I hope he doesn't get near any toy company I like. I got tired of him taking all the credit when something went good and that he was in charge of every aspect of it, but then if something went bad he acted as if he had no control over it then would blame "the factory", fans, 4 Horsemen for aesthetic changes. Also, making over priced subscription products than no one wanted, not allowing people to purchase or even pre-order individual figures was insane as well, yet they sell individuals in their store. Yes Ghostbusters is a popular franchise, while it may not be in stores the man couldn't manage to make decent collector figures, they didn't even manage to make separate bodies for the Ghostbusters.
Just so you know, that's not at all how it works. You don't pay for the subscription, you pay for a subscription exclusive. You get a figure for the money you pay. Also, the subscription doesn't give you a CHANCE to buy something. It GUARANTEES you get the figures. It's fine to be a customer and be dissatisfied, but complaining about a service you've clearly never even looked into is pretty shortsighted.
DC Universe Classics started out as an incredible toyline with great distribution, great character selection, great sculpting (thank you Four Horsemen!!), great accessories, and a great build-a-figure feature which ultimately led to another great figure, and all at a really affordable price. I think I remember paying $10-$12 per figure at the beginning. DC Universe Classics died because of poor distribution, poor character selection, questionable design choices (we got THAT version of Red Hood???), minimal to no accessories, no build-a-figure features, a subscription with poor character selection, and an overly inflated price point. I recognize the economy had a lot to do with that, but still Marvel Legends seems to produce a better product at a competitive price point. It all started going downhill with the "Rainbow Lantern" and "Super Friends" waves and it never fully recovered. While I enjoyed those particular waves, I understand why others didn't. And at some point, if it didn't say "Masters of the Universe" on it, he didn't care. Once he got his Super Friends/Powers fix, the rest was completely irrelevant. And of course, any and all problems with the line was the fans' fault. Any response to fans' criticisms were very cookie cutter and fell under "no comment" or "logistics." And, oh yeah, he flat out lied about the production chances of "Unleashed" Doomsday. That figure went from "never going to happen because not enough fans bought subscriptions" to "it will be out later this year!" For years DCUC was the shining jewel in my collection. I loved hunting them. I loved looking at them on the shelf. I loved customizing them. I nearly had them all! Now I'm going to pack them all away and put them into storage until I figure out what to do with them. I no longer even care about picking up the few figures I need to finish the collection.
Ugh. Maybe it'll be MGA Entertainment and we'll never hear from him again. Oh crap, who is that? I need to know so I can avoid accidentally adding it to our collection.
I think its one of the Palace Guards 2 pack....apparently, one of the head was sculpted to resemble his own face.
I meant from the DCUC line. I haven't been into MOTU since... um... around the time The New Adventures of He-Man was running.
It's one of the red lanterns, Night Lik. Get it -- Neitlich, Night Lik. Scott is friends with Geoff Johns so the character was named after him.
I collected MOTUC for a little bit several years ago, but I have not followed the brand in the last few years (collecting the TF brand alone is enough to keep one's hands full!). At the time I was impressed with the sculpting of the figures, the storylines, and the marketing. I also felt that Mattel tried hard to listen to fans and made changes accordingly, such as going to a voucher purchase system at SDCC. Given all that, I'm a bit surprised at the criticism of Toyguru, as my impression was that he is a fan like the rest of us, but I don't know enough about the specific complaints to have an informed opinion there. Based on my experiences with Mattel, I wish him the best of luck.
Something tells me that if Hasbro really wanted the "lead" guy of a has-been brand from Mattel to put in charge of the billion-dollar TF brand, they'd just go get him. So the real, underlying question here seems to be "Would it be better if Transformers as a brand had died for the decades since the '80s, and now only existed as a niche product aimed solely at nostalgic collecters?" To which I'll have to answer No. We'd have gotten vastly less product, and the best thing we could ever dream of then would be something like a Masterpiece Optimus, which we've gotten two of. Having a living, breathing brand, with a major footprint, just leaves so many more options for collectors than the GIJoe/He-man route, which are forever stuck in the '80s. As much as I love it, I want more from TF now than G1 retreads. I personally really enjoy sharing TFs with my son, which never would have happened if the brand was geared differently.
Yes you do pay for the subscription if you didn't you would just be buying the exclusive figure, that wouldn't be a subscription. Not really there were normal items that were available to subscribers first and sold out to subscription holders that never made it into the store. There were also subscription exclusive items that were under produced and many didn't get them. I don't think you have ever read the boards about the subscription service nightmares people had.
Mighty Spector was a car too I think. Rumour is he's now brand manager the Star Wars Black series at Hasbro. In fairness, his college thesis was on Star Wars merchandising.
Just so you know, that's not how it always went down. Sorceress and Fisto were drastically underproduced and many fans with subscriptions never got theirs. To this day there has never been any action to make things right or to even produce more of either figure to fill the demand. There's a huge number of subscribers who either moved or got new credit cards and then didn't get a figure when the old information couldn't be overwritten by the new ones so the system cancels the sub. Heck, in the last week, in the MOTUC thread here on the boards, someone just had that happen to them again, so he missed out on another monthly figure from the sub despite being a multi-year subscriber and having to make multiple calls to get the sub reinstated at all. Then you've got people in Europe (where credit cards are uncommon), who had gotten a credit card just to subscribe to MOTUC who when the sub messed up his renewal ended up getting him blacklisted from the credit card company because of the way DR mishandled the whole situation. DR's poor subscription service actually harmed someone's credit history permanently and he couldn't get a subscription anymore because they only take credit cards and he couldn't get one for another year. Claiming that it works is pretty shortsighted. Yep, he admitted in a thread (that then got deleted from the Matty forums) that he likes trying to work his 'Mighty Spector' into every line he works on.
No thanks. I'd rather not have that weasel work on Transformers, or any other toyline for that matter.
