What about the heavily rumored wave 13 of Origins? I can see Masterverse possibly going on hiatus until the next season of the Kevin Smith Netflix show, but once that comes back I fully expect we will get some new figures.
Scott kind of reminds me of myself when I was 13. I was a mouthy, obnoxious punk who lied out my ass about everything and it finally resulted in me receiving a massive ass kicking. What I'm saying is let's build a time machine and beat up child-Scott.
I guess we will see once and for all this year. He built up 2023, and now April of 2023 as the end of MOTU at Mattel. If it doesn’t happen his channel loses all credibility.
He hasn't had credibility for years. He SWEARS Mattel doesn't own MOTU anymore, that they've only licensed it. He's been disproven on this multiple times but keeps repeating his own stupid lies because people who cling to the "MotU peaked with Classics and nothing can ever compete" believe every word he says.
Not that it was really needed considering Scott track record, but Pixel Dan (who has actual connections with Mattel instead of vague "independent sources") wrote on Twitter that everything said in that video is not true.
I used to think Neitlich just didn’t grasp the rights issue because, ultimately, he was a copywriter who was promoted to a brand manager position, neither of which have anything to do with trademarks, IP rights, licensing or contracts. Now it’s clear he doesn’t grasp the issue simply because he’s not very smart. the rights issue is practically common knowledge. Mattel, for some inexplicable reason, allowed Filmation to retain the rights to the cartoon as the creator, not simply a work for hire. That means Filmation retained all copyrights to the cartoon and specific animated character designs. As he states, Classic Media bought Filmation, Dreamworks bought Classic Media, and Universal bought Dreamworks, and now Universal owns the Filmation cartoon. And that’s it. Not the brand, characters or trademarks, the cartoon itself. he paid a royalty to Classic Media to make toys of the cartoon designs and that is it. Yet he’s too stupid to know the difference. in 2014 Mattel was sued by one of the original mini comic artists claiming ownership of MOTU. Not only did Mattel win the lawsuit but the ruling stated explicitly that Mattel is the owner of the MOTU brand. Not that they were the owner in 1982 but in 2014 — with not a word of any temporary ownership.
I think it's a mixture of not accepting of being wrong and clickbaiting. He is practically a meme at this point.
What does that have to do with my comment. Scott being clueless doesn’t absolve Mattel from treating their customers like shit.
Paulmart, who has close ties to Mattel, gets product first, and has had shared SDCC and Mattel Creations exclusives, says he has product listings through 6/23.
Well that’s a relief. But the Hot Wheels and Barbie analogy is pretty off considering MOTU went off the shelves for more than a decade. Way more.
Let it sink that Scott was prophesying the end of Marvel Legends at retail based on observation on the toy isle in his local Target. Tarot cards and reading coffee grounds are more reliable than his methods...
Who was the guy parroting Scott's "Mattel doesn't own MotU" bullshit not all that long ago in this thread? And like, genuinely believed them because "Well Toyguru said it"
I was the one saying I thought he might have read a real contract that gave Dreamworks/Universal/whoever a cut of toy sales and misunderstood it. But I think I was also clear I thought Mattel owns MOTU and that Scott was misreading contracts. I still don't think that's a wild conjecture. Marvel owns X-Men. Marvel has always owned X-Men. Likewise Fantastic Four. However, Fox had the film rights in the 90s and until Disney bought Fox. And Fox's rights expanded to include new X-Men characters created after the deal and a percentage of merch sales. So Marvel avoided doing X-Men and ESPECIALLY avoided doing Fantastic Four merch, including toys. They did a lot of what they did do through Walgreens because the purchaser at Walgreens agreed to a higher cost per figure for Walgreens. Marvel and its licensees straight up photoshopped Fantastic Four and X-Men out out of classic comic images like Secret Wars covers to avoid paying Fox a cut of the rights. But Marvel throughout that was the sole owner of the FF and X-Men IP. Fox never owned any share of the rights. Fox had a contract allowing them to get a cut and make movies, which isn't the same thing as ownership, anymore than renting an apartment makes you the owner. With a really good lease, you could rent an apartment for $0 per month and never be able to be kicked out but that doesn't make you the owner. And that's what Fox had. Really, really good contractual rights. So I was open to the idea that Dreamworks had this and Scott mistook it for ownership. It could still be true, I guess. But Scott is full of BS with this supposed October memo he can't share. Why can't he share it if it's real? Would Mattel fire him a second time? Would anybody at Mattel respect him any more for revealing the existence of a memo but not releasing it? On top of that: Scott claims Mattel told retailers it would be dropping MOTU in April 2023. Let's get that very clear. Scott isn't claiming that retailers banded together and told Mattel they didn't want any more. No. His story is that Mattel was the one who made the decision to stop it and wouldn't be supplying more, even if retailers wanted it. And then, what? Mattel proceeded to release Snake Mountain and announce it would be sold at retail? And proceeded to give retailers an order sheet with product listings through June after telling them it wouldn't accept orders after April? That story stinks to high heaven. The only question for me is whether Scott is a compulsive liar who can't help themselves, whether he thinks he's a mastermind who will destroy his enemies through deliberate lies, or whether he actually has some kind of memo and did see a contract of some kind back when he worked there and is too thick to understand what it means. Like, I think if absolutely pressured to release the memo that maybe he REALLY does have a memo and maybe he REALLY will release it. And it will say something like, "We will be discontinuing production for items solicited as part of Origins waves 9 through 11 and Masterverse wave 6 in April of 2023." Which is normal. At a certain point, older waves are discontinued for new orders. Mattel has made a distinction between older waves being in-production even after release and being discontinued. But a small part of me thinks Scott could have a memo that says something like that and interpreted it as the lines being discontinued. Because there's actually good reasons to think that maybe Scott is a bit dim and very bad at reading. It's a bit like Glass Onion if you look at it that way. This IS the "toy expert" who has routinely gotten facts about MOTU wrong despite MOTU being his obsession. Mark Taylor corrected him. Many vintage designers contradicted things Scott said about vintage. Go through his videos. Look at the typos. There are a lot of typos and spelling errors. And these aren't on random forum posts but videos he uses as his professional calling card to get work. This is the expert who regularly and routinely talks about "Todd McFarland". Let's be clear. McFarlanE toys has been around at retail in the adult collector boys aisle toy space that Scott claims to be an expert in for 28 years. McFarlane has had much more success than Scott did on any brand he managed for Mattel. McFarlane is a multimillionaire media and toy creator who is probably one of the top five best known names in the history of comic books and was the licensee for a metric ton of genre properties, including Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Harry Potter, and DC. And Todd McFarlanE is the one who first hired the Four Horsemen. Mattel recruited them from Todd's company when they went freelance to work on DC and MOTU. And Scott calls him Todd McFarlanD regularly? Put it this way. Imagine someone told you they were a social media expert and they have insights about Instogram. And repeatedly called it Instogram. Or if somebody said they were a sports betting expert and they had thoughts on Michael Jurdan's career highlights and could predict future stars. And they kept saying "Michael Jurdan" a hundred times and put it in print repeatedly. I lean towards the idea that Scott's being deliberately deceptive. But I just can't bring myself to rule out the possibility that he's just exceptionally bad at reading and understanding things and somehow became MOTU brand manager (after being a COPYWRITER) with maybe a third grade reading comprehension of English and nobody ever stopped him because he was SO CONFIDENT in his own smarts. And that somehow this mythical savant managed to crank out 300+ action figures (quite likely on the uncredited work of other people) and then one day somebody had an epiphany like the detective at the end of The Usual Suspects and realized Scott was literally incapable of reading or understanding basic things THE WHOLE TIME and nobody noticed. Hell, there are famous actors and producers who can't read or write. Tom Cruise learned to read on the set of Top Gun. I want to believe that maybe Scott looks at contracts and memos and just sees squiggles that he half understands and then aggressively proceeds to assert that he knows what those documents say. And if he ever had to share any of those documents, we'd find out that he really, really, really doesn't understand basic things about the adult world or what words mean.
No it wasn't you, someone was just like "well with the rights going to Universal" like it was common knowledge. you're gonna make me go through all my own posts
It's entirely possible that he was prompted to make a video by the story about King Hiss and Thunder Punch He-Man listed as discontinued in the Target app (by all means a nothingburger) of few days ago which, combined with the usual post Christmast reorganization of the toy aisle, may have made his claim more credible with the added "independent sources" as a reinforce. His ego aside, there is nothing better than doom and fear to revitalize a stale channel. Guess we'll see another video with the same script at the end of the year.
Would Mattel possibly cancel one or more lines swiftly and suddenly? Sure. I think that's less likely after five million dollar crowdfund. Would they take the line online only? Maybe. But I don't think they'd see Mattel Creations in its current state as having the capacity. The site crashes and lags and bugs out with a few thousand orders. They don't have much in the way of inventory or fulfillment without reinvestment. Hasbro had to replace Hasbro Toy Shop with Hasbro Pulse, with both web and fulfillment infrastructure improvements, before they could routinely handle tens of thousands of orders. And Pulse still has a buggy app with loads of problems that can't handle 30,000 orders in 5 minutes and is no replacement for retail. And what would happen to MOTU's shelf space? More Buzz Lightyear toys at Target? More wrestling toys at Walmart? Or would Hasbro or Playmates eat it up? It doesn't seem very thought through. If Scott had a memo, as I said, I don't get why he would hesitate to share it. But I also can't imagine Mattel giving up 12 pegs without a plan to replace that with another product. And I don't get why Scott wouldn't mention that if it was real. If Hasbro discontinued Power Rangers in six months, you can bet the notice would be hyping up expansions to Transformers or G.I. Joe or Star Wars or Marvel Legends that would take its place. They surely wouldn't give up two or three pegs of retail space without any attempt at saving face or drumming up replacement business. And in any balanced analysis, that would be half the news story. "Mattel is dropping Origins but doubling down on WWE Superstars! Wrestling figures are king! Do kids want sword and sorcery?" No way do they produce a memo that's just, "IDK. I quit, LOL!"
With all good things, it must come to an end. If Universal dose have the rights to MOTU Mattel may have been in talks years ago and probably Origins was to show them that Mattel can continue to make the toys and thanks to those who work for Mattel and our bank accounts, Universal may have signed agreements on Mattel to continue with what they are doing. One thing That dose happen (and it has already happened) that after April Masterverse and Origins may have Brand refresh just like Origins has the Rise of the Snakemen on the package. The toys will still be coming, but the branding of Origins and Masterverse will be gone. Just like with Transformers CHUG came PWT then WFC and now Legacy. He-man has been given new life and just like the times in the past MOTU will eventually like all lines in the past, be Cancelled. When will it happen? This year, next year or 10 years from now? We shall see. Until then Keep'em coming Mattel.
