The Action Figure and Toy Collecting and Discussion Thread!

[OdoWanKenobi]

Shortpacking the females doesn't help them save money, though. They would sell. All it means is that for every collector that does manage to find one, three more don't and have to resort to horrible ebay prices.

My toy luck continues. Got John Blake today, and my batsignal now only needs its light that comes with Ra's Al Ghul.

[cooleddie74]

Scored an extra VC87 Luke Skywalker(Lightsaber Construction) from this year's "Deleted Scenes" wave of Vintage. This is the newer, much more recent variant where Luke has much paler skin on his face and hands...noticeably so. This was a change made to the figure for inclusion in the Grand Moff Tarkin(Wave 5) case assortment that just recently started hitting. The first version of this Luke had a bit of a tanned and ruddy appearance and Hasbro must have thought they needed to fix it since Mark Hamill didn't have a pronounced tan in the original SW trilogy.

Voila. Pale Rider Luke.

[C.E. Evans]

OdoWanKenobi wrote:

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Shortpacking the females doesn't help them save money, though. They would sell.

The general rule of thumb is that shortpacking the female figures will ensure that they will sell. Retailers would rather not take the risk of having their action figure shelves filled with female characters that kids don't want to buy.

All it means is that for every collector that does manage to find one, three more don't and have to resort to horrible ebay prices.

Having worked in retail myself, I know from experience it's not a precise science and sometimes it depends on the individual store and their local customer base. In my area, I can agree with the retailer claim that female figures don't really sell because there aren't a lot of toy collectors where I live, and female figures do tend to be in the mark-down bins unless they're shortpacked.

[OdoWanKenobi]

^No instead they have shelves filled with endless Iron Mans and Thors and Captain Americas that the kids don't want to buy.

[cooleddie74]

The final wave of the Vintage Collection features three female characters: Ahsoka the Padawan from The Clone Wars, Lumat the Ewok(the pink color scheme of her packaging also helps give her gender away ) and Aurra Sing the bounty hunter from Episode I. All three will sell well because:

1. They're three of the last twelve characters in the most popular line of SW figures since the eighties.

2. They're online exclusives and, so far, available only in entire case assortments. If you want the female characters you have to buy all 12. Even if you don't want the female characters you're still stuck with them. There are, as of right now, no announced plans to sell the figures individually so as to be able to gauge how popular a particular figure is.

3. They're part of a very limited production run. Boffo sales are a guarantee.

Makes me wonder how they'd do on store pegs at mass retail, though. Ahsoka? A surefire bet. All Ahsoka action figures seem to sell like hotcakes. Like the character or not, but she's damn popular with quite a lot of collectors and kids. Aurra Sing? Less so, but she's a Vintage repack of a figure that was originally a Walmart exclusive in less interesting packaging and packaging variations have a habit of selling well even if the figure inside isn't always the most desired or exciting character. Lumat? She's an Ewok. And Ewoks, in spite of the flak and jokes, sell pretty well. The Wicket and Logray figures in the Vintage Collection came and went pretty fast and didn't have much time to linger on the pegs.

[C.E. Evans]

OdoWanKenobi wrote:

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^No instead they have shelves filled with endless Iron Mans and Thors and Captain Americas that the kids don't want to buy.

They actually do, however. But as I said, retail isn't an exact science. Not every retail chain takes adult collectors into consideration and would rather have Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America than shelves full of female characters in their action figure section. I have walked into quite a few Wal-marts and have seen a number of Power Girls, Zatannas, and Spider-women collecting dust on the pegs. It seems the fewer female characters there are, the more likely a store won't be stuck with them later on. Every location is different, but that's what I've generally seen more than not in my area.

cooleddie74 wrote:

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The final wave of the Vintage Collection features three female characters: Ahsoka the Padawan from The Clone Wars, Lumat the Ewok(the pink color scheme of her packaging also helps give her gender away ) and Aurra Sing the bounty hunter from Episode I. All three will sell well because:

1. They're three of the last twelve characters in the most popular line of SW figures since the eighties.

2. They're online exclusives and, so far, available only in entire case assortments. If you want the female characters you have to buy all 12. Even if you don't want the female characters you're still stuck with them. There are, as of right now, no announced plans to sell the figures individually so as to be able to gauge how popular a particular figure is.

3. They're part of a very limited production run. Boffo sales are a guarantee.

Pretty much this. Some online toy stores--like Big Bad--don't even offer female figures individually if they're shortpacked in a case of twelve. They figure that collectors are more inclined to buy the entire case if they want the female figure(s).

[cooleddie74]

New Walmart toy department reset plan-o-grams have just been posted on one of the SW collecting sites. The emphasis on 3.75" action figures is being noticeably scaled back to make more peg wall space for the new kid-oriented Fighter Pods toys. Walmarts are going to devote fewer pegs to Vintage Collection, Movie Heroes and Clone Wars action figures for the coming quarter and the holiday shopping season and more attention to the little kids' stuff.

There are quite a few upset collectors on the sites and their boards. After all the distribution and restocking issues this past year or so a lot of us were hoping for increased attention to the 3.75" product to make up for all the recent problems, but that doesn't seem to be what the largest retailer has planned. Don't know if TRU, Target or Kmart will also be scaling back on their commitment to regular action figures, but I won't be surprised if they do.

Right now Hasbro's trying to push the Fighter Pods almost to the exclusion of everything else Star Wars-related, going so far as to change the visual theme of their website to Fighter Pods. Oh well. Nothing we can really do except hope that more new product will show up on the reduced number of pegs.

[OdoWanKenobi]

Any mention of DC Universe All Stars on the plan-o-grams?

So, I think I've built up a great deal of karma with the toy gods and was very due for some good news. I just managed to grab an Eradicator and Azrael Batman off ebay on the cheap. These two have been hounding me forever, since they're always so expensive on the aftermarket, and I really wanted to have MOC versions in order to have the BAF pieces for Metallo and Bane. Well, now I finally will have them. Yay! My list of missing DC Universe figures grows ever smaller.

[Gep Malakai]

cooleddie74 wrote:

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New Walmart toy department reset plan-o-grams have just been posted on one of the SW collecting sites. The emphasis on 3.75" action figures is being noticeably scaled back to make more peg wall space for the new kid-oriented Fighter Pods toys. Walmarts are going to devote fewer pegs to Vintage Collection, Movie Heroes and Clone Wars action figures for the coming quarter and the holiday shopping season and more attention to the little kids' stuff.

There are quite a few upset collectors on the sites and their boards. After all the distribution and restocking issues this past year or so a lot of us were hoping for increased attention to the 3.75" product to make up for all the recent problems, but that doesn't seem to be what the largest retailer has planned. Don't know if TRU, Target or Kmart will also be scaling back on their commitment to regular action figures, but I won't be surprised if they do.

Right now Hasbro's trying to push the Fighter Pods almost to the exclusion of everything else Star Wars-related, going so far as to change the visual theme of their website to Fighter Pods. Oh well. Nothing we can really do except hope that more new product will show up on the reduced number of pegs.

One of the issues I've heard toy companies are facing these days is competition for the older kid's market coming from video games. Once they hit a certain age, they're gaming all the time and don't care so much for toys. So there's an increased focus on the younger set and making existing lines more little-kid friendly; we're seeing this in the Transformers lines as well, which have introduced a preschool-friendly line called "Botshots" and simplified the mane-line toys for a younger audience. It sucks, but what are you gonna do?

[cooleddie74]

OdoWanKenobi wrote:

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Any mention of DC Universe All Stars on the plan-o-grams?

Not that I saw. The cell phone pictures seemed to focus only on the pages of the plan-o-grams that dealt with Star Wars merchandise. In my local Walmarts the DC Universe stuff is in the same aisle but to the far left or across the aisle on the other side.

Sorry. Wish I could tell you something.

[OdoWanKenobi]

Most DC collectors are expecting the All Star waves to pretty much be online exclusive anyways. Wal-Marts and Targets don't seem to have much support for the line, so it may only show up at the odd Toys R Us. It's too bad. I want every single figure they've shown so far.

[cooleddie74]

The last Vintage Collection wave is an online exclusive, which means that unless Hasbro has some surprise announcements up its sleeve for the upcoming holiday shopping season then the pegs are gonna be very, very dry between now and the first quarter of next year.

Not like they haven't been dry for most of the past six months anyways. But...you know...this time it's the principle of the matter. There should, if Hasbro knows what's good for it, be new and fresh product on shelves to draw in customers shopping for Christmas, but with the last Vintage wave being online and only a very small handful of new Movie Heroes and Clone Wars figures slated for release before the end of the year I just don't think the pegs are going to change much before the new Legacy/Droid Factory and AOTC 3-D figures hit near the beginning of next year.

[OdoWanKenobi]

At least there will be Star Wars product, even if its reduced. DC Universe shipped its last wave months ago, and the major retailers won't pick up the All Stars Wave. Whether or not they go for the new DC Unlimited line which will have a focus on Superman, Batman and New 52 versions of A-listers like The Flash or Green Lantern remains to be seen. But with DC Universe done, and Young Justice done, that means that very soon, besides The Dark Knight Rises, there will be absolutely no DC figures on shelves at all.

[cooleddie74]

Surprise!

Amazon has begun offering the 12 figures in the last Vintage wave individually, but the current price for one EU Old Republic Trooper has skyrocketed to $35. And the Emperor's Royal Guard is completely out of stock at the moment.

Screw that.

I knew this would happen with the new Royal Guard and Republic Trooper, or something very similar. All Hasbro had to do was make the final wave a Christmas season release and make sure enough shipped to retailers to meet demand. Like they used to before the current regime full of rhesus monkeys with short attention spans took over the reins at the company. But noooooo.

Oh well. At this point I'll just be glad to get one of each figure and I'll worry about army building a couple of them a little later. The prices and available stock right now just don't permit it.

[OdoWanKenobi]

When Mattel announced that the new retail DC line is mostly going to be Batman and Superman with a few other A-listers tossed in there occasionally, I was upset. Then they have to go and show us these:


Dark Knight Returns Batman and the Batman of Zur En Arrh! Oh my god! Zur En Arrh! I never thought we would see that one made. That's just insane, and wonderful. The DKR version looks great too. That's an essential variant of Batman. You know what? If this line is gonna give us fantastic variants of Batman and Superman like these two, then I'm cool with the line just being the big guns. We still have Club Infinite Earths for the more obscure characters.