[Trivial Psychic]

I would have to say that for me, it's a two way tie between Play Arts Kai and anything coming out of Sideshow Collectibles.

Like Nitelife, I used to be into 1/6 scale figures, and Sideshow (who I sometimes refer to as S***show) figures were always the worst out of the bunch. I have had to do mods or flat out replace the bodies to nearly every single one of their figures that I've purchased (most of them from their Friday the 13th line) and I've had deal with their customer service department far too many times for my liking. Their most recent Jason figure was a mess right out of the box, with it's missing paint apps (no blood on the outfit as was originally advertised,) crooked chevrons on the mask, and with a sewn outfit that was far too tight to properly pose the figure (which wouldn't have mattered anyways, because I later discovered that the arms were broken off the figure from BOTH SHOULDERS, without having ever handled the figure.) I ended up having to remove the outfit and replace the figure body beneath, which wasn't an easy task thanks to the system they used for the feet.

Top that off with their rising prices and near constant shipping delays, along with products that never look like the advertised piece, and I think they're easily the worst.

Hot Toys might be a culprit, but I honestly cannot make a fair critique of them, despite having three of their figures, as those figures rely more on die cast metal (Robocop) or have very little in the way of soft goods (I also have two of their Predator figures) and they articulate just fine and look incredible because of it.

Play Arts has become something of a joke with me. I used to collect these extensively dating all the way back to their original Final Fantasy lines, and I've watched the prices climb from 25 dollars to near insanity, while the quality and sculpting of the figures has increased marginally. I have picked up a few of their Marvel and DC Variant lines over the years, but the designs are so busy at times that it's hard to tell what I'm looking at making it a hard line to commit to, and I cringe in fear every time I have to move an arm or a leg for fear that it's gonna snap right off, something I never had to worry about with those old Final Fantasy 8 figures. As I mentioned before, for some reason, the prices for these have climbed to near insanity, and that's before they ever hit the secondary market, and when you couple that with the wishy washy quality, you might as well throw you wallet into the garbage disposal.

I saw someone mentioned Pops!...but I don't honestly consider those to be an adult collector line, but more a pop culture (pardon the pun) fad intended to target the masses of casual collectors and fans of various properties out there. Their also cheaply made and fairly inexpensive, but that's because they are also intended to be, and are not meant to be played with really. They're there to show off one's fandom to anything you can think of, and to be displayed on a coffee table or a desk at work as a conversation piece.

Now this blind box fad that's being run by companies like Loyal Subjects...that's another ball of wax altogether. I would definitely include these on the list of worst collector lines. In fact, I'm surprised that there hasn't been more of a stink being raised by them, as I see them as a form of gambling. You are paying money for something with no guaranteed result other than you will get a figure of some sort. It would be one thing if they were coming out of a gachapon style machine for fifty cents at your local grocery store. It's another when they can run you ten to 12 dollars a pop depending on where you shop.

In principal, it's no different than the seedy things that EA was doing earlier this year with Star Wars Battlefront and the loot crate controversy in gaming. People cried to the high moons over it until it forced the company (and many others) to change it's policy over it, and even went as far as to force the hands of legal legislation in some states to brand it as gambling.