I regret buying into them so will be listing my two.-ALL SOLD The only thing is I'll be asking what I paid total plus shipping, so I'll be asking for $23.50 apiece plus shipping to break even.
I could use the assistance of some eagle eyed MOTU fans who know the figures better than I do. I recently picked up Roboto but the left leg on mine looks wonky: I think he wound up with two right upper portions of the lower legs. Am I seeing things? Do I just need to put a hairdryer to it? Is this a widespread issue? If not I'm going to see if BBTS would be willing to give me at least a partial refund. Thanks!
It is the knees that are wrong. Your lower legs are correct, your upper legs are correct. Compare the circles or discs next to the "pole" on the knee. That is the tell tale sign. What he said. FAST!
Speaking of leg parts... I don't know if it's been previously mentioned, but it is my belief that the shin parts on the standard Skeletor (and those that reuse it, like Zodac, etc.) were incorrectly assembled from the factory. The left shin is designed to go on the right leg, and viceversa. You can tell by the curvature of the lower leg, which naturally should be inward, and the bulging at the ankle. I did the shin swap on my Skeletor (swapping the feet at the ankles as well) and it noticeably improved his standing/posing ability and posture. I wonder if anyone else has done this too.
Yes. My theory is that the error ocurred early in the process, perhaps in the design stage (e.g. someone mislabeled left shin as right shin, and right as left), no one noticed it and it carried from there; hence why all the figures were produced like that. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. Try it yourself.
I swap them out where the big toe is inward. I think it's more stable & biologically accurate for the small toes to be on the outside
I checked pictures online of the vintage figure and the "big toe" is on the outside, so I swapped the feet to maintain that look; but, I see the logic in your assessment.
Interesting tidbit: ToyGuru's LinkedIn says he grew MattyCollector from $3MM to $14MM annually with 50% margin and 30% operating profit. This would include Ghostbusters and the DCU Classics Collector sub and I think a few other things? The 50% margin is good. Barbie and Hot Wheels are 40% margin and typical toys run closer to 20%. (Part of the reason baby toys and such are a huge part of the sales is they have over 50% margin.) The current manager -- who JUST handles MOTU -- says she has P&L responsibility of $60MM. Now... I'm sure retail profit is lower. But operating expenses would be a smaller contributor too. We can infer that Scott's team spent less than $3 million a year on operating expenses (20% of $14M: 50% minus 30% profit equals 20% operating expenses). But running an operation over 4x as big isn't 4x as expensive if you're producing similar amounts of product and you save money by not having to ship things individually and direct. Mattel's current overall net profit margin is 16.5%. If you're above that, you're contributing to growth. If you're below that, you're dragging things down. Sorry. I like to play with numbers. Endulge me or ignore this. $60 million. Let's say expenses are high and sales are mediocre. 20% margin. $12M. Minus $3M in operating expenses. $9M operating profit. 15% net profit margin. Okay. That's on the weak side but I assumed a low margin. Strategy-wise: you want to improve the margin. And it's not a huge drag or anything. 15% to company-wide 16.5%. $14 million. 50% margin. $7M. Minus $3M in operating expenses. $4M. Around 29% net margin. Looks good next to the company numbers but not Barbie or Hot Wheels territory in volume or net margin. And it contributes less to the company's success because the volume is so low. Overall net assessment: Do you try to grow a MattyCollector style operation to the point where it gets big enough to improve the company's bottom line (which requires scaling it up considerably without increasing infrastructure) or do you target an increase of 1.5% margin increase on retail MOTU so it isn't a drag? Retail sounds better to me here. You have a choice between a really small scale wild success that will take years of effort and investment to scale up to a point where it's meaningful versus a retail line that, on its worst day, isn't a burden to the company and delivers on target if you trim some fat. Retail gets you $9 million return even if you make less on the investment as a percentage and is close to in line with company overall performance. In short, you wouldn't expect anything you might replace it with to do better. MattyCollector gets you $4 million. Bigger percentage return but less impact on company overall numbers because it's a smaller operation you can't scale easily. Also, no Ghostbusters or DC license to exploit so expect less than $4M. You can do some of both and Mattel IS. Pulling out of retail doesn't make sense to me. Mattel gets marketshare from MOTU and it's good for the brand that it's well over 4x the volume it was under Scott. What does make sense to me is scaling up Mattel Creations releases. Target 6 MOTU figures a year. Then 8. Then 12. Without pulling out of retail if you can help it. Why give up one thing that's working to get another if you can have both? Stray observation: The money raised to make Eternia was probably around 10% of MOTU's overall toy revenue in 2022, across all brands. You definitely don't want to mess with Origins, IMHO. I'd be looking at how to grow both sectors. Course correcting retail is likely not as dire as some would claim and worthwhile, if that's where we're at. Growing online is nice but unlikely to have a lot of impact any time soon without costly infrastructure improvements that can handle volume of direct-to-consumer transactions. Scaling it up isn't as easy as buying a domain name.
MOD - U - LOK! Man, I hope he has all his parts when he comes out. I always had my own headcanon when playing with him. The two would combine into the double headed one and the extra parts (the tail and two connectors) I put together to make “Snailor” (yes it has no shell but I was a kid).
