Mattel DC Figures

[Xavion2025]

I will maintain my course that some characters should just be Evergreen.

If we get any subline, this is the one I hope for most. Anything that keeps the most desirable characters on the shelves in their most iconic looks is good with me.

I agree, and I think this is very important for steady sales growth. Those evergreen characters are where new customers and collectors of all ages are most likely to dip their toes in the water. If they really dig their new Batman or Superman figure, they’re going to be more open to pick up other characters. That doesn’t happen if there’s rarely anything but B-Listers and C-Listers on the pegs.

 

[Damien]

To me "wave anchor" is just a way of saying "every wave and every case packout needs to be composed predominantly of characters at a certain popularity level to ensure consistent enough sales that buyers aren't asking questions."

I still think this may be faulty reasoning, though. If that's the argument, then you've rendered the term 'anchor character' worthless. Because, by that logic, most figures in every assortment, regardless of how obscure, are anchor characters -- because these toy companies just aren't going to make figures that they do not believe can get a decent sell-through.
That's kind of what I've been saying - we may need to dispense with even entertaining this idea that there are 'popular' characters that will sell, and they support making the 'unpopular' characters. Because one figure selling doesn't make another figure sell, and toy companies aren't really in the habit of making figures they know people aren't going to buy.

But again, anchor characters don't have anything to do with sell-through. They have everything to do with convincing retailers a wave will sell by front-lining a name even the dumbest clown in a Walmart office somewhere knows and thinks is popular.

Mattel's new DC line may get to the point where Batmen aren't as necessary

Undoubtedly. But that'll be up to them (and us, to be fair) to convince retailers that it's worth the investment without being too hands-on about what the line really includes.

but it's not like they run WWE waves without main eventers. Hasbro doesn't do ML waves without the A-list, either.

But I think the issue there is a lot more complex than 'wave anchors' and literally just has more to do with what they think customers want to buy. Because Hasbro -does- release individual figures (deluxe or whatever) that absolutely could not be considered 'wave anchors' in a regular wave. It breaks the logic that wave anchors are necessary if you can sell figures completely untethered to those anchors.

I'm not saying that they don't have an audience who wants Mr. Terrific, they do. But the line health is going to depend more on serving the 3 people only buying all the Gotham stuff versus the 1 person who wants a full DCU

But if you are releasing a wave of 6 figures in a case of 6, for instance, then this argument is a complete non-starter. All of the figures have to sell. If the manufacturer doesn't believe they will, they won't make it. No amount of selling Batmans is going to sell the Mr. Terrific. Mr. Terrific still has to sell on his own to people that want a Mr. Terrific figure. It goes back to the magic bullet argument; that Batman isn't selling the Mr. Terrific in any way. They are still separate items made in equal proportion.

Of course, ultimately that is the true customer for the manufacturer, and they know what sells and how fast and how often they have to go on clearance.

I wouldn't go that far. Retailers -believe- they know what sells, which is why they can get hands-on about what they will carry. But they are wrong as often as right. Because, again, they're usually absolute clowns with no concept of what they're buying. That's why it's so easy to sell them on those shitty low-artic kids' lines of Star Wars or Marvel characters that seem to rot on pegs forever before eventually getting cancelled and replaced by some new, but equally insipid kids' line; because some dipshit at Target heard "this line is going to be all the biggest names in Star Wars lore like Boba Fett and Darth Vader' and they're like 'I'LL TAKE A MILLION.'

Doesn't matter that the previous line of exactly that already failed. They're dumb as shit. Genuinely. From experience - these people are idiots. A good chunk of them aren't just non-collectors, they're not parents either. Virtually no understanding of toys in a real world context. They have literally no idea what people want to buy and they can't interpret the data because the sales data is actually fairly complicated and requires some level of understanding of what the products in the spreadsheet even are.

BUT, they are the idiot-kings of the aisle and still must be appeased by dangling things in front of them that make them feel smart. "You know Spider-Man? I bet you know that Spider-Man is SO popular, right? This line has Spider-Man in it all the time. Every wave you order will include at least one, maybe two or three, Spider-Man!' Done. Sold. Nothing else matters.

It isn't so much that anchors are outdated as that waves are probably outdated, at least in terms of mixed cases of characters to keep the character mix fresh on shelves. Its kind of a weird quirk to the toy industry really - when Nabisco is filling Oreo orders, WalMart doesn't get a box with 3 packs traditional, 1 pack mint, 1 pack peanut butter, 1 pack the flavor of the month. Or when the new Taylor Swift album comes out it isn't in a wave with a new Ed Sheeran and a re-release of Sabrina Carpenter.

This is an extremely well-reasoned point as well. We have to admit, at some point, that telling retailers they can't have more Spider-Man until they finish all their Disco Stus is a terrible idea. But, as I was going into above, the reality is that if you give retailers the option to not buy Disco Stu at all, a lot of them just won't. Or will order such a ludicrously limited supply that they can't even meet the limited demand.

I assume that WalMart buys into a full year worth of waves anyway

The last I knew, and this could have changed, Walmart and Target don't buy in full years for toy product that is not considered evergreen. Like, they might buy a full year supply of Big Red Bouncy Balls. Or, at this stage, they may tell Mattel that they want X number of cases of Hot Wheels delivered every quarter for the entire year (trusted brand with proven sell-through that they don't have to micro-manage or think about). But for rolling product like action figures, nerf guns, LEGO sets, etc - they are (or were, to my most recent knowledge) more hands-on with ordering.
They do plan-os yearly, so they will tend to want to keep those full. But we've all seen that Walmart, in particular, is not shy about just not having a certain product on shelves for months and months and then slowly letting it disappear until one day it's just not on the plan-o anymore and everyone goes 'did Walmart stop carrying X?' Yes. 2 months ago, actually. Because they weren't impressed with the first seven months of product and just didn't order anything else.


Reasonable people can disagree on all of this - but I think we probably all agree on some version of 'the old ways of doing things maybe don't work as well anymore and both manufacturers and retailers need to adapt.'

Edit to point out that a key thing here is also TRUST. If the Target buyer trusts Hasbro's reps, a lot of times they'll just listen to them and buy what they say. If the Hasbro rep says 'people are going to love the next five waves of Marvel Legends' - IF that rep hasn't steered the buyer wrong so far, and if 'Hasbro Marvel Legends' is a big positive number on the spreadsheet already, even a dummy dumb dumb dumb buyer from dumbtown is likely to be say 'okie dokie.'

 

[Schizm]

On the topic of wave anchors: Target didn't carry the second Marvel Legends Mini-Comics wave. It's in their system, but I've never seen a single report of people finding that wave at Target.

The characters in that wave are Beast, Black Widow, Daredevil, Feral, Rachel Summers Phoenix and Silver Surfer.

No A-list anchor. We could argue who the biggest draws of the wave are between all the ones with media exposure and I'm not saying Widow and Beast and DD aren't major characters but it's not really my point - Target didn't stock the wave.

Would they have if one of those figures had been swapped with Iron Man 72 from the Executioner wave? I don't know but it's worth considering. And if we never see another mini-comics wave, this is probably why.

And yes, I know WE all liked the wave, and yes, this is a DC thread. Points be relevant!

 

[Damien]

On the topic of wave anchors: Target didn't carry the second Marvel Legends Mini-Comics wave. It's in their system, but I've never seen a single report of people finding that wave at Target.

The characters in that wave are Beast, Black Widow, Daredevil, Feral, Rachel Summers Phoenix and Silver Surfer.

No A-list anchor. We could argue who the biggest draws of the wave are between all the ones with media exposure and I'm not saying Widow and Beast and DD aren't major characters but it's not really my point - Target didn't stock the wave.

Would they have if one of those figures had been swapped with Iron Man 72 from the Executioner wave? I don't know but it's worth considering. And if we never see another mini-comics wave, this is probably why.

And yes, I know WE all liked the wave, and yes, this is a DC thread. Points be relevant!

Absolutely a possibility that Target's buyer looked at that wave and said 'who dis?'
I believe Target still has regional buyers, so it would be even more interesting if some areas got them and some didn't.

It's fair to point out that there -are- other factors in those decisions (how many similar products they're buying, how the planogram is laid out and if there's room for this size or style of packaging, how many items in that aisle they have at that price point, what the price point actually is and expected sell-through at that price, etc). But 'I didn't recognize these names and so I didn't buy any' is 100% on that list and a possible reason you didn't see them.

The only pushback I'd give there is that Marvel Legends is so well-established at this point that they would have had to put out SEVERAL waves of product that Target got absolutely hosed on for Target to start really scrutinizing wave line-ups that hard again - assuming they stopped at some point and had more trust in the brand.

 

[Xavion2025]

But if you are releasing a wave of 6 figures in a case of 6, for instance, then this argument is a complete non-starter. All of the figures have to sell. If the manufacturer doesn't believe they will, they won't make it. No amount of selling Batmans is going to sell the Mr. Terrific. Mr. Terrific still has to sell on his own to people that want a Mr. Terrific figure. It goes back to the magic bullet argument; that Batman isn't selling the Mr. Terrific in any way. They are still separate items made in equal proportion.

I see your point. Either there’s a market for a line of action figures featuring a diverse selection of DC characters at mass market retail or there’s not.

 

[Damien]

I see your point. Either there’s a market for a line of action figures featuring a diverse selection of DC characters at mass market retail or there’s not.

Exactly. DCUC proved it. Every current Hasbro line proves it. Even the failures of major properties have proved it. You can either sell the thing or you can't sell the thing. You don't make Red Tornado at all if what you really want to do is sell 300 different Batmans. There's gotta be an actual incentive to make Red Tornado at all.

I think there is, though. Which is good news. I think understanding anchor figures don't really exist in any meaningful way to us or to manufacturers frees us to think about whether individual characters can sell. I think DC has a depth of roster that, while not Batman popular, resonate with enough people that making figures is good business. Guess we'll see sooner than later.

 

[secondwhiteline]

I still think this may be faulty reasoning, though. If that's the argument, then you've rendered the term 'anchor character' worthless. Because, by that logic, most figures in every assortment, regardless of how obscure, are anchor characters -- because these toy companies just aren't going to make figures that they do not believe can get a decent sell-through.
That's kind of what I've been saying - we may need to dispense with even entertaining this idea that there are 'popular' characters that will sell, and they support making the 'unpopular' characters. Because one figure selling doesn't make another figure sell, and toy companies aren't really in the habit of making figures they know people aren't going to buy.

But again, anchor characters don't have anything to do with sell-through. They have everything to do with convincing retailers a wave will sell by front-lining a name even the dumbest clown in a Walmart office somewhere knows and thinks is popular.


Undoubtedly. But that'll be up to them (and us, to be fair) to convince retailers that it's worth the investment without being too hands-on about what the line really includes.


But I think the issue there is a lot more complex than 'wave anchors' and literally just has more to do with what they think customers want to buy. Because Hasbro -does- release individual figures (deluxe or whatever) that absolutely could not be considered 'wave anchors' in a regular wave. It breaks the logic that wave anchors are necessary if you can sell figures completely untethered to those anchors.


But if you are releasing a wave of 6 figures in a case of 6, for instance, then this argument is a complete non-starter. All of the figures have to sell. If the manufacturer doesn't believe they will, they won't make it. No amount of selling Batmans is going to sell the Mr. Terrific. Mr. Terrific still has to sell on his own to people that want a Mr. Terrific figure. It goes back to the magic bullet argument; that Batman isn't selling the Mr. Terrific in any way. They are still separate items made in equal proportion.

My argument isn't that Mr. Terrific won't sell, though, or that he's unpopular. My argument is that Mr. Terrific sells to enough of the line's market segment to make him worth producing within their existing framework but not enough where that framework needs him to have multiple iterations or extra copies in a single assortment. My argument is that there's a difference between above-replacement-level popularity and core-product-offering popularity, reflected in what and how much they choose to offer. Because these characters aren't being made in equal proportion. They're appearing in the line with different levels of frequency, and within a single case they're likely to be packed in different quantities according to expected sales. They're not in equal proportion when considering the raw quantities of each character shipped.

That doesn't mean Mr. Terrific isn't selling, but if they're sticking to something like a traditional release strategy, a case might have 3 copies of the same Batman vs. 1 of that Mr. Terrific to account for more expected Batmen sold; isn't that the anchoring we're talking about? I mean, at this point it's probably time I default to your line anchor terminology, which feels like a more accurate way of approaching this and closer to what I was trying to articulate anyway. I don't see how something's not the anchor when there's the most of it on offer.

But a lot of the characters they're going to end up offering are probably unknown quantities, too, if they're also trying to satisfy a collector demand for novelty or variety. If they're offering something, they expect it to sell through, but do we have an example of a line at this scale without something that didn't? Not every projection is accurate, and sometimes Extraño or Dogwelder just doesn't land. I do think they and most companies take it as truth that there's a difference in risk between offering an assortment comprised largely of things that have sold for you before and one with things you haven't tried to sell yet. I don't see them in their other lines composing lineups without selections that have consistently sold for them. 3 Cody Rhodes and 2 Rhea Ripleys in a WWE Elite case shipped to Walmart doesn't mean that no one's buying the same case's 1 Dragon Lee, but even if everyone's selling through they're still ultimately selling more Codys and Rheas. And then when another 3 Codys and another 2 Rheas show up again in a couple waves and sell through again, it tells me that they believe, maybe accurately, that the line health relies on satisfying demand for new Cody Rhodes and Rhea Ripley figures at regular intervals. Does that make Cody and Rhea anchors, or something else?

I recognize that this still simplifies things, because it doesn't take into account toy format or individual product quality or appeal as a toy independent of character familiarity; like you said, a format like Marvel Legends' deluxe offerings can run contrary to this argument for a lot of reasons I can only speculate on: improved levels of execution, more unique designs? I don't know. I do think collectors fundamentally accept that there's an inherent qualitative difference in a larger or more complex piece and there's a segment of the base that prizes craft. I don't know if that totally accounts for the viability of the ML Deluxe offerings, but sometimes people just want a big cool monster or robot and if it's part of a line they've already bought into, the next step is easier. But that means a Deluxe figure has access to an appeal that Generic Human-Sized Bodysuit Superhero doesn't.

I mean, I guess we're agreeing on some level with "What they release is what they expect people to buy" part you mentioned, and to be fair a lot of that logic becomes circular: they expect people to buy more Batman so they make more Batmen, but they never expect people to buy more Weather Wizards so we never really get to see if the audience will buy anything or if they just bought more Batmen because more Batmen were there. (The same argument people had about John Cena's merch sales at his peak, actually.)

 

[Chooch555]

Interestingly Hasbro has started evergreen like dedicated SKUs for Marvel Legends (MCU Spidey, Cap, and Iron Man recently) and Transformers (Optimus and Bumblebee). Clearly Target and Walmart are good with the idea. A dedicated SKU for a Batman and a Superman that stays for 6-12 months could allow for more variety in waves.

 

[fac]

I wouldn't go that far. Retailers -believe- they know what sells, which is why they can get hands-on about what they will carry. But they are wrong as often as right.

With modern inventory control now tracking each figure in a wave (needed for online pre-orders and fulfillment) as an individual piece, I think they have excellent data on character selection. I think what they can't predict too well is when a line has peaked and started a downward trend overall so sales drop for both the heavy hitters and the c-listers or when the associated media IP is not going to resonate or not have as long lasting appeal (see the DC movies for the least 20 years being either hits or flops).

We have to admit, at some point, that telling retailers they can't have more Spider-Man until they finish all their Disco Stus is a terrible idea.

To be fair, it was the retailers that asked for this initially when the "just-in-time" logistics kicked in that placed each toy line into a large bucket SKU, and then outsourced the character selection to the manufacturer with the idea the retailer would just say "give me more DC" and what ever was up next was shipped out. The manufacturers didn't always time it right, and of course wouldn't turn down an order, which is how many lines almost tanked because if Wave 3 (all big names at Christmas) sold X amount they ordered the same if not more for Wave 4 in February, and if Wave 4 had a couple of peg-warmers then the trigger to order Wave 5 took longer or was reduced, and so it went.

But as noted once online fulfillment of individual figures took over, eventually each figure needed to be tracked and ordered on its own (people may not remember but places like BBTS and EE sold by the case at a discount to individual - now BBTS doesn't even list cases because I assume each figure is in a solid case), but the Wave/case mix mentality took a long time to break, and even when it did it led to things Target sending solid cases to different stores because they couldn't handle the inventory right. (This is why I have felt the BAF model is outdated, it is trying to solve a sales problem of moving all the figures in mixed case and avoid peg warmers which is no longer how the majority of figures are likely sold to retail anymore).

The last I knew, and this could have changed, Walmart and Target don't buy in full years for toy product that is not considered evergreen. Like, they might buy a full year supply of Big Red Bouncy Balls. Or, at this stage, they may tell Mattel that they want X number of cases of Hot Wheels delivered every quarter for the entire year (trusted brand with proven sell-through that they don't have to micro-manage or think about). But for rolling product like action figures, nerf guns, LEGO sets, etc - they are (or were, to my most recent knowledge) more hands-on with ordering.

Yes, it was I think Hot Wheels and Matchbox that introduced the case assortment that rolled along so that every re-order brought new cars. Anyway, I agree they are more hands-on, what I meant was that WalMart sees what Mattel has planned for the whole year and probably says they'll take X number of Wave 17, and Y of Wave 18, and Z of Wave 19 and so on plus exclusives and pallet displays and all that - so they see the big picture which is that at the end of the year they will have X number of Batman and Batman adjacent stuff on the shelves each quarter. But they will of course be ruthless and cancel or reduce Wave 18 if Wave 17 is sitting too long, or plan to skip Wave 19 if they think they have a better option for those pegs.

I think having an evergreen SKU for toys makes sense for the mass market retailers, the way some books, albums and movies never go out of print. Rotate through you Bats and Supes variants and always have them ready to go, and supplement with the assortments of other characters.

 

[secondwhiteline]

With modern inventory control now tracking each figure in a wave (needed for online pre-orders and fulfillment) as an individual piece, I think they have excellent data on character selection. I think what they can't predict too well is when a line has peaked and started a downward trend overall so sales drop for both the heavy hitters and the c-listers or when the associated media IP is not going to resonate or not have as long lasting appeal (see the DC movies for the least 20 years being either hits or flops).

Which also dovetails with full waves of ML ending up in bargain stores when the media offerings hit a popularity nadir, including some characters they've sold successfully before. Although I don't know if the comic waves are quite as susceptible to those trends or not, but if Target didn't even get the 2nd mini-comic wave, maybe that's an aspect too.

I think it's relevant here to note that Mattel seems to still ship traditional waves/cases for a lot of their core WWE lines, even if they've diversified that somewhat. I don't know if that reflects outdated strategy or if that works uniquely well for the property. Might be more the latter than you might expect, not just for roster size and variety but also because ensuring evergreen personalities are on the shelves also assumes offering a full variety of their ring gear, and it's common for wrestlers to have multiple colorways of the same gear, special event gear, and new branded t-shirts that they wear onscreen. The reissue waves almost seem to exist because their sell through happens so quickly, even for major names.