MOTUC 2014-2015 roll out clarification

[Black Zodac]

A message from Toyguru...

MOTUC fans,

As many of you know, over on Mattycollector.com’s fan forums we have a section called “Ask Matty??? designed as a forum for you the fan and customer to ask questions about the brand and product directly to Mattel employees. Lately we’ve been getting a lot of the same question regarding the line up for 2014 and 2015. While we have posted this info before, with the 2015 sub sales coming up in a few weeks, thought it might be a good time to recap where we are.

So to take a step back, originally back in 2009 we created a long term road map to ensure each year of MOTUC was robust with the widest variety of figures possible. Back when figures were $20.00 our goal was to make as many figures as possible for the largest selection of figures in the long run. Then the inevitable happened.
Labor and raw material costs (as well as shipping which is also tied to fuel prices) started to skyrocket. In 2012, recognizing this trend we re-drew the “roadmap??? and a line that originally stretched out to 2017-2018 was condensed into a 2 year roll out to “complete the line??? by 2015, before the figures cost more to produce than fans would be willing to pay.

What this meant was cutting out some of the “filler??? or less demanded figures and focusing on the most demanded figures to complete fan’s collections. This meant that between 2014 and 2015 we would focus on:

1: All vintage MOTU figures including variants from 1982-1987. We would look into the possibility of beasts when possible, but the focus would be on ensuring all the 5??? figures were done in Classics.

2: All original characters from the 1984-1986 POP line. While we did love the variants for this line, getting out two more Catra’s was a little iffy when we had other more requested figures to get to and limited slots.

3: All A list New Adventures figures.

4: All A list figures from media like Filmation, mini comics and 200X.

5: A few surprises!

Now a lot of fans have been asking on our forums lately what we mean by “A??? list figures. The perfect way to illustrate this is to look at the fan vote figures. We REALLY wanted to get to both Huntara and Lord Masque, but we just couldn’t find a slot for both of them. (i.e. do we not do “Perfuma??? or “Ninjor??? so we can do Lord Masque? You can see the issue!). The solution was to let the fans vote between the two for whom would get into the 2014-2015 line up. The same goes for the NA fan vote with Mara, Tuskador and Darius. We wanted all three, but there just wasn’t an opportunity.

So if you are trying to understand if your personal favorite New Adventures or Filmation figure will make it into the 2014-2015 roadmap, the best way to do so is use the Fan’s choice winners, Huntara and Mara as your benchmarks. They both represent about as “obscure??? as those two factions will go over the next two years. So if you ask yourself, is character X more popular/demanded vs. Mara (for NA) or Huntara (for Filmation) you can pretty much make a good guess. For example, Scoripa and Hydron are more popular vs. Mara and Huntara, so they will be in the 2014-2015 line. Kayo and Crackers the Clown, not so much.

Hopefully this helps put into perspective whom is still coming in the next two years. By the time we get to SDCC all of 2014 will be revealed as well as the first quarter of 2015. That should give you a pretty good idea whom is left. If he, she, it falls into category 1-4 above, that characters is likely to be released over the next two years. After that… well pending we sell in a 2015 sub we will “start??? looking into a potential 2016 line. Nothing is even close to set right now and there is always the chance 2015 could be the final year.

If it is, we want to make sure it is a great one!

News about 2015 sub sales will be posted soon. Now will be the chance to complete your collection! While we may not get to every fans favorite figures and characters, we hope that by the end of 2015, should that be the final year, the majority of customers will look at their collection and feel a sense of completion!

We’ll always be over on the Ask Matty forums, but hopefully this post clears up some questions and you can direct your friends and fellow fans to this note.

Next stop, San Diego Comic Con!

Best,

Scott “ToyGuru??? Neitlich



Rio Blast ships in Sept with all the parts shown here! 2014-2015 figures really do offer huge price value!

He also confirmed at Mattycollector.com that there will be less New Adventures characters released in 2015.

I can confirm two things:

1: Mara is not the only NA figure left

2: There will be fewer NA figures in 2015 vs 2014.

[Draego-Man]

Labor and raw material costs (as well as shipping which is also tied to fuel prices) started to skyrocket. In 2012, recognizing this trend we re-drew the “roadmap???...

2014-2015 figures really do offer huge price value!

Yet again this shyster is lying and exposes himself in his own lie.

The REAL reason for a price increase in 2015 is because the remaining figures all require more parts and tooling (Rio Blast, Blast Attak, Squeeze, Angella, Peekablue etc) and instead of spreading those figures across other years to bring down costs for everyone, they saved them all until we were hooked so that the could price gouge us to complete the line.

[Mechanizor]

I've seen this on the Org yesterday and I wanted to post it here, but then again I thought it's more or less the same old broken BS record from TG!... Let's just hope we get more bang for our money from the remaining items in 2014 and 2015.

[Johnny Calzone]

Labor and raw material costs (as well as shipping which is also tied to fuel prices) started to skyrocket. In 2012, recognizing this trend we re-drew the “roadmap??? and a line that originally stretched out to 2017-2018 was condensed into a 2 year roll out to “complete the line??? by 2015, before the figures cost more to produce than fans would be willing to pay.

Uhm... I always thought the roadmap got changed due to negative fan reaction around the time the Fighting Foe Men set was revealed. I got the impression wrapping up the vintage lines faster was a way to calm fans that were tired of questionable character decisions and just wanted their vintage favorites.

What this meant was cutting out some of the “filler??? or less demanded figures and focusing on the most demanded figures to complete fan’s collections. This meant that between 2014 and 2015 we would focus on:
3: All A list New Adventures figures.
4: All A list figures from media like Filmation, mini comics and 200X.

Who decides what's A list?

5: A few surprises!

There's still some money left for funny surprises like UNO or Nephtu. Yay!

Now a lot of fans have been asking on our forums lately what we mean by “A??? list figures. The perfect way to illustrate this is to look at the fan vote figures. We REALLY wanted to get to both Huntara and Lord Masque, but we just couldn’t find a slot for both of them. (i.e. do we not do “Perfuma??? or “Ninjor??? so we can do Lord Masque? You can see the issue!). The solution was to let the fans vote between the two for whom would get into the 2014-2015 line up. The same goes for the NA fan vote with Mara, Tuskador and Darius. We wanted all three, but there just wasn’t an opportunity.

I still don't know who decides what's A list, but now I understand who comes up with the 'benchmark' figures. Some fans at conventions. How many fans voted for the NA figure? More or less than 200 loud fans online?

After that… well pending we sell in a 2015 sub we will “start??? looking into a potential 2016 line. Nothing is even close to set right now and there is always the chance 2015 could be the final year.

You should 'start' soon. Think of all the time it takes for changes to come to fruition.

[Draego-Man]

You should 'start' soon. Think of all the time it takes for changes to come to fruition.

BOOM!!

He's caught RED HANDED in yet ANOTHER blatant lie. Considering we keep being told that it takes 18 to 24 months to make any changes at all, damn straight they should have a 2016 plan in place, and not only that, there should be at least 6 figures already in production... otherwise this 18 to 24 months business is a bloody LIE!!

Also remember Blastic everyone? Why did it only take 3 or 4 months to get rid of that? Hmmmmm...

[barrasco]

BOOM!!

He's caught RED HANDED in yet ANOTHER blatant lie. Considering we keep being told that it takes 18 to 24 months to make any changes at all, damn straight they should have a 2016 plan in place, and not only that, there should be at least 6 figures already in production... otherwise this 18 to 24 months business is a bloody LIE!!

Also remember Blastic everyone? Why did it only take 3 or 4 months to get rid of that? Hmmmmm...

It depends on the type of change you're trying to implement. Changing the type of plastic being injected into the molds has a different time frame than sculpting a new piece, create a new mold for it and start its production.

Obviously, ***guru is using this change frame as another excuse, not an actual reason because he clearly lacks factual accuracy - so basically more lying. They could easily bump an accessory in order to have a Filmation head somewhere in 2015, he just doesn't want to. He has stated before that they only show what the 4HM have finished sculpting at conventions, so they could sculpt a new Filmation Hordak head and put it with a later 2015 figure in order to have the head coming out that year. But you know, since Filmation Hordak is not Nephtu or The Mighty Screw-Up there's no incentive for that guy to do it, plain in simple.

They were still making sculpt changes to The Mighty Screw-Up in September 2011 for it to be released in May 2012. That's less than eight months! Check out the Power-con 2011 walkthrough video by Pixel-dan and you will clearly see it.

And that my friends is why I say the guy is completely clueless, since he doesn't mind anything but his own agenda. That's his knowledge for the property and its fan base. He lies with that "classicizer" rule BS to try to justify it...

[barrasco]

One more thing to consider:

So, some fans are complaining that they cannot sell their NA figures on the secondary market. But they seem to forget that their Two Bad figures pay thrice for those NA figures if they sell them.

Since we were able to buy subs Mr. Neitlich has constantly told us that the line would be very healthy without any day of sale figures. DOS would only be the icing on the cake, but not necessary for the line to survive.

But every time fans ask for NA figures we get the same answer: they sell worse than the other factions. Well, this is a contradiction: On the one hand the figures sold through subs are enough for Mattel, on the other hand suddenly, when it come to NA, the "icing on the cake" is more important.

Every NA figure so far has sold out. As long as it wasn't a fake sell-out, every figure produced was sold. So did every other faction. The conclusion is, that every figure sold as good as the other (they all sold the same amount via subs - DOS doesn't matter, if we can believe what Toy Guru said).

So, let's get back to Two Bad: He was sub only (Really? Or will his day of sale stock mysteriously appear in January 2015?) and he pays for THREE figures on the secondary market.

Here's the solution: Make the NA figures sub only. Erase day of sale. They will sell just fine if you tell us again and again that day of sale is not needed. Their value will rise if they are sub only. It's as simple as that.

Why can't you do this and finally please your customers instead of bullying them?


Mr L:

Sub holders are the vast majority of sales and we need them to lock in our production. But we still need day of sale customers to hit the min production quota needed to keep the current prices.

If we made all NA figures sub only, we would not be making enough of them to produce them at the current price.

Two things: Horde Troopers which were underproduced, Two Bad which wasn't put for DOS. Both would help "hit the min production quota needed to keep the current prices", but they just prefer to create a fake sense of scarcity so that their scare tactics can work.

[Johnny Calzone]

" But we still need day of sale customers to hit the min production quota needed to keep the current prices."

In light of Two Bad, Fangman, Clamp Champ and Sea Hawk as well as the hundreds and sometimes thousands units left according to the now fixed shopping cart trick, it just doesn't make sense to me.

[Draego-Man]

So sick of this jackass, all he does is lie. God help him if I'm ever in San Diego for Comic Con. My brother lives there, so there is a good chance I might make it one of these years. I will corner that dude and absolutely unleash on him (not violence, but words, words, and more words!).

[Mechanizor]

You should video-tape (Who uses tapes these days?)/record it and upload it for all to see if it happens.