Q&A With Mattel

by Jay Cochran
February 02, 2009
TNI: With both He-Man and Beastman selling out on the exact same day and just two days before Skeletor went on sale, this has left many collectors who had planned to get all three at the same time to try and save some money on shipping high and dry. Will Mattel be restocking sold out figures on their website, or once they are gone they are gone?

Mattel: When we knew we were getting close to selling out we posted messages on Matty’s Facebook and news pages to let fans know. We do have just a handful of He-Man and Beastman left which we are going to bring to the summer conventions to help spread the word, but other than these, once a figure is off of Mattycollector.com it will no longer be available. We will not be going back into production anytime soon. In time we will likely offer key characters like He-Man and Skeletor again, but we will change them up from their original release in terms of deco, packaging or accessories.


TNI: Is there any effort to get MOTU back on regular retail shelves by Mattel? Other companies have been successful with doing this with 80's lines. He-Man was such a profitable franchise for Mattel in the 80's combined with rumors of a possible movie one day, why Mattel can't convince retailers to try this line again?

Mattel: It is not that we are not able to convince retailers to take it, but rather MOTUC was designed from day 1 to be the flagship line of our online MattyCollector.com business and was always intended to be an online exclusive. It is possible in the future when there is new MOTU entertainment that we will look at bringing the line to retail, but when and if we do it will be in different packaging and with a change up in deco and or accessories to preserve the versions sold online for fans.


TNI: There were a few waves of DCUC figures, most notably wave 3 that had some serious quality issues (such as paint). The later waves seem to have moved in the direction of correcting this problem. Will there be any effort to go back and re-do waves like the 3rd one now that quality control seems to be more up to par?

Mattel: Unfortunately due to minimum production orders we will not be going back into production on past waves at this time.


TNI: With Hasbro's more articulated 3 3/4 Marvel line soon to hit shelves (which have noticeably more articulation than the current design used on the DCIH), is there any thought to adding more articulation to DCIH figures in the near future?

Mattel: As announced at SDCC in 2008 we will indeed be greatly enhancing the articulation of the Infinite Heroes figures in the very near future.


TNI: You have announced your plans for what you will have on hand at the NYCC in February, but Toy Fair is the week after. Will you have anything additional that is new for DC that won't be shown at NYCC?

Mattel: No. In fact we will have more product on display at NYCC than we will have at NYTF. Toy Fair is more of a show for the retailers who honestly do not need to see every single figure (they just need to get an understanding of the basic line architecture). Versus NYCC is a collector show and we wanted to make sure to have the latest and all of the newest figures for our fans at this public show.



Comments...

Last 10 comments - ( Read All Posts )
BigBearJahlon - 2009-02-04 @ 10:05 pm

As on an online site, Mattel is going ot learn a lot since this is specifically a heroes collectors venture. They will make mistakes, but at least we now have some options. I just think that the rising prices and the extreme cost of shipping will be their biggest problem after they work out thier production & quality issues.

azrael23 - 2009-02-04 @ 9:04 am
There's no doubt that He-Man and Skeletor will be avaiable again. I'll bet they just stick them in a two-pack with no changes since there really isn't a reason to do extra work making redecos of them. But you can't POSSIBLY expect them to have that done overnight, or even in a month.

I don't think thats what the sensible collectors want, they just want a definite answer as to whether or not both the figures in their original release will be available sometime in the

future rather than the maybe, maybe not type of answer.

gojira77 - 2009-02-04 @ 5:12 am

I can't believe that they made more of Beast Man than Skeletor. It's like they intentionally short packed him-- there must have been some arcane production reason why Skeletor didn't get the number two spot in the first place! I don't think we can do much more than speculate until this weekend, when Mattel makes whatever disclosures that they are ready to make. At least the people at NYCC can remind them if they dance around our questions. Considering that Stratos becomes available a week after the 'con, it will be interesting to see if his sales are impacted at all by the Mattel presentation.

HMI - 2009-02-04 @ 4:03 am

Online sales is a new thing for Mattel. They've only been at it TWO MONTHS. I'm sure that their non-answers are so because they haven't figured out what exactly to do yet. I think things would be worse if they produced too many and couldn't sell them all, which is exactly what they're trying to avoid.

There's no doubt that He-Man and Skeletor will be avaiable again. I'll bet they just stick them in a two-pack with no changes since there really isn't a reason to do extra work making redecos of them. But you can't POSSIBLY expect them to have that done overnight, or even in a month.

azrael23 - 2009-02-04 @ 1:46 am
evryone cryed when they have been on the net for a month and now that they are sold out, everyone is still crying? whats that all about? i think it is dumb to, that he-man and skeletor are sold out because i would have loved to get those 2 again to keep them in the package. sad because mattel could have own more money. i am glad that they sell because this means, that the line will go on. this is a line i love guys. at first, i hated them but once i got he-man in my hands, i fell in love. now that i got skeletor, i am even more proud that i took them. go on matty and put more dcuc on your site.

In this case I think that everyones complaint is legitimate. While its a good thing that the figures sold out Mattel may want to be a bit more

specific on details as to when they plain on making main characters available instead of being so vague, they also need to make the limit

smaller on how many you can get per account, scalpers are really exploiting many late comers. Yet people will still complain at times so its

like a double edged sword.

king kahn - 2009-02-04 @ 1:42 am
you DO know that 2 every other month is the same thing as one a month correct? LOL

Six months out of the year we'd get two figures, and the other six months out of the year we'd get one figure. That equals 18 figures, not 12.

ahhh that makes more sense. i see waht you mean now.

well two months a year we get exclusives so we actually get 14 figs a year.

i think people are forgetting this.

i would say 18 figs a year is a very good number. that is more than the orginal line put out in the first 2 years. heck 12 is more than the original line put out its first year

shokker - 2009-02-04 @ 12:50 am
Am I the only one who gets annoyed every time Mattel opens their mouth?

i got you but try hasbros q&a's @loll@ @loll@ @loll@

shokker - 2009-02-04 @ 12:45 am

evryone cryed when they have been on the net for a month and now that they are sold out, everyone is still crying? whats that all about? i think it is dumb to, that he-man and skeletor are sold out because i would have loved to get those 2 again to keep them in the package. sad because mattel could have own more money. i am glad that they sell because this means, that the line will go on. this is a line i love guys. at first, i hated them but once i got he-man in my hands, i fell in love. now that i got skeletor, i am even more proud that i took them. go on matty and put more dcuc on your site.

RobbieDigital - 2009-02-03 @ 11:29 pm
Will every figure sell out like the first 3 though? I know I only bought He-Man and Skeletor, and have no intention of buying any others besides Teela and Evil-Lyn (can never have enough female figures). Will Stratos, Merman, Zodac, and so on sell out?

If they don't re-release figures quickly enough I'm pretty sure that they will sell-out too........just from being a "hot item" for both scalpers and collectors. Its simple supply and demand...........Like I've said before, I was on the fence about these but I've been reading a lot about the line in the last month and was thinking about picking up He-man to see what it was all about. After getting him in the mail I was going to make my decision on the line based on him.............now he's not available. Skeletor too............so its pretty annoying when the company comes out and says that they may release them down the line but they really don't give a date.

I'm not going to start my collection with Stratos.........with a hope that I may get a He-man and Skeletor down the line. Not gonna do it.......not with the prices these things are. If you get behind.......you may not be able to get the figures you want unless you want to drop close to 60 bucks with 2 figures.

Essentially, Mattel has made Mattycollector.com an online empty peg.............the arch enemy of toy collectors.

I thought that maybe Mattel was going to learn the lessons of the 200X line which was a scalpers/toy re-sellers dream. I still remember seeing Keldors on sale for 200 bucks 5 minutes after going on sale at Chicago Comic-Con............after driving 14 hours the day before just to get a chance at one. (I was also told that day that I could only get a raffle ticket for either the Keldor or Batman not both) So they made my odds even worse.......the only con exclusive I got that year was a Silver Boba Fett......Lame.

Glad..... I didn't fall for their crap again.......even if I got He-man.....who's to say I would have gotten Skeletor??? Lame.....they should have given a date for He-man re-release dates.......not this "Maybe down the road" crap.

BigBot84 - 2009-02-03 @ 11:09 pm

Will every figure sell out like the first 3 though? I know I only bought He-Man and Skeletor, and have no intention of buying any others besides Teela and Evil-Lyn (can never have enough female figures). Will Stratos, Merman, Zodac, and so on sell out?

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