Diamond Select Toys is Shutting Down

My two cents: It's looking like Diamond has been operating in the red as a ponzi scheme for several years.

I've been following this drama for the last year because of the comic book angle. When Diamond first declared bankruptcy, they tried to sell their inventory of comics to satisfy their debts, except they aren't a wholesale distributor. They're a consignment distributor, which means they never owned any of those comics at any point. They were trying to steal the comics that had been consigned to them by the publishers and sell them for pennies to satisfy their debts. The comic publishers had to file a class action lawsuit to stop Diamond from selling the comics they had sitting in their warehouse. That lawsuit is still playing out, but the judge ordered Diamond not to sell those comics until they can deliver a ruling.

My guess is that none of these toys made it to production because the pre-order money people paid for them went to paying for the production of the toys that came out a year or two ago. This whole situation is looking shady as hell.
 
RunestoneCowboy said:
My two cents: It's looking like Diamond has been operating in the red as a ponzi scheme for several years.

I've been following this drama for the last year because of the comic book angle. When Diamond first declared bankruptcy, they tried to sell their inventory of comics to satisfy their debts, except they aren't a wholesale distributor. They're a consignment distributor, which means they never owned any of those comics at any point. They were trying to steal the comics that had been consigned to them by the publishers and sell them for pennies to satisfy their debts. The comic publishers had to file a class action lawsuit to stop Diamond from selling the comics they had sitting in their warehouse. That lawsuit is still playing out, but the judge ordered Diamond not to sell those comics until they can deliver a ruling.

My guess is that none of these toys made it to production because the pre-order money people paid for them went to paying for the production of the toys that came out a year or two ago. This whole situation is looking shady as hell.
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That is skeevy as hell. Did they get a leadership change at any point within the last few years? And that leadership case looked a little rotten?? Because this reeks of RICO charges. Racketeering, corruption, grand larceny, white collar crime and all that. This isn’t just a civil matter here, we might be looking at a criminal case.


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Stoopid_Sandwich said:
That is skeevy as hell. Did they get a leadership change at any point within the last few years? And that leadership case looked a little rotten?? Because this reeks of RICO charges. Racketeering, corruption, grand larceny, white collar crime and all that. This isn’t just a civil matter here, we might be looking at a criminal case.
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Not in 2025 'murica we're not.
 
But figures WERE coming out - they managed to finish the Fellowship, which turns out to have been a minor miracle. Didn't Pippin and Merry ship early this year/late last year? Was that the last line to actually release new action figures?

I got the X-Men Animated Morph bust in 2025, so they also kept some statues going.
 
Schizm said:
But figures WERE coming out - they managed to finish the Fellowship, which turns out to have been a minor miracle. Didn't Pippin and Merry ship early this year/late last year? Was that the last line to actually release new action figures?

I got the X-Men Animated Morph bust in 2025, so they also kept some statues going.
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Yes, but but the case is being made here that those figures only made it out on the backs of the upcoming figures that we have not gotten and were in limbo for years. Eventually you can't catch up if you're always paying Peter, Paul and Mary or whatever the hell the phrase is.

Mezco used to do the same thing.
 
Just to point something out for posterity, because I am okay with being that guy: I got bitched and whined at on Fwoosh for being too mean to DST Zach and look where we are. People were so enamored with having a direct line like that and not wanting to upset the apple cart, that it was borderline offensive to watch anyone just tell that guy the fucking truth.
DST toys were not very good. They made bad decisions, and had bad execution -- and my point was always "if you fix X or Y, you could be making some pretty high quality stuff that I think more people would want to buy." But nah... "the figures sell great" said a bunch of people that were obviously wrong.

But also, I called out DST's -practices-, which got me in trouble. When Zach would say asinine stupid motherfucking dickhead shit like the item currently up for pre-order does not have all of its accessories PLANNED yet. As in, they are soliciting a figure, which you can give someone money for right now, and they don't even know what will be in the box. NO ONE else saw a fucking problem with that business model? No one else thought that was weird and stank of a company operating not on the level?

No. Definitely just me. Being mean to Zach.

Toy collectors gotta stop with the parasocial bullshit. It doesn't help anyone. If some company mouthpiece can't handle honest criticism of bad practices, why exactly do we even -WANT- them here?
 
You were not the only one holding DST accountable for their baffling/poor decisions. For posterity's sake.

Their entire "pre-order now or we won't make the product" BS has pissed me off since the cancelled Buffy/BSG/SG figures and they never admitted it was an asinine way to do business.
 
Schizm said:
You were not the only one holding DST accountable for their baffling/poor decisions. For posterity's sake.

Their entire "pre-order now or we won't make the product" BS has pissed me off since the cancelled Buffy/BSG/SG figures and they never admitted it was an asinine way to do business.
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For sure. My wife is STILL angry about Hammond and Baal. She sold her entire SG collection because of that.

But man, there were a couple of people that if you even dared say 'hey Zach, that just doesn't make sense and is a ridiculous thing to say' would trip over Zach's dick to run to his defense. It's embarrassing.
 
So not to disagree with any of your broader points KD, but the truth is we don't know that the DST model itself was failing as much as DST being tied to Diamond's overall sinking ship sucked everything into its vortex.

I don't definitively know one way or the other... but some context clues have at least pointed to DST being at least marginally viable as a stand alone entity. But when Diamond finally imploded DST couldn't be easily spun off on its own because license rights wouldn't transfer... so it wouldn't be worthwhile to take over DST if you couldn't make Marvel Select or Lord of the Rings stuff. The most valuable thing DST had was licenses that were non transferable, leaving the company itself with little value.

Whoch I guess does mean Diamond Select Toys wasn't really viable as a company since it couldn't survive without important licenses. Jada Toys will exist as a company, even if it loses Street Fighter rights.

And again that isn't to say that all of your criticisms and complaints about things were'nt totally valid. But I think even if you didn't have any of those complaints the situation itself would have sunk them regardless.
 
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