yojoebro82
Thoughtful
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2025
- Messages
- 1,271
My first exposure to McUse was Toybiz Marvel legends. "Magneto on an Iron Man buck? That's questionable", I thought.
Mattel DC Figures
- Thread starter TheSameIdiot
- Start date
jayjonah
Ponderous
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2025
- Messages
- 142
I've read the last couple pages but basically Mattel has said the DC line will copy their WWE line in certain ways not fully disclosed. The kids line you saw at ToyFair and online sites is similar to WWE Main Event. The DC Collector line will be similar to the Elite line and the Ultimate line which means more accessories, if it mirrors the Ultimate line. There was even talk of calling the upper tier line DC Ultimates. However looking at the kids line the DC team must have received a decent budget because WWE main event line doesn't have accessories like was presented for the kids line. I mean who has heard of a kids line that has figures with removable face plates.
This post is going to be lengthy, I think. I apologize in advance. But I’ve been thinking about how this all started and I wanted to get these thoughts down. Plus I think it’ll be interesting and a little eye opening for folks who don’t know the complete history of Marvel Legends and DC Universe Classics.
Back in 2001, ToyBiz produced a new line of action figures called Spider-Man Classics. It was pretty darn cool. The line was aimed at adult collectors that were fans of Marvel Comics. This was the first line that ToyBiz produced in the 6” scale and it was an immediate success. I don’t know what specifically it was that made it such a hit with the fans. I don’t know if it was the scale, the insane (for the time) amount of articulation, the fact that the figures included a comic book and a wall mountable display base or the clamshell packaging. Maybe it was all of the above. The point is the line was a hit. And this was a comic based line. No media was tied into it.
Well, it was smooth sailing for the first couple of waves. But ToyBiz ran into a little bit of a problem. In 2002 Sony released a live action Spider-Man movie. Now obviously there were going to be figures based on the film, that was a no-brainer. But that presented TB with a dilemma. They didn’t want two Spider-Man lines out at the same time because they felt that might cannibalize sales. What to do? They didn’t want to lose precious shelf space on the retail shelves. The answer was … Marvel Legends.
I was at SDCC on Preview Night in 2002 when ToyBiz showed us the first prototypes of Marvel Legends, a line that still continues to this day. I talked to Jesse Falcon that night and I got all this info straight from him. Marvel Legends was going to be a COMIC BASED line, six inch scale, highly articulated and would include a comic book and a wall mountable display base in clam shell packaging. It would be just like Spider-Man Classics but obviously without Spider-Man. It would feature Marvel’s most popular characters in their most iconic looks. The first wave was supposed to be Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk and Dr. Doom. Doom did not get tooled in time so at the last minute he got replaced with a Toad prototype they had left over from another line. No matter, Doom came out in wave 2. At the time, the plan was to alternate Legends with Spider-Man Classics. During years with no new Spidey movie you’d have Spider-Man Classics. During years with a movie you’d have a new wave or two of Legends.
Now no one expected Legends to be a hit. It was only there as a filler until Raimi’s Spider-Man series of movies ran their course. Myself, I was hoping for four waves. I’m an Avengers guy so I wanted Cap, Iron Man, Thor and hopefully a couple of others, maybe Hawkeye and the Wasp. I mean, there was no cartoon, video game or movie to sell the line. Wal-Mart wasn’t even on board and that’s 40 percent of your sales right there. I figured we would be lucky if the line lasted three or four waves. Five would be pushing it.
Well, guess what, true believers. Marvel Legends was a huge, huge hit. Wal-Mart jumped on board with wave 3. They started asking for their own exclusive waves. ToyBiz owned Marvel so they paid no licensing fees. Sales were so good they could do things like all villains waves, something unheard of prior to this. I could go on and on, but the point is comic based figures in the six inch scale with lots of articulation was a hit with fans.
Sooooo … that brings us to 2003 and Mattel first acquiring the DC license. Actually, screw that. Let’s just skip ahead to SDCC 2007. That’s when Mattel announced a new line called DC Superheroes. I got to speak at length with the line manager whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten. He used to post as Inside Traitor on the old Action Figure Insider message boards. He told me it was the buyers at Wal-Mart who went to them and said “Hey, we have a line called Marvel Legends that’s doing great for us. Why don’t you guys do the same with the DC characters?” DING! And so the DC Superheroes line was born. Same general idea as Legends. Six inch scale figures, wall mountable display base, comic book packed in, lots of posability, ect. AND … they would be sculpted by none other than the Four Horsemen themselves. I was beyond excited. DC figures in the Marvel Legends style was a dream come true.
When I looked at what Mattel had on display in their booth, I was a little confused. Many of those shelves had a wall mountable display base but no figure. The few figures I saw were Superman and Batman. No matter, I thought. This is only Preview Night. Maybe they just haven’t arrived yet. So I walked down to the Four Horsemen booth to talk to Cornboy and maybe get a quote or two for Action Figure Insider (I had my press pass in those days). Well, I got some info from Cornboy all right, but nothing I could post.
Eric laid a bombshell on me. The Horsemen sculpted a bunch of figures thinking they had the master license for DC Comics. In turns out they did not. They found that out at the last minute, which is exactly when you don’t want to find something like that out. A week before SDCC, some staffers from DC Direct (Remember them?) came to the FH studio and pulled nearly all their DC sculpts. No, they said, you can’t use these. That explained the empty display cases in the Mattel booth. Eric was heartbroken, and I could tell how upset he was when he was telling me this. He sculpted a beautiful Darkseid that would never see the light of day, he said. Needless to say, that started a flurry of calls between Mattel and DC. It was DC’s position that Mattel could use whatever characters they wanted in the animated style but anything comic based was strictly DC Direct. DC would allow Mattel to use the Superman and Batman family of characters in the 6” line but they were restricted from anything else. They didn’t want Mattel stepping on DC Direct’s toes. To make matters worse, Mattel couldn’t make anything story specific in the 6” line, either. The Horsemen sculpted a great Hunter/Prey Superman but that got yanked, too.
Well, that was the last straw. Mattel took DC back to the bargaining table and after they ponied up a lot of cash a new deal was struck. And so DC Superheroes became DC Universe Classics. And life was good.
Here’s some irony for ya: Hasbro acquired the master license for Marvel in 2007. They then immediately screwed up Marvel Legends something awful, I guess in favor of their shrinky dink 4 inch line. Well, that didn’t work out too well for them. And then in 2011 I heard Hasbro was planning on bringing back Marvel Legends and this time maybe taking their heads out of their asses. I talked to Dwight Stall at the Hasbro booth at SDCC that year and he confirmed they were indeed bringing back Legends. He gave me a couple of prototypes to handle and they looked and felt like honest to God Marvel Legends. I asked why the change of heart and he looked right over at the Mattel booth and said “They’re having some success over there.” Honest to God. That’s an exact quote.
I just find it supremely ironic that it was the success of Marvel Legends that inspired Mattel to create DC Universe Classics, and in turn it was the success of DCUC that inspired Hasbro to bring back Marvel Legends.
As my old friend @rodkeith once said “The child is truly Father to the man.”
It would have been great if Marvel Legends and DCUC were both going full bore at the same time, but in this business it’s always something. No need to go into the whole Super Powers/Geoff Johns/New 52 fiasco again. With this hobby it seems every time you get excited about something someone pulls the rug right out from underneath ya.
Well, here we are in 2026. Hasbro is still producing Legends and Mattel is about to start a new line aimed at collectors. What will the future bring? I guess all we can do is hope for the best but brace for the worst.
Back in 2001, ToyBiz produced a new line of action figures called Spider-Man Classics. It was pretty darn cool. The line was aimed at adult collectors that were fans of Marvel Comics. This was the first line that ToyBiz produced in the 6” scale and it was an immediate success. I don’t know what specifically it was that made it such a hit with the fans. I don’t know if it was the scale, the insane (for the time) amount of articulation, the fact that the figures included a comic book and a wall mountable display base or the clamshell packaging. Maybe it was all of the above. The point is the line was a hit. And this was a comic based line. No media was tied into it.
Well, it was smooth sailing for the first couple of waves. But ToyBiz ran into a little bit of a problem. In 2002 Sony released a live action Spider-Man movie. Now obviously there were going to be figures based on the film, that was a no-brainer. But that presented TB with a dilemma. They didn’t want two Spider-Man lines out at the same time because they felt that might cannibalize sales. What to do? They didn’t want to lose precious shelf space on the retail shelves. The answer was … Marvel Legends.
I was at SDCC on Preview Night in 2002 when ToyBiz showed us the first prototypes of Marvel Legends, a line that still continues to this day. I talked to Jesse Falcon that night and I got all this info straight from him. Marvel Legends was going to be a COMIC BASED line, six inch scale, highly articulated and would include a comic book and a wall mountable display base in clam shell packaging. It would be just like Spider-Man Classics but obviously without Spider-Man. It would feature Marvel’s most popular characters in their most iconic looks. The first wave was supposed to be Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk and Dr. Doom. Doom did not get tooled in time so at the last minute he got replaced with a Toad prototype they had left over from another line. No matter, Doom came out in wave 2. At the time, the plan was to alternate Legends with Spider-Man Classics. During years with no new Spidey movie you’d have Spider-Man Classics. During years with a movie you’d have a new wave or two of Legends.
Now no one expected Legends to be a hit. It was only there as a filler until Raimi’s Spider-Man series of movies ran their course. Myself, I was hoping for four waves. I’m an Avengers guy so I wanted Cap, Iron Man, Thor and hopefully a couple of others, maybe Hawkeye and the Wasp. I mean, there was no cartoon, video game or movie to sell the line. Wal-Mart wasn’t even on board and that’s 40 percent of your sales right there. I figured we would be lucky if the line lasted three or four waves. Five would be pushing it.
Well, guess what, true believers. Marvel Legends was a huge, huge hit. Wal-Mart jumped on board with wave 3. They started asking for their own exclusive waves. ToyBiz owned Marvel so they paid no licensing fees. Sales were so good they could do things like all villains waves, something unheard of prior to this. I could go on and on, but the point is comic based figures in the six inch scale with lots of articulation was a hit with fans.
Sooooo … that brings us to 2003 and Mattel first acquiring the DC license. Actually, screw that. Let’s just skip ahead to SDCC 2007. That’s when Mattel announced a new line called DC Superheroes. I got to speak at length with the line manager whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten. He used to post as Inside Traitor on the old Action Figure Insider message boards. He told me it was the buyers at Wal-Mart who went to them and said “Hey, we have a line called Marvel Legends that’s doing great for us. Why don’t you guys do the same with the DC characters?” DING! And so the DC Superheroes line was born. Same general idea as Legends. Six inch scale figures, wall mountable display base, comic book packed in, lots of posability, ect. AND … they would be sculpted by none other than the Four Horsemen themselves. I was beyond excited. DC figures in the Marvel Legends style was a dream come true.
When I looked at what Mattel had on display in their booth, I was a little confused. Many of those shelves had a wall mountable display base but no figure. The few figures I saw were Superman and Batman. No matter, I thought. This is only Preview Night. Maybe they just haven’t arrived yet. So I walked down to the Four Horsemen booth to talk to Cornboy and maybe get a quote or two for Action Figure Insider (I had my press pass in those days). Well, I got some info from Cornboy all right, but nothing I could post.
Eric laid a bombshell on me. The Horsemen sculpted a bunch of figures thinking they had the master license for DC Comics. In turns out they did not. They found that out at the last minute, which is exactly when you don’t want to find something like that out. A week before SDCC, some staffers from DC Direct (Remember them?) came to the FH studio and pulled nearly all their DC sculpts. No, they said, you can’t use these. That explained the empty display cases in the Mattel booth. Eric was heartbroken, and I could tell how upset he was when he was telling me this. He sculpted a beautiful Darkseid that would never see the light of day, he said. Needless to say, that started a flurry of calls between Mattel and DC. It was DC’s position that Mattel could use whatever characters they wanted in the animated style but anything comic based was strictly DC Direct. DC would allow Mattel to use the Superman and Batman family of characters in the 6” line but they were restricted from anything else. They didn’t want Mattel stepping on DC Direct’s toes. To make matters worse, Mattel couldn’t make anything story specific in the 6” line, either. The Horsemen sculpted a great Hunter/Prey Superman but that got yanked, too.
Well, that was the last straw. Mattel took DC back to the bargaining table and after they ponied up a lot of cash a new deal was struck. And so DC Superheroes became DC Universe Classics. And life was good.
Here’s some irony for ya: Hasbro acquired the master license for Marvel in 2007. They then immediately screwed up Marvel Legends something awful, I guess in favor of their shrinky dink 4 inch line. Well, that didn’t work out too well for them. And then in 2011 I heard Hasbro was planning on bringing back Marvel Legends and this time maybe taking their heads out of their asses. I talked to Dwight Stall at the Hasbro booth at SDCC that year and he confirmed they were indeed bringing back Legends. He gave me a couple of prototypes to handle and they looked and felt like honest to God Marvel Legends. I asked why the change of heart and he looked right over at the Mattel booth and said “They’re having some success over there.” Honest to God. That’s an exact quote.
I just find it supremely ironic that it was the success of Marvel Legends that inspired Mattel to create DC Universe Classics, and in turn it was the success of DCUC that inspired Hasbro to bring back Marvel Legends.
As my old friend @rodkeith once said “The child is truly Father to the man.”
It would have been great if Marvel Legends and DCUC were both going full bore at the same time, but in this business it’s always something. No need to go into the whole Super Powers/Geoff Johns/New 52 fiasco again. With this hobby it seems every time you get excited about something someone pulls the rug right out from underneath ya.
Well, here we are in 2026. Hasbro is still producing Legends and Mattel is about to start a new line aimed at collectors. What will the future bring? I guess all we can do is hope for the best but brace for the worst.
jayjonah
Ponderous
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2025
- Messages
- 142
It's actually the other way around. That Ironman was in series 1 and Magneto was in series 3. I actually thought it made sense since they are both around the same height and build.
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Gods, I'd argue Hasbro doesn't even plan that well.
I've said for years that you need eight superhero base bodies:
- Men
- Brawler (Superman, Thor)
- Standard (Batman, Captain America)
- Acrobat (Nightwing, Daredevil)
- Skinny (Flash, Mr. Fantastic)
- Teen
- Women
- Brawler (Wonder Woman, Jim Lee Rogue)
- Standard (Zatanna, Phoenix)
- Teen