Interesting Tidbit About Those Mattycollector Sub Cancellations

February 1, 2012 | Poe

I came across this on the He-Man.org forums (courtesy user “Neil”) and thought it was worth passing along to any of you who may be having (or will have) problems with your credit card authorizations on Mattycollector:

If you are a subscriber, it’s not enough just to change your credit card details. If you do that, it only works for all subsequent transactions. Previous purchases (like your subscriptions) are still tied to your old credit card number. In order to solve that you have to go into your Order History, find the order number for your subscription (probably the one “in progress”) and change the credit card details in there as well. It’ll show you the last four digits of your old card number and you can click on that to make the change.

Now I didn’t realise this until after DR had cancelled my 2011 and 2012 Club Eternia subscriptions. They kept telling me to change my credit card details, and I kept telling them that I had done so…. not realising that I hadn’t changed them in the one place they were looking. Now, it’s utterly their fault for having such a rubbish and non-intuitive system… but I’d rather play their game then have to get them to correct mistakes.

That’s a pretty useful piece of information that I haven’t seen Mattel or Digital River publicize anywhere.

Moguera & Baby Godzilla join the S.H.MonsterArts lineup

January 28, 2012 | Poe

I’ve been trying to figure out what Tamashii Nations is–evidently they’re “an umbrella label encompassing Japan’s top collectible brands” and, as far as I can tell, they’re run by Bandai.

Anyway, the Tamashii Nations Facebook page has posted new pics of the S.H.MonsterArts Moguera and Baby Godzilla figures. For those who don’t know, S.H.MonsterArts (SHM) is a line of 6″ scale, fully-articulated Godzilla figures. (I’ll be reviewing Godzilla and Mechagodzilla in the near future–once I get through the mass of MOTUC reviews I have on deck.) (more…)

Contest Updates > Odds ‘n Ends, Identify the Toy

January 28, 2012 | Poe

One of the runner-ups to the Odds ‘n Ends contest emailed me to point out I said I’d mail a Sword of Ages to the runner-up. I completely, totally forgot about that, and I apologize. I’ve contacted the runners-up for their addresses and will mail them their swords ASAP.

Also, there’s the Identify the Toy contest. I received one–ONE–entry, which makes me very sad. Fortunately the sender, Josh Flood, got it exactly right:

Ok, so I saw that foot and immediately remembered the toy as a kid. I’m 90% sure that it is the Robotech Zentraedi Powered Armor Botoru through Matchbox. It was released a few times in the 80’s and 90’s. I think the first time was 1986, then again through exo squad by playmates in 1994 or 1995.

So, I’m making three changes for the next round.

1.) At the suggestion of a Twitter follower I’m still trying to find, I’m renaming it “Figure It Out.”

2.) You now only need to name the toy, not the line, manufacturer and so forth. If multiple people get it right, I will pick a winner at random from the correct guesses.

3.) I will also send a Poe Prize to the most funny, creative, or otherwise interesting guess I receive. If you have no idea what the toy is, just go wild and make something up. Perhaps a long-winded description of the imaginary toy it belongs to, complete with a company history. Or a haiku about how you have no idea what it is.

Mattel Gets Positively Chatty

January 27, 2012 | Poe

Scott Neitlich, a.k.a. “ToyGuru” of Mattel was posting quite a bit on the Mattycollector forums last night.

First up is this new “director’s commentary” on the Masters of the Universe Classics line, starting with King Grayskull. This seems like a neat, fun idea. There’s no real new info here–most of this has been hashed out before in interviews and so forth–but I’ll be interested to see the discussions of later figures. (more…)

Major Mattel Missive

January 20, 2012 | Poe

Scott Neitlich has posted a very long and–credit where it’s due–thorough explanatory post up about all the recent issues surrounding Masters of the Universe Classics. It does wrap up with a little of the “we should be thankful we have figures at all” attitude that really rubs many the wrong way, but overall I think it does patch up (not repair, but patch up) some of the damage of the last couple of months.

Text after the jump. (more…)

Mass Effect 2 Figures Under New Management

January 11, 2012 | Poe

After nearly a year in limbo, the second series of Mass Effect 2 figures is now available for preorder. The manufacturer–or perhaps just distributor?–is a company called “Big Fish Toys” (who have a rather spare Web presence at the moment). These seem to be the exact same figures as those DC Unlimited had planned for series two, but Bioware famously swore never to work with DC Unlimited again. So who’s Big Fish Toys, exactly? I’d love to know the story behind this.

Oh, and Big Fish will be reissuing the first series of figures, too. I’ll be curious to see whether the quality is higher than DCU’s attempts–see the Shepard, Grunt reviews at OAFE.)

Anyway…it’ll be hard to resist a Legion and a Garrus, but I want to see the quality and articulation on them first.

Poe’s Bad QC Luck Continues

January 9, 2012 | Poe

I finally went to open my MonsterArts MechaGodzilla this weekend–only to discover he had no eyes.

Now it’s a race between this and the Wind Raider as to which replacement item gets here first. Any bets?

Wind Raider review addendum – missing guns

January 4, 2012 | Poe

It’s been brought to my attention that my Wind Raider is in fact incomplete–there should be two guns on the underside of the ship, to the right and left of the center front wheel. You can see the little divots where they’re supposed to be attached. You can see them on Michael Crawford’s review pics.

I don’t know if they were supposed to come attached and someone at the factory just forgot them, or if they were supposed to be loose in the box–but there’s no sign of them.

I’ll be requesting a replacement–this error bugs me a lot more than the Swift Wind one.

Battle Beasts to return on April 12, 2012?

January 2, 2012 | Poe

I was perusing the Battle Beasts News and discovered something I’d completely missed: a countdown timer for Battle Beasts from Diamond Select. (Or supposedly from Diamond Select–BBN says Diamond posted it, but I couldn’t find the original link.) It appears to be set for April 12, 2012. What will happen on that day? BBN speculates that there will be some sort of announcement at C2E2, which begins the 13th.

What will it be? More of the Minimates-style Battle Beasts we’ve seen so far? Or the even more awesome fully-sculpted figures they showed at SDCC 2010?

As a reminder, I’m not sure we’ve ever confirmed whether Diamond Select has the rights to anything aside from the trademark name “Battle Beasts”–i.e., they may not have the rights to any of TakaraTomy’s character designs.