I took this shot while working on a review of the Leonardo Classic Collection & Nickelodeon TV figures, but the main reason for taking it was to participate in this week’s assignment for CoolandCollected’s League of Extraordinary Bloggers.
You can see C&C’s own entry here, as well as a list of links to other entries in the comments for that post.
So, BigBadToyStore has put up their 2013 MOTUC pre-orders. Some of them, like Jitsu, are already sold out, and that’s a good sign. The more pre-orders they sell, the more subscriptions BBTS may buy before the August 6 deadline and the more likely the subscription is to hit its target. If BBTS can, say, sell enough Ram Men at a higher cost, it can offset the extra Netossas and possibly Fighting Foe Men they’ll be sitting on (though I think the FFM will prove to be more popular than people expect).
So if you’re a cherry-picker and you want any of these characters – or a subscriber who doesn’t want two subs, but might want, say, two Fang Men – I recommend pre-ordering them ASAP.
BBTS also sent along a few other updates:
A Poester writes in:
I was chatting to a friend of mine today [who owns a specialist collector toy shop in England] – mostly Transformers, Star Wars etc. We where chatting and the whole situation with MOTUC came up, as I know he collects them. During our conversation he told me that last year, he contacted Mattel and wanted to be a supplier for MOTUC in the UK. They replied and told him that unless he was willing to purchase $55,000 worth of each figure, they would not supply him. Realistically he was willing to spend £500-£1000 on each figure, but he said there was no way he was going to order $55,000 worth of one figure.
It puzzles me they would turn down a retailer willing to spend £1000 on one of their monthly figures, yet they are claiming there is not enough support. Mattel must really want to keep retailers and customers away from their products.
Obviously this is entirely unsourced, so it’s nothing but hearsay without actual corroboration. Still, it doesn’t sound made-up to me, and it also sounds entirely plausible. (more…)
The Four Horsemen have been asked by Mattel to intercede on behalf of Masters of the Universe Classics. They posted the following on the He-Man.org forums today:
Hey, all of you He-Fans and She-Ravers!
As we’re sure you’ve all heard by now, the number of subscribers to the 2013 Masters of the Universe Classics Club Eternia at Mattel has dropped drastically from last year to this year. This has put the future of the line in danger of being cancelled altogether.
We’ve seen a lot of the discussion on various message boards and blogs surrounding this issue, and many people have commented that this may be some sort of ruse by Mattel just to sell more subscriptions and that there’s no true danger of the line ending. Well, you should know by now that we’ve always tried to be as open, honest and transparent with the fans as we could possibly be, and we’re telling you now that the Masters of the Universe Classics action figure line IS currently in danger of ending sooner than expected because of a sudden and drastic drop in the number of subscriptions to the line.
Continued after the jump… (more…)
 Collection Photo Contest Check out our Facebook page and enter a photo of your collection for a chance to win up to $500 store credit. Be among to the top 5 collections to win. You can vote once a day until the contest ends on August 7th. Collection image must be approved before it will show up in the contest. Entries after 3PM CST will be approved first thing in the morning the next business day. |
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMm8bxvpoT8&feature=youtu.be&h=375&w=500]
…and they’re totally right.
Just thought it’d be nice to take a break from Subpocalypse for a moment.
Scott Neitlich posted the following on the Mattycollector forums last night in response to a question as to where the MOTUC subs stand right now:
We have over 50% to go. We are at 46% of the min orders we need as of right now.
If we don’t hit 100% of the min it means fewer figs at higher prices (i.e. 30-35.00 per figure and likely only 4-6 figs for the whole year)
Forty-six percent of the required minimum tells me that all the discussion of the Star Sisters, QC, and CS issues is fairly inconsequential. The QC and CS issues have been around for almost the entire life of the line, yet they easily hit the required number last year. I have a difficult time believing that Star Sisters are holding anyone back, because the truth is, they were part of last year’s sub, not this year’s – if they were going to hold anyone off subbing, it would have been last year. (It could be argued the incentive figure, King He-Man, is no Shadow Weaver, but I think Ram Man makes up that difference.)
The SS/QC/CS stuff may have eaten away at the margins, but I think the main reason for the lower sub numbers was the price and international shipping increases, plain and simple. If it had been just the price increase of just the shipping increase, the damage might have been more mitigated. But with both hitting at once, MOTUC may have been dealt a mortal blow.
There’s not going to be another rush of subscribers – those happen in the first few days. I don’t like being a downer, but I just don’t see how they double the sub numbers by August 6 – unless there are some e-tailers who hop on board and save the line.
There’s been some talk that many people have been holding off to get paid at the end of this month or the first of August. I’m skeptical that 50% of the needed subscribers are in that boat, but I guess we’ll see.
UPDATE: On second thought, the total cost of the 2013 sub (before shipping) is $505, while the total cost of the 2012 sub was $510. It’s pretty much identical to last year, it’s just more per figure. So now I’m not sure how much the price increase figures into it, although I’m sure there’s a certain psychological resistance to paying an extra $5 per figure that factors in to collectors’ thinking (including mine, but I went ahead anyway).
