Somebody's having a laugh......

[He-man121]

Ok so the Org has posted it's recent Q+A answers, below is question four and it's answer......

Q: Are there any plans to create vehicles or giants for the mini line?

A: Potentially. Nothing to confirm right now but if they continue to sell the mini scale is a great line for these type of items as a price friendly cost!

Price friendly costs, what would anybody at Mattel or Mattycollector know about that, build it cheap and sell it for 100 times more is that not Mattel's business plan. What about the continuous Variants that are sold at the same price as a fully tooled figure, those kind of "price friendly costs".

The minis are anything but value for money for the buyer TG.

[Captain Atkin]

The mini line is being sold to the wrong audience. This should be a kids line sold in stores. I know that there are some MOTU fans that collect these mini figures, but most of the collectors who I have spoken with say that they don't buy them. They just don't appeal to most fans, and the cost is too high. People can buy Star Wars and GI Joe mini figure 2 packs online for about $12. Collectors want their money's worth, and you simply don't get it with a mini figure toyline sold at $20. Add the shipping costs to that price, and it is just too high. Selling the figures in bundles now is a smart move on Mattel's part, but I still don't see this line catching on with fans.

[wallbie]

I thought the mini line was potentially going to get cancelled. Captain Atkin's got a really good point though. If these two packs weren't $20 and at retail, I'd probably get them for my kid and a set to keep MOC.

[Draego-Man]

The shipping on the bundle is outrageous... I looked and it was OTT. This line is an utter failure as far as I'm concerned. The Giants promise to be even more of a failure. They are simply delusional to think they can have 3 lines going at once. All of the resources for these wasted efforts should have gone into classics, and then maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't be getting such sub-par figures with fat armor etc.

[_RZ_]

The mini line is being sold to the wrong audience. This should be a kids line sold in stores. I know that there are some MOTU fans that collect these mini figures, but most of the collectors who I have spoken with say that they don't buy them. They just don't appeal to most fans, and the cost is too high. People can buy Star Wars and GI Joe mini figure 2 packs online for about $12. Collectors want their money's worth, and you simply don't get it with a mini figure toyline sold at $20. Add the shipping costs to that price, and it is just too high. Selling the figures in bundles now is a smart move on Mattel's part, but I still don't see this line catching on with fans.

Totally this. These would have done great at retail at $5 each in blind bags. The IOS game was pretty popular with the little ones, these figures are obviously very cheap to make. There's no reason why these are so much. Oh I forgot it's Greed.

I still think that these should have been made to copy Skylanders and interact with the IOS game. If they were fixed-pose with accessories sculpted in-hand and attached to stands (again like Skylanders) and allowed some IOS interactivity (even a card with a QR or download passcode would have worked!), they would have really done something special and maybe got kids into He-Man again for more than the 2 weeks it took for them to be bored with the game. It would have kept the game going, tied into the current kid fad, and been cheaper to product. As it is these are over $10 a pop. S/H on these is just highway robbery, even in the US. I can see wanting to cover your bases and charge a few bucks extra to cover the shipping operation. But really, even with the bundles these are way too expensive to ship or to collect in any real way at this time.

Price friendly costs, what would anybody at Mattel or Mattycollector know about that, build it cheap and sell it for 100 times more is that not Mattel's business plan.

Sadly that is EVERYone's business plan. This is the world we live in, and what we older folks get for giving crooked people money and having the "wanting the toys no matter what" attitude in the 90's-early 00's. It's not only Mattel but across many US businesses and those they influence globally. In the toy game it's been the rise of LEGO as a huge profit maker with low overheads besides licensing. This is why our collector figures are becoming so expensive, not due to rising costs IMO but straight-up greed and desire for bigger margins and bigger bonuses with complete disregard for the consumer. They think of us all as stupid, petty, cheap, Comic Book Guy stereotypes, as if we don't deserve to be respect as consumers because of our nerdy interests. Oil has risen but much like the airlines, that price rise was taken advantage of in a huge, dishonest, pure scummy way. And because we all do nothing, we get what we deserve. Mattycollector was an interesting idea at first because it offered its items for basically the same as retail, without tax; but now we get the same (or slightly lesser) retail item but with a huge "collector" markup and lower costs on their end. Why? Because we let them take advantage of us, and still kept buying.

I thought the mini line was potentially going to get cancelled.

Exactly! Weren't these the figures that had to be made smaller for the same price just to stay afloat a few months back? Didn't it take years to get approval on them? And now they're talking vehicles? Seriously, it's 2014. Collectors aren't as blind as they were in 1994 or even 2004. What is this google thing I've been hearing about? We've been told all about the toy making business and we can all see shipping prices online easily. Matty customers can get a rough sense of "costs" with a little research and interest. While we don't know all the "details" or numbers exactly, we're not clueless and know when we're being taken for a ride.

[teemu81]

A devalued Dollar is also a BIG reason why prices are higher on Toys (and things).The Dollar has and is losing it's purchasing power everyday

[Shawn]

#truth. #butwhatcanido #facepalm.

[D.M.]

The mini line is being sold to the wrong audience. This should be a kids line sold in stores.

No way. It would be pretty senseless to market a caricature of MOTU to kids. They're the potential future fans, so what would be the best is to market MOTUC to them.

Unless you're talking about toddlers.

[Shawn]

Originally MOTU is a a caricature of Frazetta/Conan. "kids today" don't care about that. Fantasy is alive, but "hyper anime detail" wasn't enough to appeal to them. (leaving spin blade debate aside BTW) "kids today" love that preschool plasychool chubby little cartoon guys because the window for playing with toys is smaller then it was when WE where kids...SO "mini masters" was a way to market MOTU to kids today, that's why the 4HM made it. That's why the Cellphone game style followed this style.

Toyguru is just selling overpriced toys to the wrong crowed. These need a lower price point and to be at retail. I guess this was a "last resort" because retail didn't want them? OR Team Matty wants to keep stuff on Matty. Perhaps there is more possibilities I'm not seeing?

I've been saying/thinking MOTU as Skylanders since before there was a skylanders. I saw Pokemon and Digimon and hero clicks and thought "they could do that with MOTU" and they still can, Skylander proves how well this works. I always knew it would.