Mattel’s latest Facebook entry is a little…odd.

Hey DCU fans,

It is no secret that their has been a delay in getting new JLU figures into Target stores. This is entirely do to our factor shutting down last December. We have already found a new factory and we have new packs ready to ship, the problem is, while we waited for the new factory to produce the new 2009 figures, we had to continue and ship 2008 product to Target to hold the place in the toy aisle.

So right now Target is full of 2008 packs. We need to get all of these sold before Target will take orders for new 2009 packs. So, to help, Mattel is funding a month long price reduction on 3 packs. So tell your friends and allies, swing by a Target and grab some JLU packs this month on sale. Once we move all of the older product, we have fresh new figures ready to ship and get into your hands!

That is the latest! We are doing everything we can to get to fresh figures. All we have to do now is clear out the 2008 inventory. 🙂

Matty

I know JLU is struggling, but asking your fans to buy product they don’t want or already have (even at a discount) in order to free room for new product seems vaguely like blackmail.

This problem is not the fault of toy collectors. This problem is the result of the factory and/or Mattel itself (or, perhaps, Target’s rather strict toy aisle space requirements).

As one Facebook commenter put it, “just operate like most other companies and issue a vendor return on the 2008 products, clear the space, and ship out the 2009 variety. You could then sell the 08 merch at a discount on mattycollector.com to people that might actually still want it.”

I don’t know enough about the toy business to know whether such a plan is economically sensible, but I’m fairly sure it is what a lot of other companies do in this situation.

At the same time, it’s important to remember that JLU is on thin ice already. It’s possible a vendor return would be used as a reason by Mattel management to axe the line.

So what’s a JLU fan to do? Hard to say.  Complain all you want, but keep in mind boycotting the sale entirely will likely result in the end of JLU. Fair? Definitely not. But unfortunately, life isn’t fair.

UPDATE: Mattel just posted this on Facebook:

Since their seems to be a lot of chatter online about the JLU sale at Target, I wanted to clarify for everyone. No where in our original post did we ask fans to re-buy JLU figures. We just want to announce that they will be on sale and if you have friends who have not bought wave 1 JLU figures, now is a good time since they are on sale for a month!

We would never ask fans to rebuy figures just to keep a line going. Our goal is to keep open honest communications with our fans and yes, we do need to sell through the current stock before we can ship new figures, but in no way are we expecting the same fans to rebuy. We just hope fans can help spreads the word that we are having a promotion right now.

Hope that helps!

Matty

OK. The wording of the original post is pretty ambiguous, and I still think it’s odd they’re doing this rather than initiating a vendor return, but again, JLU is already on thin ice. At least they spoke out about the issue.