Review > Action Figure Displays

January 16, 2009 | Poe

afd_8You may never have heard of JDP Designs before, but they’ve heard of you–the action figure collector who wishes they had a better way to show off their figures than just placing them against the same old $20 IKEA shelving or off-white apartment walls. I stumbled upon an article about their Action Figure Displays last week, and I knew I had to investigate.

There have been a few attempts at producing action figure displays, most notably Ultarama. While Ultarama displays are great for figures in the 3″-5″ range, the effect isn’t quite as good with larger figures. Enter JDP Design. (more…)

Secrets of Mattycollector?

January 16, 2009 | Poe

Good morning, faithful readers! We start the day with a rather juicy find.

A poster on AFI (“The Question” appropriately enough) stumbled upon some interesting results when you do a search for “DCUC” “JLU” and “Infinite Heroes.

Before I go any further, let me make it clear: it’s very likely that most of these will not be sold on Mattycollector.com. As several AFI posters suggested, they may be some sort of test of the store program. (more…)

Toy news roundup, 1/15/09

January 15, 2009 | Poe

newspoe

Todd McFarlane predicts the future

January 14, 2009 | Poe

OK, this is funny. Or is it creepy? Either/or. (Thanks to Ninersphan for pointing out the article.)

It’s a “Super Bowl XLII: Larry Fitzgerald” limited edition from McFarlane Toys.

And, man, it would really be scary if it had XLIII attached to it.

It captures Larry Fitzgerald, the Cardinals’ glue-fingered receiver, in a pose very familiar to anybody who watched the Arizona-Carolina playoff game.

fitzgeraldtoy

Ask Mattel > January edition

January 14, 2009 | Poe

mattel logo

Time for our latest round of Ask Mattel with Mattel’s Toy Guru!

1.) How soon can we expect the MOTUC character selection to branch out beyond the 1982-1983 waves?

2010 will feature both POP and New Adventures characters. We just could not fit these figures into the first 12 due to time limitation! We do have plans to get to them in early 2010.

2.) Will Faker’s chest emblem be a sticker, or tampo?

It is a tampo. We looked at doing a sticker but it just wasn’t working out and honestly, was making the figure look cheap.

3.) At the SDCC DC panel, it was mentioned Mattel had changed vendors (i.e., factories) due to quality control problems around the time DCUC wave 4 was being produced. However, there have been a greater-than-average number of reports of QC problems with the Walmart wave and the two-packs, which were, I think, produced after the vendor switch. Wave 1 and the initial shipments of wave 2 were very good QC-wise. What are the challenges facing Mattel in solving these QC issues? (more…)

Pic of the Day

January 14, 2009 | Poe

afd_preview

Poe’s note: Your pic of the day today is actually a tiny preview of a review I’ve got coming up later in the week. I’m sure some of you are clever enough to figure out what it is, but just to be clear, no, it’s not the Ninja Turtles–I already did that.

Toy review roundup (via Fanmode)

January 14, 2009 | Poe

fanmode-copy Corey Tincher reviews the Mattel DC Universe Classics Hawkman figure. Excerpt: “… a magnificent figure.”

Corey Tincher reviews the Mattel DC Universe Classics Mr. Miracle figure. Excerpt: “Mr. Miracle’s weak paint and marginal fun are the only thing holding him back from greatness …”

Action Toy Review reviews the Mattel DC Universe Classics Amazo Wal-Mart exclusive figure. Excerpt: “… other than the problem I had with his ankle, it is generally a good action figure.” (See also.) (more…)

Poe’s Point > MOTUC Sells Out?

January 13, 2009 | Poe

heman_beastman-22There’s been some mildly heated discussion regarding Mattel’s decision to pull Beast Man and He-Man off Mattycollector prior to Skeletor‘s release on Thursday. For the record, here’s what Mattel had to say about it:

As visitors may have seen, both He-Man and Beastman are now sold out on Mattycollector.com. We knew a few days ago we were running low and with only a few hundred units left, we wanted to close down sales so we can have just handful for NYCC and SDCC to help spread the word on this amazing toy line at the summer conventions. (after all, the more fans we can get, the more units we can sell and the more tooling dollars we can get to tool bigger and better figures!)

We won’t have every 2009 MOTU figure available at the shows, but we actually produced more of these two figures in particular to help gauge sales. And now that we have a good idea now of how many MOTU fans are out there we can adjust future figure production accordingly.

Skeletor goes on sale at 12:00 Eastern this Thursday. (as does the DCUC Adam Strange and Starfire 2 pack and the Infinite Heroes stands). We are also working hard to get a monthly subscription service up and running for MOTUC to take us through December. (at which point the subscription for 2010 will cover Jan- Dec figures of that year).

I’m not naïve–I know Mattel hasn’t exactly won the people’s trust with their issues with DCUC and so forth. But I don’t quite get why this has made some people so suspicious. Mattel has been warning the figures would sell out for weeks. (more…)