Comments on: Ask Mattel > July 1 Edition

By: AFP’s Ask Matty Round-Up for 7/1/9 | ActionFigurePics.com

AFP’s Ask Matty Round-Up for 7/1/9 | ActionFigurePics.com — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:37:27 +0000

[...] Poe Ghostal’s Points of Articulation [...]

By: Reverend Ender

Reverend Ender — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:22:42 +0000

So, enough lamenting. With our powers combined, could we possible compile a list of what states DID receive Wave 5, so that I can ask all of my friends in those states to be on the lookout for the exclusive Wave, buy lots for me, which I can then distribute to me fellow misfortunate Poesters and Fwooshers? Feel free to email me if you have info.

Poe, you are doing a fantastic job, keep up the good work please! MY question actually got asked AND answered last time, and it was a good question and got a good answer. I think it's a great example of what to ask.

My email is: reverendender@gmail.com

By: monkey boy

monkey boy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:16:00 +0000

yes exclusives maximize sales for the single vendor, thus maximizing product makes a certain degree of sense, but the goal of exclusives, from a retailer standpoint (and retailers have stated this on several occasions) is to get people coming into the stores and buying things. retailers are proponents of "chase figures" for the same reason…they want people to come to their store. and with chases especially, they want them to come often.

there may be more of an exclusive WM wave than a normal mass market wave shipment to wal-mart, but you'd be batty to assume mattel makes the product in the same numbers that it would have shipped to all the other vendors. keep in mind that not only will this wave ship to wal-marts only, but it most certainly won't even ship to all wal-marts. wal-marts are notoriously spotty for which stores get exclusives. some entire regions seem to never get any exclusives, or a very limited quantity.

the proof is in the pegs, people. retailer exclusives either tend to disappear immediately, or pegwarm indefinitely. and that's if the store even gets them in…so for every TRU mezco heroes or DCD watchmen exclusive nobody asked for, you have a WM exclusive like the marvel legends ares wave which barely hangs around long enough for your local scalper to come in and buy all of the good figures.

which is another problem. isolating the figures in a single location is basically a scalper's dream…it means everything is waitign for him in one location. there are still figures from the ares wal-mart wave i've never seen and probably will NEVER see (crossbones, hello?), and i probably only stumbled upon the remnants of that wave maybe three times.

as for DCUC wave 5, never saw it. not at a single wal-mart in my area, and there are quite a few i frequent. not even the super wal-marts near me had any remnants, or even the double packed riddlers lingering on the shelves. if they ever got them in, they flew of the pegs as fast as they hit them, but i suspect it's entirely possibly that no stores near me carried the wave at all. the only way i got a riddler was through an online contact, and i suspect the joker might be the same way.

furthermore, it's fundamentally troubling to me that the joker is an exclusive figure at all…i would say it's like (blank) from the (blank) line being an exclusive, but i can't think of a better example than…JOKER being an exclusive in a DC COMICS line. what if the only way to get megatron was through a single store. what if the only way to get darth vader was at a single store? power girl i can almost understand…she might be considered a "heavy hitter" in the DC universe…but the freaking joker?! everyone knows the joker, even 5 year olds who've never read a comic. probably every hero in the DC universe has faced the joker at least once. yeah, let's make HIM the retailer exclusive.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:32:01 +0000

LOL.

By: Fengschwing

Fengschwing — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:18:00 +0000

I have a question for next time at least, 'How can you justify the $3 price rise?'.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:47:16 +0000

I think part of it is that they don’t show up at all stores. Beyond that, I still think the perceived rarity helps turn it into reality. I’ve seen people on other boards brag how they own 5-6 sets of wave 5 (complete with pictures).
Put it this way: if you saw waves 10 and 11 sitting on the shelves, and you only had money for 1 wave, which one would you buy?
Or to put it another way: If you saw 2 sets of wave 10 on the shelf, and you had money for all of them, would you buy them all?

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:43:40 +0000

Actually, they do cases of 10 now. Since there will be no All Star figures in this wave, there's a good chance that 3 of the figures will be somewhat easier to find and the other 4 will be hard.

By: finkrod

finkrod — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:42:34 +0000

I look forward to these Q&A things mainly for the humor. Since they invariably answer either “We will look into it” or “We can’t comment on that at this time”, it’s almost satire. Don’t stop please! It’s kind of like that “Letters to Darksied” column that Toyfair used to do.

@Poe: When exactly did you sell out Poe? And to whom? It wasn’t Whitey, was it?

By: PrfktTear

PrfktTear — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:41:34 +0000

@George: Sell out? I think thats way off base. Lazy, yes, but unless someone has actually ran a site, I don’t think you know how time consuming it is to come up with quality content. Consistency is nice, but he’s not a trained monkey here for our amusment.

I think the Q&A is worthwhile to keep around. Its not like its a weekly thing, once every month is fine. Just important to be discriminating about what questions are asked.

By: AmericanHyena

AmericanHyena — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:31:00 +0000

Y'know…for all the peeps bitching about Joker…I would point out that in Wave 5 the most well known character was the one who was doublepacked. So like Riddler, I'm thinking that Joker is probably going to outnumber the rest of the wave in production number and be substantially easier to find.