McFarlane knows translucent plastic exists yet refused to use it for Firestorm's flames. They didn't even make new banded bracers for Sinestro.
Hawkman and Firestorm are instant PO's. Sinestro, whilst I like the character I will wait on the classic costume.
And yes agreed on the translucent plastic for the flames. Something akin to the dio that came with the White Knight Bat 2 pack.
I think these are essentially $10 extra for a raffle ticket at chases that sell for $100.
McFarlane was slipping chases into what he thought would be lower demand figures and now the idea is to charge $10 extra for the raffle aspect since these ALL have chases. I'm guessing Silver Age Sinestro, Jason Rusch, and JSA Hawkman.
Isn't this a dangerous game for Todd to play? I can order 10 from Target, expect to get one and return the rest. The onus isn't on me for once and they'll have a bone to pick with Todd for getting stuck with inventory.
Yup!
I just reached out to BBTS with exactly this concern.
It's one thing to do periodic variants although we may all grumble about them.
It's another thing for:
- Every figure to have a variant.
- The variants to frequently be more desirable than the regular versions.
- There to be a $10 premium for the "privilege" of maybe getting a variant.
- The variants aren't even blind boxed so they can EASILY be returned without even breaking a seal, particularly to merchants who probably can't eliminate a return policy to suit one figure.
This likely will carry over into negative effects for retailers with almost no return policy as scalpers will bleed Amazon dry of chases and then Amazon will be forced to dramatically price reduce remaining stock, which their competitors will be pressured to match.
Todd has a bad case of NFT brain right now. He's thinking about everything the way he thinks about NFTs where people will pay $40 for a JPEG they have a 2% chance of selling for $2000. And even with crypto crashes, that still works in Todd's marketplace. I made $600 off a $35 NFT in Todd's marketplace last week. I hate NFTs but I like having money for toys so I learned how to navigate it. That doesn't make the approach good or healthy. It's a bubble.
I want the Platinum Superman. I'm doing exactly what you said already. I have a large bundle on preorder. I'm keeping a chase. The rest are going back. It's going through an account where I can tie up a couple hundred dollars for a week between the order and the return refund if the net result is that I get a Platinum Superman for $30 instead of the $150 I've seen them sell for on eBay. I know I'm not the only one doing this.
It's an objectively crappy system and I don't feel especially guilty for exploiting it with large retailers. But it's going to hurt retailers and blow up in Todd's face.
Target at least caps these to an order limit of 2. And I'd never exploit this with a dedicated toy retailer. But with Amazon or Walmart? They might find a way to course correct if I wasn't just doing it to get a personal copy of two different figures.
There will absolutely be people who order 50 or 100 and scalp every chase they get.
And I'm not sure what that means for Amazon. Do they end toy returns? Limit quantities? Ban anyone who returns too many? Fail to respond at all because they're focused on the billions of dollars they're making off of other products and they don't notice and let the algorithm manage things? Get aggressive with Todd? Insist that future waves be blind packaged so people have to break a seal to decide which non-chases to return?
I think Todd is really letting crypto and NFTs cloud his thinking and probably looking to make a quick buck while consumer spending is down. (And not necessarily deliberately doing anything malicious, just dumb and greedy.)
But, yeah, everything you just said is absolutely part of what I figured out a couple of weeks ago. I've reached out specifically to BBTS to illustrate what's going to happen and why they might want to drop carrying these altogether or open up a line of negotiations with Todd.
It would be better all around if these figures were released in normal waves at normal prices with the most popular decos being the most produced and any variants just going out as traditional exclusives or later releases. This is actually a system that, along with some other stuff like the Build-an-NFT, actually has the potential to destroy Todd's retailer relationships, alienate fans, and possibly sour his relationship with WBD. All for a quick buck that Amazon may find a way to strongarm back out of him once they see the net results, through vendor agreement allowances or general corporate strongarm negotiations. Amazon is essentially an unregulated kingdom in some ways and they could essentially blacklist his products from the platform and retailers could begin planning to reallocate him out of planogram space if he screws them. Even unintentionally.
He could spend the rest of his WBD license term only selling direct through his own site and then wakeup to an email from WBD in a few years saying they decided to give the license to Jada or Jazzwares the next time the agreement is up.
I don't know that the Collector Edition stuff alone would do this (although my gamed out version of what happens has tens or even hundreds of thousands in losses for retailers from sone of the impacts) but between this and Build-an-NFT and whatever similar stuff he has in mind, I do think he's playing with fire.
(The Build-an-NFT is another potential debacle but it's essentially attaching physical action figures to an unregulated side market with its own NFT chases that some sets will unlock that could yield paydays of many thousands of dollars for market exploiters but the bottom line is a lot of people with a lot of money are going to cause a lot of plastic figures to flood markets and hurt retailers because they'll be buying with zero interest in the figures and people who want the figures will also encounter weird distortions because of a digital product they don't want either.)
I think you might be overestimating how much Amazon cares about this line.
And regarding Firestorm, he is the only one of these good enough to warrant the extra 10 bucks. Had it come with an extra head, it would've been an amazing release.
Yesterday I got a notice from Amazon that my Antimonitor shipped. But it won't be here until September 1. That's about 8 days in transit. What shipping service did they use… The Pony Express? I thought paying $120 a year for Amazon Prime included "Free 2 day shipping". Whatever happened to that?
That's a nice looking Brainiac. I don't really collect Superman characters, but I love the Injustice designs a lot, and I liked Jeffrey Combs' performance a lot. I'll probably snag it, if only because there's so many Injustice designs I'd still love to get.
Regarding the chases, I'm lucky in that there's only been one to date that I really felt like I needed, which was the properly masked Catwoman from The Batman. Other than that, I haven't really been in love with any of the chase/gold label/platinum figures (although Gold Label seems to have taken on a different meaning now). I'm sure that'll change one day and there'll be one I absolutely have to have, but it's been nice not having to worry, but I certainly feel for those who have. I've tried to track down chases from other lines before and it's been a miserable experience.
Nice looking Brainiac, not for me-Silver or Bronze age only-But eager to see if his Dr Octopus tentacles are articulated (Wired?) in anyway.....
Brainiac looks quite ok, don't really have anything else to add. Translates the design very well into figure form.
I dig that Brainiac. A nice cross between his robotic and organic incarnations. Brainiac is one of those characters that doesn't really have a "standard" look. He's constantly evolving and changing, so this figure will work for me as a decent representation of the character.
That Braniac looks awesome. Actually it's the first thing Todd's shown in months I actually liked. Hell I have outright hated the recent string of stuff. I'm glad people are excited for Collector Edition, but to me it was fumbled hard, especially since I think Firestorm is just modeled off the PP Superman. Ugh. If they wanna do a DCUC style line then make new bodies.
This Braniac though is really cool and makes me want to see the Page Punchers Superman wave even more. That and Spawn are the only things keeping my interest. New52 Batman could be cool.
Based on the retail listing leaks we had before, I think we might be able to infer that the Superman Page Punchers figures are Injustice themed.
The listings as I recall them:
Brainiac (Green Head, no comic)
Superman of Earth-2 (Armored) vs Brainiac
Superman
Superman of Earth-2
Ghost of Zod
Brainiac
We had gone back and forth on Earth-2 referring to the New 52 version or COIE.
I now lean towards the idea that it refers to the Injustice Earth.
Injustice features two Earths. One labeled Earth-1 where Superman didn't become a crazy dictator and another, I think typically called Alliance Earth, where Superman did go nuts.
My best guess is that this is another case of McFarlane Toys getting a little sloppy with reference material.
It makes sense after getting two Injustice Green Arrows, two Dr. Fates, Flash, Reverse Flash, Grodd, Supergirl, and Batman that McFarlane would prioritize arguably the star of the franchise, Superman.
Zod doesn't really have a presence in most Earth-2 iterations (Mala and U-Ban the crypgenically frozen Kryptonian criminals kind of filled that role pre-Crisis) nor does Brainiac. Zod is black and the father of Val-Zod in the New 52 but extremely minor. Zod is, however, in Injustice and I think he dies and Brainiac exists in Injustice and this is that Brainiac with a green head.
So my hunch is that these are all Injustice figures. Zod is probably a ghost of the playable Zod with a standard version coming later. I think the standard Superman is the heroic version and "Earth-2" refers to the evil tyrant Superman, who does indeed adopt armor.
Classic Riddler shipped from Amazon - should be here tomorrow.
As an aside, something that may be confusing going forward is that some Injustice designs have muddled relationships to the comic books.
Injustice Zod is HEAVILY based on the pre-Flashpoint Zod from the Richard Donner/Geoff Johns comics, father of Chris Kent.
But things got more muddled as the series went on and "Earth-1" Supergirl from Injustice is the New 52 Supergirl design with the red diaper.
Whereas "Earth-1" Superman from Injustice is a no trunks, vaguely Rebirth-y Superman who has never appeared in merch.
"Earth-1" Hawkman looks very much like the pre-Flashpoint JSA version minus trunks.
And Injustice has an Earth-2 based on the New 52 version (but not exactly). I think Earth-3 has been acknowledged with a mashup version combining Morrison's with Infinite Frontier and Forever Evil.
And confusing this is that the main DCU has now crossed over with Injustice but has its own numbering system for earths that doesn't match Injustice numbering so the Injustice Earth-1 isn't the comics Earth-1. Neither are the pre-Crisis Earth-1 or Earth-1985 which is a continuation of pre-Crisis Earth-1.
And the current DCU was once Earth-1 but became Earth-0 thanks to the various Crises.
And there are simultaneously the dead Infinite multiverse from pre-Crisis (which came back) and the "local" 52 Earth multiverse and the negative Dark Multiverse and other Multiverses entirely, which have all been renumbered and/or rebooted at various points.
The current Earth-2 is a restored New 52 version (which I think ignores the later arcs of that comic) but the pre-Crisis version and other past Earth-2s like the one Johns' JSA visited exist somewhere.
But I think McFarlane is just running with Injustice as "Earth-2" in contrast to Injustice's "Earth-1" (which is only called Earth-1 by Injustice characters).
Glad to be back on the forums. And with Wordpress. Neat.
I preordered the 3 collector figures because they look awesome. They are comic accurate, and look great, so I sucked up the additional price. Hawkman and Firestorm both have a good bit of unique sculpt, but it still does feel like "charge the collectors extra because we can". I guess it's working, I bought them. But they look seriously cool so I don't really regret it.
I thought I'd be unhappy with Zero Hour Hawkman, but it looks amazing. Just a really well done figure. Wondering if I can swap the BWL Sky Tyrant's wings onto Hawkman for articulation.
One thing I am absolutely not OK with in any way, shape or form is these platinum variants. For two reasons.
First, I have absolutely no interest in getting something I didn't order. Paying $30 and getting a variant you don't want absolutely sucks. I am dreading the Abyss coming in the mail, just praying it's the normal version and not the platinum that has never shown up in a comic.
But second, and most importantly...sought after variants should just be regular figures. I'd be beside myself if classic blue/black Sinestro is a variant as opposed to a regular release. Ditto for Jason Rusch Firestorm. I can live with having to return a glowing Alan Scott or a colorful Abyss, even though it's inconvenient. But what I absolutely cannot stand is paying $30 for a collector figure then having to go on the secondary market and pay twice that for a more sought after version of the character. Platinum Freeze would look great with the classic Riddler...if it weren't so expensive.
I want to know what I'm paying for. I think that's pretty fair regardless of whether or not you like a specific variant.
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