic. I mean, isn’t that what the buck system is for? Aren’t all four of the movie GBs on the same buck? (I don’t have them, so I don’t know.) I just don’t understand why they won’t do movie buck repaints as opposed to nothing at all. I mean, you have fans asking for repaints! That, like, never happens! 🙂 Should be music to Mattel’s ears.

         1. I’ve almost bought them a few times too since they’re the only RGB thing in town, but I’m not old enough for Megos and I’m not terribly impressed by them. You nailed it – they crossed two eras with that decision and they sold accordingly.

            And put me down as not wanting RGB repaints from the movie bucks. I want ’em right or not at all. The movie guys can share a buck because they don’t differ that much in the film, but the cartoon would need more love that Mattel can give.

6. Yeah I was pretty suprised by this news myself when I saw it on the matty news ection last night. I was out to dinner with someone and here I am reposting mattel news to my website on my phone think that was the fastest turn around for some mattel news. sucks for GB fans who are getting screwed!

   1. It’s a bummer for sure.

7. So Stay Puft MM is coming back on Oct 17th? Next month is going to be rough with the Wind Raider also going on sale… I’m legit going to have to start selling off old stuff just to keep up with all this new stuff I want…

   1. The Wind Raider has been moved, we’re just not sure to when. I need to get the MOTU page updated with Mer-Man & Battle Cat as reissues and the WR moved to TBA.

      And selling old to make way for new? Pretty much!

8. Soooooooo…if the $20 Ghostbusters are now $22–do you think we can safely assume the same for the $20 MOTUC?

   1. I’m guessing so…

9. Yeah, screw them. They treated this line like a red-headed stepchild and devoted NO resources to it. My God, the Ghostbusters universe has so many characters, so many fun, unique opportunities for figures, and they gave us practically nothing. Re-use, re-use, re-use….tons of Ghostbusters and not much else. We get ONE major villain (Vigo) and a hard-to-get exclusive Stay Puft, with a few minor ghosts stuck in as poorly articulated, undersized pack-ins (the Scoleri Brothers should have been new figures in a 2-pack/boxset/whatever…now we might never get Tony).

   Where were the other major characters? I think all we got besides Ghostbusters was Walter Peck and Vinz, and I guess we have to count Dana as Zuul. Why not do RGB figures? An ECTO-1? So many possibilities, so little ingenuity. Like someone said before, you have to spend money to make money. If this line branched out to include more characters/ghosts it would sell ridiculously well.

   They drove this thing into the ground themselves (no way can they blame fans on this one) and I HOPE some company worth a damn who cares one lick about the property and the fans gets a shot at this thing.

   1. Mattel actually probably knew this wasn’t going to work from year one of the line, but they gave it a shot anyway.
      Because enough people don’t actually really want Ghostbusters toys. Not Real Ghostbusters, not movie-styled, not Filmation.
      It’s a tough pill to swallow, but there is a reason that every few years a company puts out a Robocop figure and no supporting figures – because the costs don’t justify the production of those deeper characters.
      It’s a world where a smaller company like SOTA once tried to do the Matty route – they only needed 2000 sets to be pre-ordered to put Darkstalkers into production, which “fans” bothered them about over and over. But they couldn’t get the sales they needed – not even 2000 sets!

      I laugh when I read that more people would have gotten in on Ghostbusters if there were vehicles and playsets and more figures…would Terror Dogs have really brought enough people in to make this line work? I doubt it.
      Again, enough people don’t care, and Back to the Future will be a similar “dud” of a line if Mattel decides to even make figures from it.

      I’m not trying to rub anyone’s face in it – it saddens me that the fans of the property can’t get what they want. But sometimes there just aren’t enough fans out there to make it work, just like 200X He-Man, Xevoz, Skeleton Warriors, about 60% of Playmates’ action figure lines in the 90s that weren’t Star Trek, War Planets, Army of Darkness, and so many others…

      1. The fact that enough people subscribed to maintain the line for a few years, and got basically nothing new/exciting along the way (and knew that was the case), leads me to believe that if the line was actually broadened and expanded on there’s a good chance it would have grown. We’re supposed to take the fact that the sub died as a reflection of the general disinterest in the property? No, it’s a direct result of them shoving Ghostbuster after Ghostbuster down our throats and offering nothing else. MOTU 200x died because they shoved millions of He-Men and Skeletors at us…Batman died because they showered us with Batmen and nothing else. It’s not rocket science…they mishandled Ghostbusters exactly the way they’ve mishandled many of their other “failed” lines. You’re telling me that if they offered Terror Dogs and Gozer and RGB figures, the sales would be as bad as they are for “Pajama Party Egon”?

         The opportunity was there to make this line something more than it was. And if people will support lines like Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG1, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and practically all of the Diamond Select Movie/TV lines (that offered tons of characters and sold primarily in the specialty market), there’s no reason Ghostbusters wouldn’t have the same success.

         And Darkstalkers is in no way comparable to Ghostbusters. GBs has a decent following and caters to casual fans much more…I had never even heard of Darkstalkers at the time SOTA tried to bring those out. And SOTA had practically 0% of the resources Mattel has, and they were on the way out as a player in the action figure market.

         1. I agree with most everything you’re saying and what I may disagree with would be just a matter of ‘shading’ and ‘detail’.

            But there’s the other problem. Ghostbusters would only succeed with publicity. There is NO WAY for a casual yet dedicated GB fan to jump on. No placement of AFFORDABLE figures. TRU had a Christmas set. I’ve seen them still on the shelf, might by gone by now, I have to look. But what casual GB fan, on an impulse buy, is going to shell out(x)Dollars for a box set?

            I think the mini figs were doing OK but THAT gets into comic book shop land.

            What would have been grand is a line of 3 3/4 inch GB figures, and an Ecto-1, and lots of ghosts to bust and EVERY SINGLE CARD pointing to Mattycollector for larger figs and role-play toys and the like. Maybe they’ll try that if Ghostbusters III ever gets out of development hell. Probably not.

            But still, where would anybody hear these existed? Where would a casual comic buying, toy buying 20-40 something nerdling find out about this? TV spots during Adult Swim would help. Ads in various mainstream magazines would help. A damn ad as a ‘blow in’ flyer or sticker on the sleeve of the MOVIES would help.

            But it seems Matty put all their chips on Wizard and Toyfare, and boom, faw down gone.

            GRRAAARRGGH!

         2. Well, the ultimate acid test of the saleability of any Ghostbuster concept would be the dreaded Matty Thermometer, which I don’t think people want…
            Zach, you are absolutely right about one thing – the maximum possible subs for 2012 would have been achieved if the 2012 lineup had something other than Ghostbusters and Dana.
            If they were holding back a Terror Dog or something fantastic for that last slot in 2012, they screwed up.
            And you are also right that people would be way more excited for some non-GBs, but would it be enough?

            Sales on Ghostbusters figures are obviously enough to keep the line going, just not as a sub.
            There is some baseline number that Mattel requires on these guys to reach profitability. MOTU Classics hit it via subs to the extent that they “don’t have to sell anything beyond the subs.”
            Ghostbusters must still obviously have the potential to hit the required number if the subscribers (plus whoever else was buying them before) continues to purchase the figures.
            My question, as is the question whenever I see passionate debate about a toy line, is: what is the audience for Ghostbusters toys?
            We can go to the store and get Minimates, which seem to have sold well. Mattel has put out a decent amount of figures for a mostly online-only line, but something in their research must have told them to keep this online and not put it in stores. They can run GB for online sale in quantities that are a fraction of what they would need to sell to Walmart. So what kind of sales are they missing out on by having it online only?
            I know that Palisades, SOTA, and NECA used to covet that “casual buyer” – and when they didn’t grab them, you would see the results at Suncoast Video laying around at 75% clearance, like Reservoir Dogs, TRON, and the NECA Ghostbusters.Or just that one “bad idea” figure – like Debbie the Roach Girl from the recent Mezco Horror line. They completely sold out of Surgeon Freddy, but nothing was moving Roach Girl from the shelves…
            Putting the four main GB heroes at retail might have worked, but if you slotted Walter Peck in there, I guarantee we would see shelves of him in stores now, and potentially into the next decade. Because Ghostbusters isn’t Star Wars; Star Wars can sell a figure of something that they can’t even get a still of for the back of the package (which I saw on some recent ANH figure). The monsters and ghosts are going to sell better than the Mayor of NY, or Louis Tully.
            The Mattel lines you mentioned also weren’t Star Wars. There was never going to be an audience that could absorb the standard 200X He-Man and his variants. Then again, those figures exist in tens (or hundreds) of thousands of pieces. It’s easier for the line to fail than to work based on those quantities.

            The relevancy of Darkstalkers to Ghostbusters is immense.
            It was the first example that I can remember where a company said “we know someone wants these. We don’t have the money to cut steel; we only need 2000 pre-orders and you can have them.” No smokescreens of magic thermometers and “the line is doing great, except cherry pickers and sub sales are down and everyone is confused.” Just a concrete number to say to the incredibly loud online fans who said that Darkstalkers surely would be a hit based on the SOTA Street Fighter line. And they couldn’t do it. People online at the time argued that there was some giant fanbase clamoring for Darkstalkers toys, that the choices for the pre-order were weak, etc. But the fact remained that SOTA could not find even that small amount of buyers to make it work.
            I fully admit that Darkstalkers has a much smaller fanbase than GBs – but HOW MUCH smaller?
            Over on Topless Robot today, they have a story about 3 3/4 Venture Bros figures being on the verge of cancellation because pre-orders have been terrible. What does that fanbase look like?
            Battlestar Galactica, which was mentioned, is on hold through DST because retailers don’t think they can sell them.

            In the end, just look at MOTU Classics. From a post by TG a while back, they though the line was six figures – and were blown away by the sales.
            Sales increased to the extent where they took a chance on Battle Cat. We’re getting a vehicle in December.
            Where is that excitement and massive sales on Ghostbusters? If the first couple of figures had blown out in two minutes like Battle Cat did, maybe the budget could have been bigger and you’d have Terror Dogs and Ecto-1 on the way. But the fanbase just isn’t there in the needed quantities.

            1. are you the same Dr kent from October Toys?

               1. Yep!

                  1. Can you also be the same Dr Kent from the IAT forums? We could benefit from having you around a little more… 😀

                     1. I can certainly try!
                        Once DEER CROSSING is done, I’ll have more time on my hands.

                        I also have a great idea for a historical toy article that I don’t think I ever wrote up anywhere – and it’s related to this topic. It’s called “The Lesson of the Reservoir Dogs.”

                        1. OH, let me know, I can tell you how Suncoast reacted to the demand that ‘The Cop’ figure in the 12″ scale be taken off shelves…

            2. I’m not sure if anyoen said this allready but they are pretty much doing the same thing (ie the Darkstalkers thin) with the Venture Brothers 3 3/4 line if they dont get enough pre orders they dont do em . its a good idea I think because if they fail to sell only the fans can be blamed but they are at least upfront about it for Mattel to just one day pull the plug is wack

         3. dude, not picking on you personally, please understand that’s not my intent… but judging a property’s relevance in the cultural sense, or even in the larger fan community sense, by whether or not you’ve heard of it… that’s just a fool’s game homes.

            example… tori amos has been selling tons of CD’s, for the better part of the last two decades… i couldn’t name a one of those. my wife can name every friggin one, and sing along w/ each of the songs. i just can’t do that. when i hear her voice, my soul starts to cry and my balls violently brawl in my scrotum. that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a market for tori amos crap, i’m just not in that market.

            there was a time, clearly a little before yours, when darkstalkers fans were whole segments of the chat room worlds. if, by virtue of active fanbase, you were judging how big the darkstalkers pool was, you’d think they were easily the size of the street fighter or mortal kombat community. the problem is, they forgot they were a homogenous and chatty bunch, so the same 20 or 30 guys in the states were stating sales figures from japan for the games, and discussing toy lines as if those sales would correspond on a 1:1 basis, and they were doing this in three or four chat forums at once. if halo and gears of war figs have proven anything over time, it’s that the vast majority of video gamers don’t want/buy action figures. but there’s a percentage who do, and those geeks (moi) will buy those lines, but not in enough numbers to even match the distribution or character diversity that a property like the WWE has put up.

            doc’s point on darkstalkers is completely fair on this topic, as ghostbusters does have a vocal fanbase, and a movie sales track record that says that if the majority of the movie fans bought the figures, there’d be ghostbusters as far as the eye can see… that’s clearly not the case though.

         4. I could fill up a whole page on Stargate fans and how they don’t “get” how toys work. That was an interesting experience. I imagine this “movie line” had similar problems because if you hit up any GB forums, the Mattel line isn’t exactly the topic de jour.

            It’s too late for me to try to be coherent…

            I’m with Doc in that the hand that GBC was dealt is most at fault with the direction of the line. While that certainly doesn’t let Mattel off the hook.

            I don’t think the line ever sold well enough to tool up Terror Dogs and Gozer. I mean, we only get a cool ghost when the accompanying figure is ridiculously cheap, right? Mattel can’t work in the constraints that this type of line provided and I don’t think they ever really got a handle on what the collectorbase wanted anyway (because there is no central place where even the “vocal” consumerbase meets).

            I’m still shocked that it’s their belief that movie product would outsell RGB product (which apparently shouldn’t be hard to do…)

            1. I have to get to bed too, but honestly, I think Mattel got MURDERED on the likeness rights for this line. If NECA couldn’t work out making the GBs – and look at the hundreds of movie figures they have made. They even got Silence of the Lambs! – I would bet it was more about money than anything else.
               It could easily be a whole ‘nother topic – but for people that want Mattel to do RGB, what exactly do you want? Close to the Kenner sculpts, but more articulated?

               1. It may not have been the rights per se, but the approval process. Bill Murry is famous for being a d*ck about such things. And time is money.

                  Real Ghostbusters would have most likely been a smoother, faster track in addition to the nostalgia value. OTOH that may have had a legal issue with Kenner (now Hasbro) which may have legacy rights ownership. It can get so messy.

               2. Pretty much the MOTUC treatment. I want all the 80s lines updated with better articulation: COPS, Mask, RGBs, etc. We’d be living the dream!!!

10. Im certainly not happy about the end of the subscription but I can deal with getting them sale day. But they HAVE to release the Ghost Trap the same day as the Legion 12 pack? Who could afford both at the same time?

    1. I don’t know if you buy MOTU, but the Wind Raider was supposed to be that day too… Crap timing.

11. The only upside I see is the MIA status on the BTTF line… Now that line would’ve been WORSE thAn the GB line… a Sea of Marty McFlys and Doc Browns maybe 1 Biff and NO DeLorean… (and that line lends itself to a bunch of McFlys and Doc Browns…)

    It sucks that GB was so mishandled…

    1. They won’t even start BTTF because they know it’s constraints are greater than they could handle. They just bought that license for the car anyway though, right?

12. So much nerd rage I am holding back.

    1. do it dude… do the posehn nerd rage scream. it feels good (in the privacy of your own home)

    2. Let it out, you don’t want to get backed up. 🙂

13. Boo, Mattel. I guess I can live without The Rookie and at least they’ll complete the “Ready to Believe You” team.

    1. the rookie is cominf as a DOS figure !

       1. Are you planning on passing on the Rookie now?

14. Pingback: Ghostbusters: Ready to Believe You Egon Review (Lab Coat) « It'sAllTrue.Net

15. “The receptionist”? Seriously? Do they not know who Janine is? You’d think they would given that they used the hot Season 1 design for Janine in the RGB exclusive. It just shows how out of touch they are and further exemplifies why the line sucks. Tiny ghosts, no variety, lousy variants. And that Ray head sucks.

    That and the fact that they ONLY will look at BttF as a Matty line. A retail boxset with Marty and Doc in their looks from the “when this baby hits 88 miles per hour” scene would sell gangbusters. You can’t tell me Toys R Us would say no to that.

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