What is the WORST adult collector line in existence?
 

Okay guys, my curiosity has been tingling the past few days on this topic, so I want to get a broader perspective here. Since this IS a negative topic, however, let's put down some ground rules:

1: No scale Wars here.

If you like 6 inch, 3.75 inch, or whatever scale you ascribe to, that's fine, but don't rag on a line JUST because it's not in YOUR favorite scale. If it's terrible by the standards of its own scale, though, then it's fair game(also, try to compare it to at least 2 other lines in the same scale when making your judgments. You don't have to say what you're referencing, but just keep it in mind).

2: Outdated or surpassed in quality doesn't mean that it's terrible.

Judge a line from the time it came out, not what came later. This is just to maintain equality in judgement.

3: Just because you like a line doesn't mean that others aren't allowed to dislike it.

If you want to have a valid, friendly discussion about it, and you have legitimate counterpoints, then go on ahead(just keep the discussion as short as possible). If your argument is just, "Well, I like it!" and nothing else, don't even bring it up.

(Also, a line can have good figures, but still be terrible. Judge from the majority, not the minority)

4: No kid oriented lines.

Pretty obvious by the title, but just for extra clarity, do not bring up lines that aren't extremely focused on adult collectors. If you have grievances with a kid's line, that's fine, just don't bring it over here.

5: If possible, have a few figures from the line you're having.

Handling them at a friend's house or something is fine too, just have in-hand experiences with your targets. Personal experience is the best way to judge something, after all.


Alright guys, gals, and the occasional space whale, get to it!

Me personally i think the reaction stuff and these vintage styled mk stuff. I mean for the price they're asking.....its just ricockulous. Plus the plastic is just junky and frail.

McFarlane.

Funko Legacy figures. The joints used clear plastic which made them fragile when you were posing them. You also had to worry about snapping the weapons when placing them in the figure's hands. The weapons were sculpted really thin and made from a stiff plastic. The hands were also made from a stiff plastic so you either had to heat them with a hair dryer or risk snapping the weapons when you wanted the figure to hold something.

The swappable heads on the Rocketeer also didn't work properly. The neck consisted of a barbel that plugged into the body and the head. But the head was so tight on the barbel that you would yank it out of the body when you wanted to swap the heads.

pops
hot toys
disney infinity
mini mates
play arts kai

worst ever.......

Exactly. I just have one and it’s Rocketeer, his joints are unbelievably loose. Plus the paint on the unmasked Head was Comical to say the least.

@Tomax how’s hot toys the worst? I mean the Details alone should exempt them alone. They’re Likenesses are almost always spot on. My only gripe is the price. But I can understand why’d they charge that

Comin from a former 1/6th maniac i have to agree with tomax on hot toys. Their artic is not as good as it should be on many of their licensed figs ( companies like dam toys, and many other 3rd parties have double jointed arms and better poseable bodies often at much less than ht ) and the likenesses, while improved, often are nowhere near as good as the advertises pics. Plus the plastic is not as structurally sound as it once was and many times pieces break during assembly/ posing. I speak from experience here. Plus the prices are on the “holy shitsnacks i didn't know they had that much meth” side.

I’m also going to add Justice League Unlimited to the list. While the style makes it look like a kids line, the character selection and exclusives make it a collectors line. Outside of the original seven and the beefier, generic body mold, a lot of JLU figs had weak ankles that would cause the figures to lean forward and eventually fall. I think Mattel tried making some stands but it just made the figures do this:
https://i2.wp.com/www.everythingacti...-2200-1487.jpg
Figures from the end of the line also had sloppy paint apps. Some of the Batman figures had thin paint above his mouth which gave him a questionable look for a superhero. And only the original release of Hawkgirl came with her mace.

I would have to say that for me, it's a two way tie between Play Arts Kai and anything coming out of Sideshow Collectibles.

Like Nitelife, I used to be into 1/6 scale figures, and Sideshow (who I sometimes refer to as S***show) figures were always the worst out of the bunch. I have had to do mods or flat out replace the bodies to nearly every single one of their figures that I've purchased (most of them from their Friday the 13th line) and I've had deal with their customer service department far too many times for my liking. Their most recent Jason figure was a mess right out of the box, with it's missing paint apps (no blood on the outfit as was originally advertised,) crooked chevrons on the mask, and with a sewn outfit that was far too tight to properly pose the figure (which wouldn't have mattered anyways, because I later discovered that the arms were broken off the figure from BOTH SHOULDERS, without having ever handled the figure.) I ended up having to remove the outfit and replace the figure body beneath, which wasn't an easy task thanks to the system they used for the feet.

Top that off with their rising prices and near constant shipping delays, along with products that never look like the advertised piece, and I think they're easily the worst.

Hot Toys might be a culprit, but I honestly cannot make a fair critique of them, despite having three of their figures, as those figures rely more on die cast metal (Robocop) or have very little in the way of soft goods (I also have two of their Predator figures) and they articulate just fine and look incredible because of it.

Play Arts has become something of a joke with me. I used to collect these extensively dating all the way back to their original Final Fantasy lines, and I've watched the prices climb from 25 dollars to near insanity, while the quality and sculpting of the figures has increased marginally. I have picked up a few of their Marvel and DC Variant lines over the years, but the designs are so busy at times that it's hard to tell what I'm looking at making it a hard line to commit to, and I cringe in fear every time I have to move an arm or a leg for fear that it's gonna snap right off, something I never had to worry about with those old Final Fantasy 8 figures. As I mentioned before, for some reason, the prices for these have climbed to near insanity, and that's before they ever hit the secondary market, and when you couple that with the wishy washy quality, you might as well throw you wallet into the garbage disposal.

I saw someone mentioned Pops!...but I don't honestly consider those to be an adult collector line, but more a pop culture (pardon the pun) fad intended to target the masses of casual collectors and fans of various properties out there. Their also cheaply made and fairly inexpensive, but that's because they are also intended to be, and are not meant to be played with really. They're there to show off one's fandom to anything you can think of, and to be displayed on a coffee table or a desk at work as a conversation piece.

Now this blind box fad that's being run by companies like Loyal Subjects...that's another ball of wax altogether. I would definitely include these on the list of worst collector lines. In fact, I'm surprised that there hasn't been more of a stink being raised by them, as I see them as a form of gambling. You are paying money for something with no guaranteed result other than you will get a figure of some sort. It would be one thing if they were coming out of a gachapon style machine for fifty cents at your local grocery store. It's another when they can run you ten to 12 dollars a pop depending on where you shop.

In principal, it's no different than the seedy things that EA was doing earlier this year with Star Wars Battlefront and the loot crate controversy in gaming. People cried to the high moons over it until it forced the company (and many others) to change it's policy over it, and even went as far as to force the hands of legal legislation in some states to brand it as gambling.

I also hate the current trend of blind box collectibles. I tend to only be interested in them when it's the only way to have a character represented on the shelf (I don't count the vast majority of pops) but I never buy any because the math is clearly against me getting the single one I want. Of course I could go to ebay to guarantee I get the specific one I want but then I pay much more than if I had just rolled the dice in the first place.

I think I'm on both sides of the fence when it comes to blind box toys, I tend to treat them the same as a pack of trading cards, knowing full well the possibility of getting duplicates, that being said, it really sucks getting a duplicate, especially when your spending $10 plus per blind box, like with the loyal subjects, I love their motu and thundercats figures, but I hate spending nearly $15 a piece and pulling dupes from them, I was lucky with the thundercats blind boxes by pulling zero duplicates and a chase figure from the 4-5 That I've purchased, the motu line on the other hand is a different story, out of the 8-10 That I've purchased, half of them have been dupes, some ive pulled 3 of the same damn figure while never pulling just one of a specific piece, which is why I tend to not purchase blind box toys anymore unless they're on sale or on clearance.

McFarlane for sure. They're so hit or miss with their stuff. I have the entire Wave 1 of Stranger Things figures and they're just garbage. Chipping paint apps, terrible articulation, rubbery accessories, likenesses that look almost nothing like the prototype pictures, etc.

Yeah I gotta agree on the Blind box. They’re also way too expensive some of those blind boxes are $8-10 which is outrageous.

@Triv I’m the say way. I don’t even count Sideshow in the same boat as hot toys. Even worse is some of those sideshow figures have terrible Likenesses

Agreed, and I would add the first wave of Playmates Star Trek TNG line.


CCC.

For me, Reaction for sure. Terribly bland aesthetics that look like they were carved from a bar of soap.

A lot of people are posting McFarlane and with valid reasoning but I can't label McFarlane as the worst because they're the company who really started the adult collector figure market. Back in their prime McFarlane's movie maniacs were freaking dope and offered licenses not available elsewhere in plastic form. I agree that they've significantly fallen off of the peak but they are showing large improvements over when they first came back with the Color Tops a couple of years ago.

McFarlane figures, like early TNG and a few others, had static action poses that limited the poseability of the figure in a very negative way. Same reason I don't like He Man, Thundercats, Warlord, and other lines of "Mister Universe" muscle poses figures.


CCC.

I understand the desire to keep these retro, and I do like them, as well as keeping costs down, but I do wish they would add knee joints.
https://i.imgur.com/60hWvqB.jpg


CCC.

Absolutely,I think the problem with McFarlane toys is, well...they lost their balls, they used to push the envelope, now they just seem to consistently try to play it safe, not to mention choosing piss poor licenses, or creating figures based on licenses falling out of trend (with exceptions of course) or not competing with trends that are working, like more articulation.

Add to my list NECA's Pacific Rim line. Sculpts and paint were largely great. But the materials and engineering was so poor that the figures would break themselves just standing on the shelf. I've referred to their "plastic" choice as "recycled chewing gum" which sadly seems pretty accurate.

The DC Multiverse figures are a fairly horrid line. You keep buying them because you want articulated 6" DC characters to match your Marvel Legends. And every so often you get an acceptably good one. Just often enough to keep you interested, but not enough to paper over how awful most of them are.

Agreed! We probably wouldn't have NECA, Mezco, Marvel Legends and other things without McFarlane setting the standard for quality sculpts and a general 6/7" scale. Color Tops has been really iffy but their new Star Trek, Labyrinth and Destiny figures are pretty dang good (the Stranger Things wave 1 figures were a disappointment mostly because of the faces, but I think that was a factory error since the wave 2 figures look much better)

Reaction, yeah, too expensive for the quality of the toy and that was when they were $10 at retail. $15 is just nuts.

I agree about Justice League Unlimited. I didn't collect them but have picked up some at flea markets cheap. They look like fun but are lumps of plastic that fall over a lot.



Playmates never entirely seemed to know what they were doing with that license. The first wave seemed to be as much kid aimed as collector aimed, you have Riker with rips in his uniform! The brightly colored accessories, and there were v-crotches...for a tv series that featured characters sitting down a lot, this was a bad idea.

Then they got more collector oriented as the Trek lines went, once they realized the folks buying were adults who mostly weren't opening the toys. Maybe that's why articulation got inconsistent. And they kept the bright accessories for no good reason, though.

Then they started making 6 inch figures FOR NO LOGICAL REASON. This was after they made 8 inchers with cloth outfits and IIRC a few 12 inchers, plus micro stuff. (There was an aborted metal figurine with environment backdrops line planned, too, IIRC) All over the place. They'd repeat that with JJ Abrams TREK movie line...3 scales, which was at least one too many.

and failed to follow through with the second wave, making it impossible to complete the bridge playset. What's more, they never even attempted the one playset that should have been done, the Holodeck!


CCC.

Mattels WWE Zombies/Mutants. What exactly is the point.

The Funko Legacy figures definitely suck, mostly because half of my Game of Thrones figures broke only seconds after removing them from the package. Plus they had very poor QC with the paint apps, so ordering them online is very dicey.

The other one is Saint Seiya Myth Cloth figures. I only own 1, but the problems I have with it would be the same with any figure in the line. I know the OP said no scale wars, but these figures are a truly weird scale that don't really go with anything else. They have removable die-cast armor, which creates a few problems. The figures look stupid and weirdly skinny without armor. The armor scratches very easily as you're putting it on the figure. Once the armor is on, the figure becomes ridiculously heavy and difficult to pose. On top of all that, they are quite pricey and they come in MASSIVE, hard to store boxes.