[Grippen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snowflakian

Well, part of that for GI Joe though is also how much they've already covered over the years. How many variations of the same character will a consumer purchase before they say they have enough? How many can be sold when half the market is already "full" on that character?

Marvel Cinematic lines having a pause for so long means they don't quite have that same issue of re-selling the same characters over and over again. So I'd expect Spider-man is one of those that may get a figure still when his film gets nearer. They've already said they are planning him to have his own 4'' comic line, so a 4'' movie line support of some kind doesn't seem that far-fetched either.

Part of the problem is character over-saturation. How many times will a parent or collector re-buy certain characters for their kids before they'll say "don't you already have that one?" Or collectors skip it because it's the same figure repackaged with no emphasis for the purchase.

So skipping some mainstays for now that do have solo films coming up and can carry their own line even without a film, yeah it's to be expected they may come later. Whereas others that are a singular tool with likely no retool potential behind them to offset costs, may wait for a big push year. Black Panther for example can get repackaged. Agent 13 herself is mostly part swapped made to reduce costs. Vision would require a complete new tooling with potentially no re-use except for figures of himself later. Wanda is much similar.

So skipping Spider-man for now in favor of waiting for his film makes sense. Making black Panther for now makes sense since he could get reused for the Legends 4'' or even slightly retooled again for a later release in Infinity War or his own movie. Him having a solo product line as an unproven movie is highly unlikely, though they could do a minimalist one like Thor: The Dark World had gotten. Really depends on who is in his movie that would warrant molds besides himself.

Vision would have made sense, because with the distance between Civil War and Infinity war, re-releasing his figure could have saved costs. Wanda though is a mystery. Not sure if they could have recouped costs on her by a re-release if she gets a new costume later, and her mold has no direct animation support either unlike Vision coming up, nor comic support, and it'd need a heavy retool but it probably still would have been prudent to do her and Vision as an exclusive two pack release minimum. Really depends. I'd expect Infinity war may have more 4'' support due to the induced drought. And we also still don't know Thor's movie scale for Thor: Ragnarok. So we very well could see a Banner figure there.

The 4'' scale is also the only scale that did get an Edward Norton Banner though. Blonsky too. So we have gotten material in the past other scales haven't. So now it's their turn while we wait. No big deal. Market trends fluctuate, it happens.

Not entirely true. Yes SS and SE have several versions but there are lot of characters missing in modern design, something that the club is trying to fill up but their resources are limited and prices are high. Limited because they do not make new molds, they try to reuse parts and create at most new heads and accessories.

For example, Bombstrike had a new headsculpt but the rest is just a reused of existing molds which made her not entirely accurate when we look a the original figure from 2004. Similar approach for Spearhead & Max, actually here they reused the parts of the convention NF variant exclusive figure. It was nice to see a new and improved Max but the figure was just a reuse of parts.

So what I'm trying to say is that there are still many figures that did not receive an update, some iconic and when say iconic I mean you saw them in the cartoons. For example Captain Grid-Iron had so many appearance in the cartoons and the only version of him is a vintage one.

The reason here is the movies, Marvel is getting lots of attention due to the movies that overall have been a success. This means toys will sell better. I think 2.5'' its for kids and in general pay up for the more collector oriented scales.

GI Joe up until now didn't have movie and to be honest both movies were not as big as the Marvel ones. Plus GI Joe has always been 4'' so they tried to make a mix of collector and kid toys. The first movie toys for example were bad, for the second they mixed, first waves were movie/kis oriented but later waves were mostly collector oriented.

We even saw some figures with minor articulation (pilots) which was something we never seen up until then. I'm not an expert but I read that 4'' highly articulated figures are expensive to produce and the price point is not worth it reason why hasbro started releasing the 2.5'' scale instead starting with GoG, and continuing with Age of Ultron and now Civil War.

They cannot do this for GI Joe because they will loose the collectors market and kids lets face it do not know GI Joe as they know Marvel (again tanks to the movies). So what I think Hasbro decided is to stop GI Joe for now (they did it in the past early 90s until eraly 2000s) and they will probably start releasing things based on movies as well. I'm sure they will continue with 4'' but we may see some articulation reduction and also we will see only a few figures and vehicles.