[OttoDestruct]

I am an addict, there I said it its out in the open. I have spent more money over the years on action figures than most people spend on their car.
All total I have well over 1,000 figures, ranging from vintage Joes to designer Vinyls.
About a year ago I said enough, its time to cut back , you've gotten out of hand and hobby has became obsession, so instead of going cold turkey I cut back. Considerably
I stopped my Starwars collecting, resigned myself to Bandai never bring Gundam back to the US, gave up on Mezco completely after they canceled any further Hellboy Comic figs and forswore high end Japanese toys.
I was going to only collect Cobra figures and vehicles, and most importantly DC Universe Classics.

For a while I was happy in my new mode, the DC figures continued to delight me and I, as any good collector I bought every single figure released, even variants. which I actually hate the mere concept of.
I loved the sculpts , the articulation, the vibrant comic colors, the character choices and even the C&C Figure which until this line was also a concept I was vehemently against.
In fact Grundy was my first C&C. ( I had problems finding Orion initially for some reason.)
I looked forward to news articles showing my new plastic lovelies and scoured web pages and blogs for rumors and pics. I was hooked.
I diligently bought every wave without fail, even wave 5 which I fortunately had no problem finding.
I loved my weekly toy hunt , an aspect of the hobby which I truly truly enjoy.
The figures marched along filling my shelves with plasticy goodness, and awesome comic visage.
I heard complaints from some collectors on QC, bad paint apps, and sticky breaking joints, the endless screaming about wave 5.
I ignored it all and continued in my happy consumerism.

And then it slowly started , around wave 6. the figures were harder to find, sporadically showing up here and there, I started finding wave 6 at places like Kroger, which was fine by me actually because I shop for groceries there. Then wave 7, again mostly bought at Kroger.
Then the bottom fell out.

Wave 8, the disaster.

You see my friends I actually am a delivery driver, so I travel all over my state and stop almost every day at retail outlets, a job which has helped me with my hobby greatly.
I was dumbfounded as to why I could not find my toys!
It really seemed that when Mattel changed the way they packaged the figures in new case allotments ( which really messed with Etailers) and went from a 5 piece to a 7 piece C&C is when the troubles began, Now again Wave 7 wasn't that bad, though it did seem like a long time betwen figure finds , but wave 8 wasn't there, at all.
The west coast was apparently getting these guys but us east coasters were very dry. All we were getting was Worlds Greatest Super Heroes waves with the terrible Mattel stands, and left overs from wave 6 & 7.
I broke down and did something I really dislike, I bought some of the figs online.
I went to my favorite blogs and news feeds to try and find out why, and there were spurious stories of under produced figures and Wave 9 being sold out everywhere.. Wave 9?! where was wave 8?!

Time went on and I finally found a wave 8 figure in an entirely different state at retail, Vigilante! My hopes swelled! Dreams of Giganta and Gentleman Ghost and Hawk Girl filled my little head and I went back to looking at retailer outlets, eschewing the online sellers hoping I would find my plastic joy on a toy run.

Wow what a mistake

I completed wave 9, no problems, wave 10 , easily procured. even Public enemies fell into my clutches, but wave 8 still eluded me.

Now since then I have finally at least completed Giganta, a great guy on here from the UK hooked me up with a Gentleman Ghost MOC.

Needless to say I was a little annoyed and concerned. What happened?
I posted questions on Mattel's Matty Facebook and all that was ever said was it was the retailers fault. Really? Really?

It was during a custom on a Cobra Snake armor that it struck me.. "Wow this white paint job sure is a pain in the.... hey, wait a minute!!
If Mattel is having QC issues the white paint job on GG must be a nightmare!" I went to my computer and voiced this theory on Matty's Facespace, and simply asked " Hey is it possible the rarity of this fig is because of Poor QC? As a customizer I know White paint jobs sure gives me fits".
Less than 5 minutes later my post was removed..

"HMM" I mused, "interesting".

Then as if by magic wave 8 began to appear in case assortments , a little here , a little there. but still no GG.
It was if as the rest of the line, held back by the possible problems with GG was being snuck into retail,
Then Mattel states. "There is not enough fan demand to re issue this figure." Excuse me?
He's available in The JLU, Brave and Bold and the cutsey little guys, and he's not popular enough?!

I then begin to slowly realize Mattel is in fact a Mega Corporation and Evil.

And then the prices started to rise....

In my honest opinion on this line the recent hike in price is due to two factors.
Poor sales of Avatar toys
and the trashing of countless GG's due to poor quality.

Now I may be way off base on this but the Joke of a "Survey" that Mattel posted about our collecting habits really glaringly points to this, I mean come on, they directly ask.
"You Indicated that you don't collect the Avatar movie figure, why is this?"
I answered honestly, "they have poor sculpts, the articulation is so so, the scale is totally off and the price point is way to high."
Now many people of course said things like they are terrible or they suck, but that's not what a market analysis wants to hear, and really I would LOVE to answer multiple questionnaires on toy lines.

But back to DCUC.

The distribution problems that Mattel is famous for are apparently not really that exaggerated, but whats the real reason behind this?
Why cant they give us just an honest adult answer?

In short, much like the U.S.A. in that I love my country, but I hate my government, I love the DCUC but I am growing to hate Mattel.

Will I continue to collect this line? Yes.
Will I hate the price point and distribution? Yes.
Will I continue to scour places like this for news and rumors? Yes!
Am I excited about new figs! Heck Yes!

All In all I love my DC figures, and I won't give up on something I love.


Otto Destruct
Coming soon! A wave by wave review!




Oh, and don't even get me started on Gleek.............