According to a recent Mattel Q&A over at
italltrue.net, the Masters of the Universe Vs. DC Universe Classics line has been canceled do to a lack of retailer interest.
MOTUClassics.Com: Is Battle Armor Faker one of the six 2011 TRU MOTU/DC 2pks?
It was one of the original six but at this point it will be the final pack as retailers have not ordered any additional packs and it looks like the line will end with this pack. The GL/Zodac and Supergirl/She-Ra packs should still hit before the end of the year now for a total of 5 packs. But the sixth pack will not move forward unfortunately. There just has not been enough interest from retailers to keep this line going. While we announced 6 packs and hoped to do 6, we could not find a retailer who would take the min order needed for the 6th pack.
As many of you know, these sets were sold exclusively at Toys R' Us stores and contained repaints of Masters of the Universe Classics figures previously sold on
MattyCollector.com along with a repainted DC Universe Classics figures.
There are probably a number of reasons why this line did not take off, such as trying to make people buy a DCUC figure when they likely only wanted the MOTU one, but regardless of the reasons this would be the second attempt in recent years where Mattel has tried to get their flagship boys action figure line back on mass retail and failed. The first attempt was back in 2000 when they launched a revamped version of line that went along with a new cartoon that aired on Cartoon Network. Both the cartoon which was pretty good and the toy line experienced short lives, as both were soon canceled. Many blamed the failure of that line due to poor distribution of the figures.
Over the past couple years Mattel has been selling Masters of the Universe Classic figures on their collector oriented website
MattyCollector.com, and though the line defiantly has collector support from die-hard fans who grew up on the old 80's cartoon, Mattel seems unable to expand that interest significantly beyond that demographic. At least not enough to support it at mass retail. From time-to-time rumors about a new live-action Masters of the Universe movie for the franchise pop-up online, which certainly could be something that gets retailers interested in carrying the line again, but if or when a movie actually happens is any ones guess at this point.
Do you want to see Masters of the Universe Classics figures sold at mass-retail again or do you prefer to buy them through Mattel's collector website?
