The Action Figure and Toy Collecting and Discussion Thread!

The toy gods have smiled on me these past few days. I found a 6" inch Loki figure, and a 4" Hawkeye, both of which have been eluding me for some time. Also, the Club Infinite Earth subscriptions pulled an 11th hour victory, and the sub for next year will go through. I get to have my Wally West, and Larfleeze, and Saint Walker. Yay!

 

^
Awesome news, man...I'm happy for ya!

Even in the era of generally craptastic distribution for pretty much most toys it seems we can still make some great scores if we remain persistent.

 

It actually looks like the second wave of Avengers figures are starting to hit in pretty good numbers. Of course, Hawkeye and Black Widow are still getting scooped up fast, but I've been finding Skrulls at even the crappy Wal Marts. Now if only Hasbro could make the 6" Hawkeye and Hulk show up somewhere near me. Oh, and they need to make a freaking Black Widow in the 6" scale. What the heck is wrong with them, releasing everyone but one character?

 

This is the company that is making the final, highly prized 12-figure wave of the Vintage Collection a limited-run online exclusive. A wave with several perfect army builders that, now, only the fairly well-off will be able to amass squads and squads of.

Guessing why Hasbro does what it does is about as pointless an exercise as one can engage in, but I'm happy to hear the second wave of Avengers figures is showing up in better numbers. That's cool.

 

This may be funny only to me, but:


When Gotham is Ashes.....

 

"Come get some."




Love it!

 

NECA makes some god damn awesome stuff, don't they? I wish they would revisit Army Of Darkness, now since their two figures seem a little dated in the articulation department. The sculpts are still pretty great, though even all these years later.

 

They're still holding onto the long-held idea that female action figures don't sell that well in US retail stores, so they produce them either in limited numbers or not at all.

 

Unless they're female characters from Star Wars. But even then the only female characters that sell like hotcakes are Princess Leia in a slave bikini or the ones based on the Expanded Universe(novels, video games, etc.), and then largely because they're EU figures and those always have much higher secondary market value than your average Luke, Qui-Gon or Rebel officer.

Being shortpacked or not carried forward in later waves and case assortments plays into that as well. Thinking it might be the only time you ever see that figure adds to the popularity.

 

Female figures don't sell? Then why can't I find the 4" Black Widow anywhere? Where's all the Madame Masques from Marvel Legends that should be warming the pegs.

 

City Of Villains Heroclix

This fight won't last long.

 

WOW!!!! Given that DC has kicked Wally to the curb its cool that he's still getting a figure

 

Are you also collecting the Marvel Select versions of the these? They need to make an Avengers version of Cap. I think they they already did a Black Widow and it was exclusive to the Disney Store. The Hawkeye MS figures are easy to find.

 

Well there really are not that many non-EU female characters in Star Wars

 

Because they didn't make a lot of them. Usually there's only one to a case. And if someone gets it before you do, well...that may have been the one and only time that figure was there at that store.

See above response. But I did see one Madame Masque warming the pegs at my local Target. It's been sitting there for over a month now. Next stop: the markdown bin if it's not sold in the next several weeks (Target really doesn't like peg warmers).

Hasbro still has collectors in mind (or at least partially) in that regard by making female figures at all for both Star Wars and their Marvel toylines.

When Hasbro tried to rebrand the 3.75-inch G.I. Joe line into the 8-inch Sigma 6 line during the mid 2000s, it was noticeably absent of any female characters (despite well-known ones like Scarlett and the Baroness appearing in the accompanying cartoon series). They actually did the same thing ten years earlier with G.I. Joe: Extreme--no female figures, despite having ones in the cartoon. Hasbro even skipped having any female figures in the G.I. Joe toyline that came immediately after the 2009 Rise of Cobra movie.

The short-lived A.T.O.M. cartoon series that aired on Jetix (formerly Toon Disney, now Disney XD) had a prominent female character, yet no action figure of her was ever made.

The live-action Green Lantern movie didn't have any female Lanterns in any speaking roles, but there were some in various background shots. Mattel opted not to make any, but did make some male Lanterns that were conceptual designs not actually used in the movie.

Yep. Most stores will only carry one or two of them ever, so it's very much first come, first served. Everyone else, try eBay or an online toy store.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

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.

 

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

 

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.