[Freekazoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grant C

That seems like throwing away money! Mezco says they're for collectors. There is a huge market right now for endgame figures. As a collector of one 12's I would love to see endgame figures given the one 12 treatment. How about a box set? There is precedence for this.

There are a couple of things going on here with the licensing:

First, it's pretty obvious that Mezco was late or bidding cheap on the license for 6" MCU figures. This explains why they were not able to get the license for all but the few they have that are based around lower-risk properties, properties they have already established, or ones where they seemed to get the timing right and still suffered severe delays (Ragnarok figures). That's probably why they have chosen to stay more in the realm of comics and evergreen properties like the Horror figures and 89 Batman. The product development cycles must be too long to produce figures at the rate and the variety they would need to be profitable while Endgame is still popular with their current capacity.

Second, Mezco is maturing slower with the One:12 line than a lot of people would like when it comes to logistics, production scaling, and especially customer satisfaction. Most of their recent figures are being produced in the thousands (similar to most Hot Toys releases) and the sustaining revenue from LDD and other lines may not be able to support the line effectively to grow and produce more consistent product (as seen by recent releases having notable QC issues). This extends further with the more "vocal" dissatisfaction of One:12 detractors or disgruntled collectors that miss a preorder. Bandai Figuarts, notably with the Infinity War and Endgame figures, have a similar pricepoint, but a higher volume and a mature product line with several character iterations to improve the engineering. Whatever Mezco is doing is not enough to match the resources available to the larger corporate producers and they will remain a boutique manufacturer for the foreseeable future.

There's a lot more that can be said about a company's preferences for licensing or the ability of the product managers to actually get things finished on time, but it ultimately comes down to the risk of being a collector, especially with boutique figure lines. At some point in time, the IP, Product line, or even just the one figure you've been looking forward to years will get cancelled.