While we’re waiting on the fate of the subscription, I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at the upcoming case assortments for DC Universe Classics Wave 20. Mattel mentioned that the new DC line would offer them some flexibility and DCUC20 might just be a window into their intentions.
In four months, I'm going to be 30 years old. I'm not really worried about it. Things don't feel much different from when I was a kid. The space shuttle is still the primary space vehicle, ketchup still isn't a vegetable, and Clash of the Titans & The Karate Kid are new in theaters. Not everything is the same, more people care about who Jacob is than who shot JR, and of course, there's Pluto (sorry, buddy). As a toy collector, things feel especially the same. I'm still hitting up stores looking for Black Spidey, Desaad, He-Man, and Wreck-Gar. Over the last few years, toy companies have, ingeniously, figured out that I'll buy all my old toys over again if they at least try to make them better. It's an 80s love fest out there. I've been enjoying every minute of it.
I'm ambivalent on the Mattel/Wal-Mart partnership. I really don't care if they keep getting exclusives or not. I live practically on top of Wal-Mart HQ and have dozens of stores within a reasonable driving distance, but that doesn't make it easy to find the exclusives. I didn't get DCUC5 first hand. I had to buy the Giant Man figures and Nemesis figures while traveling in other states. And I know that even though DCUC10 was easier to find for a lot of fans, the bad taste DCUC5 left in the mouths of most collectors is still fresh enough that even I cringed at the announcement that DCUC14 would also be exclusive to the retailer. But I'm not writing about whether there should or shouldn't be Wal-Mart waves today. That ship has sailed, so I'm moving on too. But I do have a problem with some of the figures that go into Wal-Mart waves.
Last month, the IAT staff sat down and beat out our Jan 15th Mattel questions. We bounced around a few ideas and, like we always do, we got off track. This time talking about Masters of the Universe Classics and the future of the line. Vault had done a little spreadsheet work and came up with a rough estimate of how many figures Mattel would be putting into the line if they fulfilled their 2016 goal including monthlies, quarterly bonuses, convention exclusives, and subscription exclusives. Then he made a list of all the previously released MOTU toys and added in some likely non-Filmation candidates that didn’t get a toy but could be done now. Vault was surprised to find that the numbers turned out to be about the same.
I didn't want to write this article. To turn the Most Requested feature into yet another referendum on the DC Classics neck articulation seemed like overkill. On Monday, we had plenty of comments about the lack of articulation question in our Ask Matty. On Tuesday, our very own Mr. Rant shared his opinions on the matter. On Wednesday, we poked a little fun at Mattel for removing the articulation. I went to the list of possible Most Requested figures and some caught my attention: a Lou Ferrigno Hulk, a good G1 Arcee, a Thundercats line. There are plenty of things on the Most Requested list, but right now, this week, the neck articulation is being talked about across the internet. If there was ever a time to rally and try to get the point across, it's this week. So here it is. I don't think there's a DC Classics fan out there that would disagree that this is one of the biggest requests we need to ask for right now. Mattel, it's time to fix the ball-jointed necks.
Upfront, I should say this is an article about scale more than it is about wanting the Legion. I want the Legion, but I also think they're already somewhere in Mattel's game plan. So this article is going to jump ahead to how to do the Legion. Specifically, how tall to make them. My concern is born out of figures like Beast Boy, OYL Robin, and the Wonder Twins. Mattel's few forays into teenaged characters has been troubled at best.
Now, I know that scale can be a sensitive subject among toy collectors. Some of us don't seem to mind at all while others can be downright unwilling to buy a figure that is out-of-scale with the others. For the most part, I don't mind DC Classics handful of scale issues so far.
Toy collecting can be a strange endeavor for me. Sometimes I love it and sometimes I hate it. I imagine there are a variety of factors involved. There’s the joy of finding the latest stuff, usually after a fair amount of frustration caused by not finding it up to that point. There’s the satisfaction of placing an entire collection together tempered by adding up the cost of everything still to come in the next few weeks. Particularly, though, how I feel towards any line seems to come and go in waves.
