A few days ago, some online retailers listed the following case packs for DCUC Series 7:

Case 1:
1x Batman
1x Green Lantern
2x Flash
2x Captain Cold
2x Kid Flash
2x Big Barda

Case 2:
1x Wonder Woman
1x Firestorm
1x Flash
1x Captain Cold
2x Blue Beetle
2x Booster Gold
2x Aquaman Blue

If you order the first case, you don’t get Booster Gold or Blue Beetle; if you order the second case, you don’t get Big Barda or Kid Flash. What’s more, you don’t get all the parts you need to create the Build-A-Figure.

This understandably created quite a stir on the various toy forums, prompting Mattel’s Scott Neitlich to post on the topic.

Like last time, I’m afraid the news isn’t good.

Although online sellers and fans are some of our most vocal and enthusiastic buyers, the bottom line is that Mattel as a company has to sell X amount of figures to cover the cost of tooling, painting, packaging and shipping out high quality action figure collectibles.

While online sellers do help us reach a lot of customers in greater areas (more rural, international etc…) the bottom line fact is that they represent a very small fraction of overall sales for the company (and yes, even of specifically the DCUC line).

While we do work directly with them to supply things like case packs and product images for their catalogs, it just is not feasible from a business perspective to center the line around their sales. If we did so, we honestly would not be able to produce these toys.

[...]

In order to continue to produce wave after wave of outstanding DCUC figures we have to work closely with our retail partners who at the end of the day make up the vast majority of our sales. One of these conditions is that we need to provide our retails stores with fresh product in every single mix. Therefore the “waves” as collectors know them have been split up into two mixes to ensure every mix has fresh characters in them. (which helps brick and morter stores move more product to collectors, moms, kids, grandparents, and people who aimlessly wonder into the toy aisle, see a Firestorm and think he looks cool enough to add to their cart) You’d be surprised how much this factor adds up and helps boost sales to the point that we can actually afford to produce the line.

Although this does not work for all the online chat board members (although very vocal and enthusiastic and we love you guys and your support and suggestions) at the end of the day we have to meet costs to produce these toys.

You guys wanted brutal honesty? You got it.

Neitlich adds that they will be offering online retailers solid case packs so they can create a “solid wave mix,” but I’m not clear on what that means–so I asked Scott. Here’s his response:

Online retailers can order the standard case packs or the solid case packs and resell them directly or shuffle them however they would like.

We’ll have to wait and see how online retailers like CornerStoreComics, BigBadToyStore and Enchanted Toy Chest decide to move forward. In the meantime, it looks like brick-and-mortar retail chains are going to be the main place to find DCUC from Series 7 on.

Of course, there are many collector-oriented toy lines that thrive just fine at retail–Star Wars, G.I. Joe, and Transformers, for instance. I could be wrong, since I don’t collect those lines, but it seems to me most collectors get those lines at stores.

The best way for Mattel to ameliorate the inevitable collector community backlash to this news is to fix the distribution problems that have plagued collectors since MOTUMM (MOTU 2000).  Get these figures into Target, Wal-Mart, and TRU in the sort of numbers we’re (finally!) seeing with the Movie Masters line and collector griping will be kept to a minimum.

My local Target (Watertown, MA) has had the same three Etrigans and four Orions on the pegs for more than half a year, with no sign of DCUC Series 2 or 3. If that doesn’t change soon, and I lose my ability to easily buy DCUC figures online, I may become annoyed enough to stop collecting it. (OK, that’s not bloody likely, but it’s possible–especially if another, easier-to-find line captures my interest.)

It appears I will soon be in the same situation with DCUC as I was with MOTUMM–frequently haunting big box stores while occasionally breaking down and buying some rare figure online. However, if Mattel can fix their distribution problems and get the product in the stores in sufficient numbers, this may not be that big a deal.