Skurge the Executioner BAF Wave

[TheSameIdiot]

I think its a mild handwave to compare Nimrod to Xemnu and Armadillo, but sure... they could release figures that way...

That's fair. My point was more that Nimrod required a unique sculpt, and they didn't think he'd sell on his own. Something they curiously went back on with the new release.

To use your earlier example... your proposed two pack of Enchantress and Executioner forces me to buy the one chatacter from the BaF wave that I didn't need. Instead I was able to add a whole pile of new characters - WBN, Phantom Rider, Warbow, Ai Aipac... and sure I had to buy another Iron Man, but at least it was an armor I didn't have. Enchantress was the ONLY one in that wave that was a rebuy for something I already had a decent version of on my shelf.

I don't want to be forced to buy those figures, especially in a wave that I wouldn't buy anything from otherwise. To me, you're arguing against your own wallet.

If the wave was like:

Spider-Man
Scarlet Spider
Black Cat
Aunt May
Spider-Slayer
The Spot
BAF: Big Wheel

I imagine you wouldn't be as thrilled about having to buy that wave to get a new character. Wouldn't you rather a Big Wheel/Spider-Man two-pack?

We know Hasbro tends to put less popular BAFs in more popular waves and vice versa.

Without the BaF, Phantom Rider and Warbow are definitely not happening.

Are we certain? Francine Frye, the Rose, and Hypno-Hustler were recent single-carded figures.

I think you raise a good point about X-Men/Spider-Man figures versus Avengers figures. I'm not sure how much faith Hasbro has in the Avengers comic brand anymore.

 

[Thor-El]

I'm not sure how much faith Hasbro has in the Avengers comic brand anymore.

And that makes me very sad. But on the flipside, it also saves me a lot of money.

 

[fac]

BAF waves should be themed.
Why Hasbro would go from themed waves to hodgepodge waves is just crazy.
The "let's clean out the vault and stick them all together in a BAF wave" approach is lame.

They set the stage when everything was BAF to do themes for the retro card waves. In any logical sense, the BAFs should be themed and you use the blister cards for odds and ends because it is way more flexible (mix and match themes, however many unique figures you want to release in a case, etc.) But they went the opposite over time.

Literally asking for less for your money makes no sense to me. It's not hard to sell or buy just the pieces/figures if one really wants to go that route.

In theory at least, Hasbro was sculpting and selling us 7 figures for the price of 6 - but the expense to design and sculpt and make the 7th figure had to come out of the budget for the wave. If they felt the BAF model increased overall wave sales by say 15% (and reduced peg warmers that blocked future sales), that didn't impact the budget for any single figure. But if the blister cards sell as well as the BAF waves, then the development budget is being stretched thinner, then the BAF is a worse model for getting figures with dedicated sculpts out. And the evidence with the BAF waves being not as prominent suggests that may the case.

I love the BAF as a concept but not how they execute it, with mixed waves and variable production numbers of figures to account for online sales more than stocking brick and mortar. There is a lot of waste when some BAF parts are probably made at twice the rate of other parts in the same wave given the preorders for the figure given they mostly sell the figures now by single cases, not mixed wave cases.