[Universe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Madame Warlock

tbh Hasbro(and Mattel) have a long history of making questionable/indecipherable business decisions. people who think it must be done for some unseen reason to maximise profit have too much faith in their competency - sure they're greedy capitalists so that's what they THINK they're doing but you'd be surprised how many ridiculous obstacles there are to basic supply and demand. In particular concepts like "girl action figures don't sell" which isn't true. The toy industry is full of self fulfilling prophecies too, where people get the idea something shouldn't work so they sabotage it. I think this is the problem when you have actual nerds inputting into it, esp. wealthy ones that afford for the larger, more expensive figures so assume every other "collector" can too.

I was mad at the change to 4" when it happens but also kind of excited. 5 years later we were made to switch back if we wanted to be "Real" collectors. It's pretty obvious the market can support both scales as it has done for some time. In Mattel's case for example, do they really think having 6-7 different iterations of the same character, 4 of the same version, in the same or same-ish scale is the best idea market wise? As dodgy as the Infinite Heroes line was at least it was something. Quite why they scrapped it when Marvel Universe became a successful was bemusing. The Multiverse stuff was a good sign they were doing the MU thing, and then that disappeared.

None of this really screams to me that these guys have a clue what they're doing. The problem is that these businesses try to operate on the idea of what their customer base SHOULD look like, which is one of the reasons why there's crazy gender segregation in toys perhaps now more than ever. They like to have set demographics to market to, and don't like when they overlap. Unfortunately more and more it's obvious that this is a terrible strategy that people are becoming more conscious of especially eg. with the reintroduction of feminism and race politics into the mainstream. Segregated marketing really needs to go away. The idea of "Smaller scale for kids, larger scale for collectors" is one particular example of that market segregation - and you can see it with the new Star Wars stuff with the 6" black series being more readily available than the 3.75" stuff. Similarly, the 4" Movie figs were largely nuked in favour of the 2.5" to make way for playsets - because smaller figs are for kids, and we can make these more cheaply that way and market to parents who don't have a ton of space for larger playsets.

Hasbro & Mattel need to accept that you can't divide up the market so easily between boy and girl, kid and adult, etc. and that you can market a lot of this stuff to pretty much anyone.

I agree with this but instead of capitalism, it is more the human nature of it. People are fans of their own creations. I despise the 2.5" line and Mashers. While there are applications to any toyline, my bias of them keeps me from ever buying them, even when on clearance for a buck (although the Antman is the gem and I will be getting him). Mashers, I could use a couple Dr Doom(s) to make for Doombots. But would I buy a whole wave? Hell no! Just like Dwight, he is a human being, therefore he has his own opinions, bias, and preferences. He happens to be in a position to manipulate his personal agenda and it is evidenced by how many Legends and features the line has picked up. They have started to mimic the Japanese imports by adding accessories and heads to make an appeal to that collector market. I applaud his efforts because he has done very well for Legends.

The thing is we still exist, we would like the same effort or a new person to run that line who has the same pull Dwight does. We want figures, plain and simple. The ideal is of course, to revert back to the direction they were heading with progressing molds that added articulation (Herc buck/she hulk), not take it away.

As consumers we ought to make a big stink about it, not to desuade collectors, but to ensure we still have a breath in the fight to improve not degenerate the line. We're human too after all, not just "consumers and numbers".