Mattel DC Figures

I loved DCUC. Bought everything. My extended Justice League and extended Legion of Doom are still on display in my mancave.
I HATED the Rainbow Lantern wave. It should have been the actual Lanterns - Arisia, Larfleeze, Bleeze, Saint Walker, Iroque, etc.
I LOVED the Super Friends figures. I'm glad we got them all before the line folded.
I was prepared to shift to McFarlane to add to my collection of missing DCUC figures.
Only got a very small handful. The size/scale difference just irritated me too much.
If McFarlane had kept the same size as DCUC, I probably would have bought everything that DCUC didn't make.
I hope the new DC line is compatible with the DCUC line in scale. If so, I'll definitely be picking up some characters missing in my collection.
However, I have no intention of rebuying everything.
 
scottg10 said:
Thanks, I appreciate the insight. It was mainly a question of curiosity, it was so long ago and Neitlich is long gone, so it doesn't really matter at this point. I know corporations tend to repeat the same mistakes over and over, but hopefully they've learned enough since then to not to let one man's ego tank an entire product line.
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No problem.
The whole point of even bringing up Scott was really to illustrate that... he's gone. So there's no need, YET, to hang a lot of his bad decisions on Mattel as a whole and act like the Mattel of 2012 is the Mattel of 2026. I've said in my comments about Mattel previously, in this thread and others, that the company is still absolutely festering with morons that WILL make terrible decisions if given the chance to do so. They're as far from a perfect toy company as you can get without being like.. Super7 or something. But there's a lot of great people there that genuinely want to make great toys and who are active toy collectors themselves. They get it. They know what we want.
It's just gonna be about who wins more often.


mrboshek said:
I was trying to remember what the story was behind Johns involvement. I came across this link, but of course the fwoosh is down so I can't get the whole retelling or find out who made the post.
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One of the ways Scott sucked up to Johns was to let him create one of the 30th Ann. figures which was basically advertised as a 'fan creation' wave but ended up mostly being vanity projects. It was how they got out the Fearless Photog figure that never got made in the vintage line despite the kid winning the contest.
Anyway.. that was the line where Scott dumped his time-travel Deadpool rip-off 'create-a-character' into MOTU lore (Mighty Spector). 4H got to make a dragon dude. And Geoff Johns gave us 'Sir Laser-Lot.'

I have no idea what Scott was supposed to get out of sucking up to Johns besides an action figure in DCUC that no one bought, but whatever it was I don't think he got it since he does not work for or around DC Comics and is practically jobless.


mrboshek said:
My interest fell off a cliff after that Lantern wave.
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You and TONS of other collectors, apparently. It was even mentioned internally, from what I heard, as the moment collectors stopped feeling like Mattel was listening to them. You can get away with ignoring a lot from your consumer-base if they at least feel like you're listening and you care. The moment they feel like you don't give a shit what they want, you've lost them. Even Mattel, famously idiots, knows that.
 
Ugh. I bought the Rainbow Lanterns wave with extreme prejudice because I was insanely all-in to DCUC and also wanted the Anti-Monitor (such as he was, sigh). But boy was I pissed, and I say that as someone who legitimately loved the Super Powers/SuperFriends stuff. Rainbow Lanterns really did feel like the falling-off point, and nothing was ever the same after that. I really did think they were going to start getting their shit together right before they lost the license, but things were so uneven and nonsensical even then.
 
I know if I was in charge of this DC line I would mirror some deep cuts and the regulars that McFarlane had did and show the DC fans and McFarlane this is how it's done and you really couldn't compete except for your vehicles.
 
Xavion2025 said:
I’m glad you said that, because it’s given me some much needed perspective on my own posts. If the figures are good, I’m going to be on board in some capacity. I’m making myself out to be much more difficult than I am by presenting things I’d like to see as demands.
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I always try to keep in mind that the most passionate (and autistic) nerds on the planet love whining and nitpicking, and will always be whining and nitpicking. Excluding very obvious bad faith exceptions and echo chamber meme hating, most people I've seen complain do it out of a hardcore love for something. It's very easy to lose sight of this at times.

I've also recently learned that toy guys will buy basically anything if they have even the vaguest familiarity with it and the figures are actually good. If the only loud and consistent complaints about your toyline are "Hey, why the HELL don't we have this character?!", you're doing good. That's not even complaining, that's just asking for more product.
 
Niko (protozoalord) said:
I always try to keep in mind that the most passionate (and autistic) nerds on the planet love whining and nitpicking, and will always be whining and nitpicking. Excluding very obvious bad faith exceptions and echo chamber meme hating, most people I've seen complain do it out of a hardcore love for something. It's very easy to lose sight of this at times.

I've also recently learned that toy guys will buy basically anything if they have even the vaguest familiarity with it and the figures are actually good. If the only loud and consistent complaints about your toyline are "Hey, why the HELL don't we have this character?!", you're doing good. That's not even complaining, that's just asking for more product.
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Also worth noting as an addendum that even those extremely loud complainers that hate everything - buy all of it. They buy it and then tell you how much it all sucks.
 
So the thing about that Rainbow Lantern wave, and saying this as a massive fan of the GL book at that time, was that it could almost have been forgiven if they had done actual Lanterns... Atrocitus, Larfleeze, Saint Walker, Indigo-1 instead of the Super Hero counterparts. But indigo Atom, Blue Lantern Flash, Violet Wonder Woman... those choices were bad even for someone like me. It was no wonder the line lost all momentum at that point. And then to have to subscribe to a year's worth of mail away figures to get Atrocitus and Larfleeze was super annoying.
 
secondwhiteline said:
But judging by Mattel's character selection for the new line, I think they're in a pretty good place about structuring these waves? Every choice seems sensible and Deathstroke hitting so early even in this format tells me that there's at least some focus on toyetic characters who aren't total household names, as popular as he is with comics nerds.
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"Sell action figures of badass characters" is a surprisingly underused business strategy. Deathstroke. All those badass knights Damien posted. It's not that complicated, guys.

I can't count the number of times I've read, "I don't know anything about them, but the toy was too cool to pass up" on the Marvel board.
AceofKnaves said:
Although when talking about “adult collectors” some of us need to remember that an “adult collector” might not be in their 40s/50s with a huge amount of toy-baggage. An adult collector could be a person in their 20s who never had a chance to build a DC figure collection and is just starting.
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While I am, err, not in my 20s, this fits me pretty well.

I wasn't into DCUC for a variety of reasons. I was a Marvel kid, I didn't like the line's uniformity (something I seek out now), and I didn't think they articulated well. My only DCUC figure was a classic Superman that had a massive splotch of excess red paint across his chest. Being a kid, I decided to cover it up with a blue Sharpie. The Sharpie didn't remotely match the rest of the costume, so my effort to cover up the defect stood out more than the red paint had. That was the beginning and end of my DCUC collection.

These days, I know a lot more about DC. I have a shelf dedicated to DC characters. I hear you guys talking about Morrison's JLA, and I think, "Fuck, I need to clear another shelf for DC characters." I'd like to build out a full Justice League roster for the first time.

All this Green Lantern talk makes me want a Jo Mullein, too.
 
I don't think DCUC ended because they finished their Super Powers tribute, but I'd agree that the extended Super Powers tribute was the biggest symptom of Scott's self-indulgence, which did tremendous damage to the line. I was still in college when DCUC started, and it's pretty wild that the line hooked me when it was so slavishly dedicated to Bronze Age DC, but I grew up with a figure collector father so that stuff was always present to me where it wouldn't have been for most other 20-year-olds.

My argument about the death of DCUC is that it starts way earlier than most people tend to think: that Wave 14 was the tipping point. That wave coincided with a Walmart holiday shipper for the line, meaning that the line was out there for the Christmas season with a wave where the A-listers were Alan Scott and Zatanna. That feels like the moment to me where any growth the line had collapsed, stores were starting to sit on a lot of product and the enthusiasm was slipping fast. If anything, the Rainbow Lanterns felt like an overcorrection to me by trying to capitalize on the popularity of Blackest Night and the DCD series surrounding it. I think chasing recency was a huge if understandable misread of what the audience for the line wanted. There was probably a healthy middle ground between "All the A-listers and Ray Palmer in Lantern costumes" and "We're making Tyr because he was in Super Powers, people will love it" -- Marvel Legends, that middle ground is Marvel Legends -- but they went so far into the latter that they thought the former was an emergency fallback.

And honestly, I don't think collectors need to be totally happy for a line to be successful, they just need to be happy enough. People bitch about ML all day but like Damien said, they're hammering product out, and it's the same with the WWE line. At a base level you either have to be consistent with quantity or consistent with quality to keep collectors on the hook, because once you've defined yourself as a person who buys things you start finding excuses to buy things, and a company as big as Mattel or Hasbro probably should be prioritizing quantity. Part of the DCUC collapse was the absurd distribution issues that were hobbling the line from the start (hands up, everyone who never managed to build Giganta).
 
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Once I decide to follow a figure line, all the quiet, subtle details have already been addressed in my head. IP, scale, style, articulation, price point, etc. One factor remains and that is character selection. It’s literally what makes it fun for me.

Unfortunately for me, my taste isn’t informed by the top characters, but the middle to the bottom. I 💯% understand that without Batman and Superman, this doesn’t happen. However I don’t really have a favorite character anymore. Gun to my head, I’ll say Jack Knight. Mainstream, I’ll say Wally West. But that’s not the real picture. I love the JSA. Omnibus view. Pre Crisis, post Crisis, SSoV, Freedom Fighters, Infinity Inc., the Blackhawks, the Marvels, and all the other stuff Roy Thomas wanted to drop on us. I love 70’s Kirby. I love the Titans/Young Justice. Also omnibus view. That is my mainstream.

But I also like a lot of more niche stuff. Kingdom Come, Flashpoint, Gotham by Gaslight, Red Rain, DCeased, and more. All the stuff that’s gonna take a long time to get to. If ever. I’m Tom Hanks on the island except I don’t even have Wilson with me.

Batman, Superman, and GLC isn’t much fun for me anymore. I’m at the point in life where if it’s not fun, I don’t wanna do it.
 
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