General Marvel Legends

Joe: No licensing fees (this is huge), greater margins, more freedom to go wild with designs & accessories (aka no Jesse approving or not - nothing against Jesse!), and the fish, etc are tiers that get unlocked with greater volume sales.
 
Every new GI Joe release announced makes me regret not going all in on the line from the beginning. I don't have the space and being a completionist Legends collector is expensive enough. I buy a handful a year breaking me own... but the newer Retro releases are all just so good. Plus the army builder soldier and police officers complement Legends very well.
 
Enforcer said:
Every new GI Joe release announced makes me regret not going all in on the line from the beginning. I don't have the space and being a completionist Legends collector is expensive enough. I buy a handful a year breaking me own... but the newer Retro releases are all just so good. Plus the army builder soldier and police officers complement Legends very well.
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I bought the first 50 or so releases until they initially switched to windowless packaging (since I don't open them). Since then, I've only bought what I find marked down to at least under the $20 price point. I think that their quality has actually improved dramatically since the early figures. There are some that I've missed that I wish that I would have bought, but I couldn't really afford to go all in on another line anyway as I buy just about all Marvel Legends and DC Multiverse figures as it is.
 
I regret not getting the second Firefly release. That one is tough to come by now. I wasn't a big fan of the original over-designed homages to the classic characters. Cool generic futuristic military looking guys, but I had the OG toys as a kid, so those are the designs I'd buy.
 
I love Legends, it's what got me into this scale of figures and I'm still psyched every time a new wave ships, but the stuff they're doing over in Classified is BONKERS. Each iteration gets better, too. Dial Tone has a set of sculpted hex wrenches on a little wrist-mounted tool kit. The stuff that team does is wild.
 
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Small? Please be Yellowjacket!

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Those are the worst teases. I can get my hopes up for anything and it's going to be, like, a roleplay item.
 
To my eye with that comparison shot, face should be longer, stretch the chin down a bit, and I'd arrow key tap the face up once or twice to see how it looked.

I can mentally overlay the guidelines on both and it's in Close But This Ain't Hand Grenades territory.
 
Beamish said:
How can Joe get little sausages and fish and we can't even get yellow boots on Jean?
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I just pulled all my Classifieds out of their storage box and displayed them this weekend. As I was getting their weapons in their hands and posing them up I began to notice something pretty incredible: Not one figure that I pulled out of the box (we're talking maybe 50 or 60 figures) are what I would classify as a "dud" or "low effort". It took me a long time because with each figure I was taking my time looking at all that was packed in with it, whether it's the sculpt or the (tons of) accessories or the paint job.....I was soaking in each figure. My internal head conversation with myself as I looked at each figure was something along the lines of, "Dude, look at this. Guy's sweet!" repeated 50 to 60 times over. That set up took a while.

IMO, there is a disparity in quality between GI Joe Classified and Marvel Legends that is tremendous, so much so that you cannot just blame it on licensing. Every toy company deals with licensing. It's not some insurmountable handicap that takes your toy line down from a GI Joe Classified level to something that is "just OK" most of the time.

I think ML does a decent job on the A-listers. When a Thor or a Cap or a Hulk or an Iron Man come out, they are usually pretty good, they get the best effort. Their recent Punisher and Ghost Rider--great! Then you get to the c and d listers, the lesser-knowns, and a lot of the times it's just Hasbro cranking them out on a buck that you own dozens of already just to get it out and sell it to you again. (And yes there are exceptions to this, Power Princess is the best Wonder Woman figure ever, ROM was good). Then you go over to GI Joe and you see your A listers with great figures--Duke, Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, Cobra Commander, but then you get your c and d listers and they get nothing less than the best treatment as well--Snow Job, Road Pig, Scrap Iron, Blowtorch, Raptor, Frag Viper (Frag Viper?!?!?!).....I could go on. There are no duds. The quality is consistent. Rather than licensing, I'm more willing to blame complacency and the knowledge that the fans will probably buy something regardless. When the company making your toys hears stuff like, "How could they leave this obvious detail out? I'm going to have to paint it myself". "I've been waiting forever for this character, I wish it was better, but this will be a place holder for now." "I've been waiting forever for this character, I wish it was better, but I have to complete my team", they know they've got you and can give just about whatever effort they like.
 
I'm not sure the logic makes sense there. If they are being complacent and relying on fans being willing to buy whatever they put out, wouldn't the A-listers get less effort - not more? The A-listers get more effort put in because they sell better, they can price them higher to begin with, and they can reuse any unique sculpts they put towards them. Fabian Cortez and Husk are 90% reuse because they just aren't going to move as well.

The fact that Legends and Classified are both Hasbro products, in my opinion, is the best evidence that licensing fees are a genuine factor in how much value can go into each. It's the same bean counters overseeing each line, with the same demands for profit. I just don't buy that the reason one line can include a lot more in the box is not because of a real financial constraint, but because the other team just tries harder.
 
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