Thoughts on Mattel's Latest Shenanigans
There's been some serious grumbling about Mattel lately, from their poor articulation on the DCUC figures, substandard sculpts and lack of accessories on their DCU Infinite Crisis line, to their horrible handling of their Mattycollector exclusives. In fact, I've never seen fans so angry at an entire toy company like this before.
Of course, complain all we want, but we still keep buying the toys! Heck, I picked up a Public Enemies Batman a couple of weeks ago (full review coming soon!) and finally hunted down a DCUC Bats after checking the same Walmart every weekend for over a month. We (the grumbling collectors, I mean) sure make a lot of noise, but we haven't exactly put our money where our mouths are. Well, maybe a little. I guess there's some reason why all the DCU Infinite Crisis figures are showing up in discount shops and 99¢ stores.
Recently, fellow toy collector, blogger and all around good guy, Bubbashelby, wrote up some interesting insights on the whole Mattel mess on his Toyriffic blog, specifically focusing on why we seemed to have ended up with a line of less-than-great figures packed with less-than-desirable characters. He touches on a bit of copyright law, developing an interesting theory in which I see quite a bit of merit. It's a simple case of "use it or lose it" that has built a strange brotherhood between DC Comics and Mattel (and may bleed over in the world of Eternia, as well).
I strongly suggest swinging by Toyriffic to read the whole article and maybe leave a comment or two. Special thanks to Bubbashelby for opening up what is turning out to be one of the toy-collecting world's more insightful discussions.
Comments
I think we need a new type of discussion from a new (old) type of collector. There are a lot of us out there who don’t fall into the “gotta have it now” mold that is driving and has driven the toy marketing machine for too long. We as toy collectors are getting older and wiser, and the toy companies are slow to follow.
PS – thanks for the props
You know this is very interesting and a valid point that you’ve brought up. Mattel is a trainwreck and what they did last month just makes my jawdrop in amazement at how they can stay in business. But then I realized that DC Universe and Maasters of the Universe Classics is merely a small portion of their profits since its a collector targeted market. They are more interested in the Barbie and Dora the Explorer demographic than anything else. So obviously poor customer service and allocation of resources to such a small part of their company operations will probably go without any sort of improvement. They see these products as loss leaders and will treat them as such. Sad but true. Also not helping things is the idiot collectors that continue to blindly buy these figures even with all the problems. Its like their drug addicts and Mattel is the pusher. Well, plastic crack thats essentially what action figures are and I think the analogy has been used for many years now.