[En Sabah Nerd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wonderful Toys

How does McFarlane Toys get away with it with the Walking Dead? It may be a successful franchise but it's not like every character they make a figure out of is a household name and they dress normally, though a bit grimy.

I love NECA but if there's two things that bug me, it's their refusal to make figures out of so many major characters in franchises and opting instead to focus on the superheroes, monsters, and aliens even if the human/civilian characters are just as important if not more so, and their rejection of even bothering with some franchises because they're "too niche". They started out making Hellraiser figures, now Hellraiser is too niche for them.

Firstly the Walking Dead figures are very cheap. They cost like $12 and are vastly inferior to most other adult-aimed figures, heck they're inferior to McFarlane's own products from the past. Also being McFarlane ties them directly to Image which means they have their pick of the crop for all things TWD, so they seem to have a "why not?" approach to character selection since it's roughly all under one roof. Also TWD isn't just successful it's stupidly popular, like record-setting viewership popular, so figures of normal chumps already get a sales chance just for being part of that show.

When there are additional steps to making figures like securing rights in the first place it makes a lot of figures more effort than they're worth. For instance many fans have stated a desire for other members of Dutch's team from Predator like Blaine except we should all damn well know that only the most die hard Predator fans would actually buy a figure of that minigun-toting maniac so in the general market such a figure could represent a risk. If Aliens wasn't the mega-hit that it is then it would probably be a poor decision to be making figures of guys like Frost but fans have made it evident that they'll take just about any of the marines to build up a little squad.