[Jmacq1]

Yeah, important to keep in mind it very well may not happen. It does present interesting hypotheticals though. And the original article notes that the antitrust concerns might not be as big as folks think since they wouldn't even be close to owning the "whole" market for toys (about 25% of it).

I don't think it would be the all doom and gloom that people are decrying. Hasbro and Mattel aren't going to stop wanting to get money from collectors entirely just because they're one company now, and in the grand scheme it could be win-win...Mattel's distribution seems better than Hasbro's, and Hasbro's collector-oriented offerings are generally superior.

It wouldn't arrest the decline of the 3.75" figure quality, but it'd probably make for good 6" figures and a lot of them.

It definitely IS possible for a company to hold the license for both Marvel and DC at the same time...Toy Biz did it in the late 80's/early 90's, though only for a couple years (It's super-weird to remember that Toy Biz basically made its' big "splash" into the market with toys for the Michael Keaton Batman movie, considering they eventually became part of Marvel Entertainment). I just suspect that they wouldn't keep one or both once they came up for renewal. But who knows?