Mattel did its usual round of Q&As yesterday. In addition to my own, here’s a round-up of the rest, with my commentary.
Raving Toy Maniac actually asked some non-JLU/DCUC/MOTUC questions, but it was one of the DCUC questions that intrigued me.
What are the ratios for the variant figures in the DCUC Series 3? (Not production numbers, but ratios of variants to regular versions.)
Sorry, this is not information we give out for any of the waves.
Perhaps they’ve made a change in policy, but this is not true of previous waves. We have been given an idea of some of the ratios of the chases on previous waves here and here (wave one’s variants have yet to be released).
Over at the Fwoosh, we get the news we all knew was coming:
SDCC had a very impressive showing of new figures for DCUC, but collectors are a fickle lot. Are we going to be seeing packaged pictures of the upcoming series 4 and the Wal-Mart series soon? If they are going to hit in October, that is getting close. Also- series 3 was revealed on Fwoosh and shown in Toy Fare last year in October/November- any chance of series 8 being revealed around that time this year?
Because of the new vendor we are using [we] pushed some of our release dates back. New accurate dates will be announced soon on the retail release section at MattyCollector.com in the next few months.
No surprise here, unfortunately. I predict we’ll see only Wave 4 before Christmas. Waves 5 and 6 and the Starfire/Adam Strange two-pack will be pushed back to 2009.
When are waves one and two of the Toys R Us DCUC going to hit?
Around October.
(crosses fingers)
Toynewsi doesn’t have a Q&A per se, but seem to have turned it into an article on MOTUC. The one quote from Mattel is on whether designs from the 2002 revamp of Masters of the Universe will be used for the MOTUC line:
All of the figures in the new MOTUC line will be retrofitted to look like classic figures. So when and if we did Count Marzo’ for example is released, the Horsemen will sculpt him to look like he had a figure in the 1980s. We may eventually do variants of figures like Hordak in his 2002 look. But initially we will be doing all the figures in a vintage classic look.
This makes sense to me, but then, I’m firmly in support of the design aesthetic for MOTUC. The TNI article claims MOTUC has not been “warmly embraced” by the collector community due to the high price tag and the decision to base the designs on the 1980s originals.
The article also cites TNI’s own unscientific poll stating that only 45% of their readers would buy the figures. Frankly, I think that number is pretty good, considering TNI is a general interest toy site. (I’d like to see the results of such a poll over on He-Man.org.)
However, there is definitely a vocal contingent of fans who prefer the 2002 Masters of the Universe over the originals. I’ll probably write up a post of my thoughts on the issue sometime soon.