[tlasjr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kylactus

I've come to believe it's all cyclical. Bear with me, in 2008 marvel legends died, giving us marvel universe, and gi joe 25th was in full swing again. It was 3.75 heaven. Over the next four years 3.75 was king, to the point where we were starting to get inundated with repacks, repaints, and over saturation, culminating in the IM 2 line that is still findable in some clearance stores. So most companies reached a point where they felt they sold all the 375 merchandise they could to this generation... Solution go 6" for a few years until everyone buys up their fill in that scale, by then you have a whole new crop of consumers to start off on 3.75 again. Mantle, with the DC stuff though, I feel, are always playing catch up. Multiverse was an attempt at compatibility with MU, when that slumped ( I feel mostly due to the fact that most of the main characters had definitive versions made so there was no where to go and people were getting sick of repacks) an legends became hasbros main focus again they went to 6" to fit in with marvel legends. The coin will flip again... Last time it was four years (08-12) and here we are in 2016, next year may be the revival.

The problem with that is kids, the main target audience usually collects for roughly thr same span of years. say 6-12 or 7-13.

By that time most have moved on to other pursuits. The kids who bought whiplash and crimson dynamo in 2010 arent the ones buting professor zoom or aquaman now.
Hence the fact Mattel has two lines, a kids line and a collector line.
The scale change is based on two factors profit and miscalculation.
the major companies went to 3.75 scale when gas went up. Now that gas is way down the cost of materials has dropped but the cost of labor has increased. Thus it now makes more sense to produce and sell less of a larger scale figure with a higher profit margin that multiple smaller scale figures.
The miscalculation is that the collectors of one scale will jump on board with a new scale. . I have several thousand 3.75 inch figures. I have a few 6 inch scale figures, 1 of whixh doesnt fit as a 1/18th scale representative of that character.