Wrestling Toys (Mattel WWE, Jazwares AEW, etc.)

@Thor-El

I think the ramp pattern matches to this one from Jakks. Could've been used in more than one set.


arajezX.jpeg



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Randy Orton is laying on a table with a chair wrapped around his neck thinking, "Huh?"
 
Alt said:
Kyle Peterson says the AEW Jazwares team got laid off Friday evening.
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It's been rumored for a while that Jazwares was losing AEW. It's not really surprising. All this time and what have they actually accomplished? That stupid fucking asshole from JAKKS still runs the line like the best way to release action figures is to make sure only 10 people are able to get the most popular figures, leaving tons of characters languishing on shelves for over a year. Even moreso than WWE tends to be, AEW's line is just a miserable chore to keep track of and collect. And the figures have never really gotten any better, so it's hardly worth it anyway.
 
mrboshek said:
@Thor-El

I think the ramp pattern matches to this one from Jakks. Could've been used in more than one set.


arajezX.jpeg



3bfdRyi.png


Randy Orton is laying on a table with a chair wrapped around his neck thinking, "Huh?"
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That’s at least partially it. I have those side panels as well. It also came with a blue wrestling ring and the black barricades for around it. Thanks!
 
I've enjoyed picking up a bunch of AEW figures from Ross for $3.99 each - but never watch AEW as I'm a WWE guy. It's still been cool to get some WWE characters from the AEW line.
 
Damien said:
It's been rumored for a while that Jazwares was losing AEW. It's not really surprising. All this time and what have they actually accomplished? That stupid fucking asshole from JAKKS still runs the line like the best way to release action figures is to make sure only 10 people are able to get the most popular figures, leaving tons of characters languishing on shelves for over a year. Even moreso than WWE tends to be, AEW's line is just a miserable chore to keep track of and collect. And the figures have never really gotten any better, so it's hardly worth it anyway.
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Explaining to my non-figure-collecting wrestling fan friends exactly what went wrong with this line was just...I should have given them course credit for how much I had to go over. I'm not sure I've ever seen a figure line start out so popular and shed audience interest and goodwill as determinedly as this one.

The entire experience made me think of this ancient Penny Arcade strip:
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secondwhiteline said:
I'm not sure I've ever seen a figure line start out so popular and shed audience interest and goodwill as determinedly as this one.
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I think that about sums it up. It's further proof that the incel douchebag 'I collect for value' clowns are a TINY minority of the overall toy collecting community. When you appeal to them specifically, because you are a hack dipshit that's bad at his job, you lose -literally everyone else-. And, oh my fucking god who would have ever guessed this, secondary market value of your rarest figures doesn't actually make your line more popular.
 
Damien said:
I think that about sums it up. It's further proof that the incel douchebag 'I collect for value' clowns are a TINY minority of the overall toy collecting community. When you appeal to them specifically, because you are a hack dipshit that's bad at his job, you lose -literally everyone else-. And, oh my fucking god who would have ever guessed this, secondary market value of your rarest figures doesn't actually make your line more popular.
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A lot of those 90s guys never got over secondary market fever, but I think DJ Jazzy Jeremy's involved in scenes that actually still operate on it, like trading cards. But wrestling figures are tougher than that, because you need to be constantly in motion to get out new looks and new talent in a timely fashion and you need to have a distribution plan that accounts for the collectors who want a full roster while forecasting correctly to make sure that the shelves have that space but popular names are always around enough for more casual buyers to get...I mean, it's not wildly far from the demands of a superhero line, but you're also locked into a weekly show's ongoing changes including talent health and contract status, and the market's far less kind to the old-but-not-retro.

And they achieved basically none of that. The production speed alone was guaranteed to kill a wrestling line.
 
Alt said:
I don't know who this guy is. Story time.
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Jeremy Padawer, currently the President of Jazwares, and also probably cured cancer and landed us on the moon and restored Spider-Man's marriage to MJ according to his obviously self-penned Wikipedia page.

Rick would probably have the most comprehensive info here, but before Jeremy became President of Jazwares I think he was running the AEW line, and did the same for Jakks WWE for at least part of its run (I think developing the Classic Superstars sub-line is credited to him? So he had a lot of goodwill at one point). But Jeremy came up during the Beanie Babies craze so he's all in on the aftermarket valuation component. He's also a big trading card collector; his socials were hilarious during the AEW line's run, because dudes would be asking him about when long-delayed, constantly changing waves were going to finally drop and he'd just be posting about crazy rare old sports cards he just bought at auction.
 
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Alt said:
I don't know who this guy is. Story time.
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Jeremy Padawer is just a typical no-talent opportunistic sleazebag. Literally made money in the late '90s by buying up a bunch of .com names and sitting on them until someone needed that name and then selling it. Relevant to how he would treat everything he ever touched -- he also used to run a fucking website tracking the value of fucking Beanie Babies.

He is responsible for withholding 'normal' versions of the main MOTU characters during the 200x reboot when he worked at Mattel. So... all those complaints about how you couldn't actually GET a regular He-Man or a regular Skeletor, that ultimately killed fan interest in the 2002 toy line? Jeremy. Gotta leave those regular versions OFF the shelves, so they maintain their secondary market value.

Unsurprisingly, he was also a fucking Hot Wheels guy at Mattel. So... same attitude.

He's probably most famous for his time running the 'boys' division of Jakks Pacific where, again, his entire philosophy was to crank out as many rare, chase, or exclusive figures as possible to create tons of figures with high secondary market prices that only 'true collectors' could even dream of owning. He is largely also held responsible for such stellar decisions as Rey Mysterio and The Undertaker using the same body mold. Because Jeremy Padawer does not give a single fuck about the actual product. It's all about faking up the 'value' of everything. His entire career is just 'how to be the sleaziest scumfuck and do the most scumfucking imaginable.'
He doesn't care about the product. He doesn't care about actual value to the customers. He doesn't care about the customers. He cares about forcing the market to think his products have way more value than they actually do in order to be king of the toybox because, of course, he always makes sure to have one of those rare things for himself. Of course.

More recently, he was the guy in charge of the AEW line once Jazwares bought out his company (Wicked Cool Toys). He is considered almost solely responsible for the Jazwares AEW line being REPLETE with rare variants and chase figures and exclusives, to the point where most AEW collectors have given up even giving a shit about the line because it's too concerned with the variants and chases to actually even regularly release the waves people are waiting for. And, again as above, he never bothered to actually improve the product in accordance with customer complaints, instead focusing on enforced rarity and high secondary market value (which, again, Jeremy is too fucking stupid to understand does not actually make JAZWARES any extra money unless Jazwares is hoarding the chase figures and selling them on eBay - which Jeremy has been accused of doing).

And as said above - he does the whole trading card thing. And by that I mean he is obsessed with having rare stuff because, to him, THAT is what collecting is actually about; lording what you have over people that cannot have it.

He's basically a sleazy finance bro masquerading as a toys and collectibles guy. The kind of dude that would trick a child into trading him a rare Pokemon card and then get hyper-defensive online if anyone called him out on how shitty that is to do. You know the type.

Jeremy Padawer is human garbage. He is a stain on our entire community, and represents the WORST aspects of toy company upper management on every level. The fact that he hasn't been drummed out of the entire communtiy yet is an embarrassment to us all.
 
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