DC Comics Toys Update From Mattel

They're just repainted Batman figures. We've featured them before.

EDIT:

i agree! red hood is the #1 dc figure i want made and # 2 would be lady blackhawk

Or more likely because the manufacturer doesn't have squat to do with distribution. That would be the retailer's job.

You don't have DC figures you want at your local store? You call the local store, not Mattel. Mattel can't force Wal-Mart (or whoever) to do anything once the product has changed hands (or even really before then). If Wal-Mart (or Target, or whoever) isn't ordering enough product to get it out to every store, that's their fault, not Mattel's. Or it's a sign that the line wasn't selling enough to make it worth Wal-Mart carrying in every store.

Heck, Wal-Mart makes no secret whatsoever that their MO isn't to have "every line in every store." That shows you how much they care about toy distribution (read: they don't). The adult collector segment is such a small portion of the buying populace that only the barest minimum of catering is worth doing toward them. The rest of the time their toy sections just need to be "good enough" for the soccer moms to buy the occasional toy for junior when they're passing through buying other, more profitable items.

In any case, I think it's great Mattel has a new collector oriented line in mind for next year. My question is: Do the retailers give a crap? They're dropping Mattel's product left and right at the moment, so I'm highly skeptical that this "new collector-oriented line" is ever going to make it to store shelves. Or if it does, that it will last beyond the first wave or two.

.....and now I'm horrified. Batmobile is the only think that I like from there.

6" according to the update.

LOL

Looks @2002MOTU line.....

Yea that's been like Mattel's #1 complaint since 2002. It is now a decade later so..

2002 MOTU Line had no problem with distribution. The figures were pretty well available all over the place. The problem was with case pack-outs that generally looked like: 4 x He-Man, 4 x Skeletor, 1 x everyone else (or something to that effect). Leading to pegs clogged with tons of He-Men and Skeletor and leaving secondary characters ofttimes difficult-to-impossible to find.

By comparison, the case pack-outs for DCUC have always been pretty even. The problem with DCUC has simply been stores not stocking it very well.

And your excuse for MattyCollector is... ?

I don't think that's quite fair eaither. Take Young Justice. You have a new line supported by a popular cartoon. It made it to stores, in numbers thatboth series of figures were readily available. Then they ship out the same thing. Now they have peg afte peg of captain atom and aqualad and Mattel wants to release wave two. Is it suprising that reatliers said "umm. no thanks".

Another scenario, DCIH, The make it out to retail in moderate amounts. Do you remeber wave one? Captain Marvel, Guy Gardner, Professor Zoom and Adam Strange. How big a hit was that wave? It's STILL available at Toysrus.com. Is it any wonder that line floundered at retail? It was "distribution" it wasn't "lack of fan support ofr the line" It was a terrible selection of a substandard product at a price that at the time was higher than the other lines.

The retailers will get us the product if you make it worth the time for them to do so. Even Mattel's stuff. Let me know if you have trouble finding Qwardian Weaponers, the major retailers still have some here.

That's not exactly Mattel's distribution or case assortment, either. That kind of has nothing to do with either.
That's a different issue that, to my knowledge hasn't been brought up. Character selection. So that's not completely fair to the comment, either.

Now if the case assortment broke down to 5 qwardian weaponeers, to one Star Sapphire, then it's case assortment.
But mattel has been pretty good about making sure the case assortments are fairly even. Again, character selection is a different problem, which I never said wasn't an issue.

I worked for Walmart. And I've said what the problem is, a million times on this board, and so have others. I'll explain it again (And I'm not intenting to sound snippy, that's not my intended tone and I appologize if it reads that way. I don't mean it to)

The problem is on the store level. It's the system virtually *all* the box retailers use to order items. It's literally called POS (Not making that up. And it *is* a p.o.s. system).
For Walmart and Target, virtually all ordering is done by the computer, which monitors what goes across the checkouts. Let's use Transformers for our main example:
A case in the first wave of Transformers Prime was made up of 3 Bumblebees, 2 Cliffjumpers, 2 Wheeljacks, and 1 Soundwave.
Each one of those has an individual UPC number, and on the reciept may even acknowledge the ndividual character, as it may read out "Tsfmr Bumble," or "Trns Sound" on the receipt.
What POS does, is it keeps track of how many items a store has in stock, and how many it has on the floor (meaning in the backroom, and on the shelf)
Once an item reaches below a preset amount, then the system automatically orders a preset amount of cases from their warehouse. And it does not acknowledge or understand the differences between Bumblebee or Soundwave.
So in this situation, Soundwave is a rare and popular character. Needed by kids and collectors alike. They can stock four cases to the shelf, and end up with 12 Bumblebees, 8 Cliffjumpers, 8 Wheeljacks, and only 4 Soundwaves.
Naturally, Soundwave is gonna sell out really fast. Even if not many people want him, but more people want Bumblebee. Those looking for Soundwave are still gonna come up short.
Now like I said, POS doesn't individualize, and see they're out of Soundwaves, and low on Wheeljacks, but still has 10 bumblebees on the shelf but no soundwaves. All it sees is they have 20 deluxe transformers on the shelf (where you or I see 10 'Bees, 7, Cliffs, and 3 'jacks), and a full case in the backstock, and doesn't order any more until the total stock reaches five or six deluxes.
While I can't speak for Barbi or simular girls toys, this effects every actionfigure, across every brand, across every toy company. It's been the downfall of many many lines. Even popular ones.
This is what effects distribution so badly, and this is something that Mattel, nor Hasbro has absolutely *any* say over.
It killed Transformers Alternators, and has been the single worst enemy to DCUC, and Infinite Heroes. Seen how badly it hurts transformers and Marvel Universe, too.

The only thing they can do is try to cheat it with case assortments. And even if they dropped the case assortments down as evenly as they can, to 1 figure per case, per wave, and even that still wouldn't do much.
On top of that, speaking from personal experience, it sometimes takes an act of god for an employee who is aware of a propblem to be *allowed* to do anything about it (Like clearance out figures that are gumming things up).
Hell, Walmart even uses POS on fresh areas like Produce. We threw away more good produce because POS kept screwing up our stock and shipping us stuff faster than we could sell it. We'd end up sitting on literally thirty 80 lbs cases of carrots, when we could only sell through maybe a case a day, with more coming in every night.
So it mucks up everything. Not just toys.

That is the true source of the problem. Bad case assortments, and bad character selections will only feed this. But it's the POS which dictates distributions. Because it see's the shelf full of something, it will continually skip ordering cases from the warehouse, which is why you can sometimes see one store skip two, or three waves, while another store the next town over may get them.

I hope that helps. (If I were wise, I'd save this post somewhere so I could just copy/paste it in the future.)

What about Mattycollector? If you haven't been able to get the product you want off of Mattycollector in the past year or so, then you're simply not applying any effort whatsoever to getting it. Most items have lasted at least a couple or three hours, and then been reissued not terribly long afterwards. Once again, if you didn't end up getting it (with a couple rare exceptions), it's your own fault. Contrary to what some people seem to believe, being a collector usually does require at least a tiny bit of effort.

If you're talking about Mattycollector's shitty customer service, that's a separate issue that has nothing to do with distribution. Beyond that, MattyCollector's level of sales will never match the money Mattel makes from retailers. It will always be a secondary effort for them.

Crazy Jetty gave a good explanation. The bottom line is that at most retailers for many lines, a handful of pegwarmers can gum up the entire system. The system doesn't care if those five DCUC figures it's tracking as still being in-store are 7 waves old. They just know "There's DCUC on the shelf so we're OK." We see the same thing with the Marvel lines, and especially with Star Wars (I swear to God most people will probably not see any "vintage" wave past the Episode I wave on-shelves this year...especially since retailers have been backfilling with leftover product from LAST year).