Here is that shot of his belt emblem
But that's a great question about the Void. I get the sense we will at least get a taste given the movie seems to focus on the damage and mental issues the characters carry.
I wish someone would ask the team about the future of Disney+ waves. For the first half-dozen or so shows we got 3 to 5 figures, more for What If...? But after the Hydra Stomper BAF wave that had some Hawkeye and Secret Invasion and few odds and ends, has anything been announced?
It seems like big a change in strategy given that at the start of D+ we were getting waves every 6 to 9 months with a lot of dedicated sculpts. Around 35 figures across 5 BAF waves plus about a half-dozen deluxe and exclusives in about 3 years. In other words, they were pushing the D+ quite a bit, but for 2024 it was just Man-Thing.
Which means so far pretty much nothing for Echo and Agatha All Along or Werewolf by Night or the Guardian Special. I am wondering if the Man-Thing from the WbN was originally planned as the BAF for a wave with something like more Secret Invasion (Gravik, G'iah) plus WbN (Jack, Elsa) and Echo (Echo) or maybe more She Hulk (Titania) or Loki (Ouroboros, Renslayer).
Yeah, it's a shame there's still nothing going on. I know the vast majority of the pegwarmers over the last couple years were the D+ figs, but I do wonder how much of that was more quality over anything else- we knew that a lot of them were heavy reuse, or, in Fury's case, he was just a traffic cone. There's still a fair amount of people who don't have D+, and the collectors like us who know what's being released generally know when we're getting one pulled over on us quality-wise, and with rising prices, are more selective with what we choose to purchase.
I'm actually really liking Agatha so far, and it's a shame that there probably won't be anything for it. I'm sure we'll get one of Joe Locke's character in some future project, but I can't lie and say that a Patti LuPone figure wouldn't be appealing to me, just to have a figure of Patti LuPone 🤣 . Same with Aubrey Plaza; who knows if either will be back in any future projects? I'm glad we got Agatha in an earlier wave, or else they probably wouldn't have even done her from her own show.
@fac Right, nothing against these characters, but we got old Loki and Jimmy Woo. They made me feel like were were getting into Kenner Star Wars territory as far as characters they'd make figures of!
For leaks next year, I think all I've seen mentioned is two from Born Again, and they're obvious ones that may even use some parts hasbro already used.
but the wave you proposed definitely sounds like something Hasbro would have done before this change.
I don't think they ever quite got the D+ BAF waves to really work - too long to get them out given they waited for the last of the 2 or 3 shows featured in a wave to premiere, and the mix of animated plus live action (while not as bad as the mix of comic and MCU) in a wave may not have helped at times.
Seems like the model of show-specific multi-packs of varying figure counts would be the best option, supplemented with deluxe figures and exclusives.
It seems like big a change in strategy given that at the start of D+ we were getting waves every 6 to 9 months with a lot of dedicated sculpts. Around 35 figures across 5 BAF waves plus about a half-dozen deluxe and exclusives in about 3 years. In other words, they were pushing the D+ quite a bit, but for 2024 it was just Man-Thing.
All of the Disney Plus waves you're referring to mostly peg-warmed and went to Ollie's. That made it obvious to me as to the future for Disney Plus waves--it will be significantly reduced and likely limited to more-popular characters.
Plus Kevin Feige has been continuously screwing over all of the Marvel partner toy companies since Covid started by moving release dates knowing that the toy companies can't move with them, and that hasn't stopped even after Covid has been over and has happened several times this year as well.
Hasbro HAS to stop trying to get out ahead of most MCU characters for now because they're clearly losing money on them. My guess is that any we see going forward that are released with their associated MCU content will be no-brainer A- and B-list characters, and any middling to minor characters will come long after their movie or show is released.
@fac I completely agree with you about the waves never working, but not the multipack idea. If they were to tackle each show the way they did Deadpool & Wolverine (a few single releases and a deluxe or two), I would be utterly content.
@enigmaticclarity and I'd be very happy with that, as long as they DO have those supporting characters eventually. I'm fine waiting a few years for Electro, but I still want him.
Plus Kevin Feige has been continuously screwing over all of the Marvel partner toy companies since Covid started by moving release dates knowing that the toy companies can't move with them, and that hasn't stopped even after Covid has been over and has happened several times this year as well.
This is quite a drastic interpretation of the long-term effects of COVID and multiple industry strikes plus a change in CEO.
I want my MCU waves back! I love Agatha's new long jacket. Echo deserves a figure. I don't mind if they start ignoring What If (though a white Hela, Michelle Yeoh and a Widow would have been cool), but what I really want is communication about it! Going from "here's everyone" to "here's no one" and no one telling us the strategy shift is really frustrating.
But here's the other thing: the figures that haven't sold weren't the best.
Kingpin - weird face, wrong body
Yelena - huge head, too big a body (again)
Fury - awful body that can't stand
Gamora is a great figure, Talos is good but the neck choices they made screwed collectors, and Agatha is one of my favorite figures of last year - think she's fantastic and should have sold better.
I think Wave 4 with Jimmy, Loki, He Who Remains, Zombies IM/Wanda, Howard and Skull was a great wave - they just made too many! And Loki was probably unnecessary in the grand scheme of things - Renslayer would have been better and completed that show's main cast.
It was also an odd choice to paywall the only Season 2 Loki figure behind a role play toy which never even went to retail.
And in all of the above we can't forget the windowless packaging which looks to have decimated sales - so the content of the waves can't even be fully blamed.
Communication would really be great, but to be fair I don't tune into the streams much anymore. So any vague hint of 'yeah yeah we've heard your bitching, now on to what we really wanna discuss!' is totally missed by me, heh.
I'll play the cynic today until e-rock comes back.
All of the Disney Plus waves you're referring to mostly peg-warmed and went to Ollie's. That made it obvious to me as to the future for Disney Plus waves--it will be significantly reduced and likely limited to more-popular characters.
Hasbro HAS to stop trying to get out ahead of most MCU characters for now because they're clearly losing money on them.
Overproduction tends to hurt future sales more than initial profits, unless the retailers demand makegoods - but we don't know if these waves sold OK but needed to sell more units than the comic waves given the effort to produce, if they were both overproduced and undersold, or just overproduced, or were normal levels and the bottom dropped out from the Legends previous floor (my guess for the line overall to be honest) or what happened.
Not saying they sold well, but Hasbro may have made money while their retail partners didn't, which killed future prospects - I doubt it gets to wave 5 without the earlier waves doing OK. I do believe the HydraStomper wave (the last D+ one) was a disaster given the character selection and Secret Invasion not being well received.
In any case, 0 new figures and none previewed or announced for D+ is a pretty drastic reduction, not just a pull back to the highest profile characters.
Quite possible that Hasbro received a lot of early pressure from Disney/Marvel to promote the first few Disney+ shows with action figures, and if the sales were bad it would have provided Hasbro leverage in telling Disney, "No" when it's come to future waves. They have also been burned so often by the company changing release dates that it wouldn't shock me if the new strategy is more of a wait and see. If there's fan demand for characters from Agatha All Along or whatever comes next then I would expect to see Hasbro address it, but if the viewership is subpar or they're not seeing much interest then they'll ignore it. Unless, of course, they think something will be a hit and is likely to create demand for toys, but that also depends on Marvel sharing advance details about the show with Hasbro which they don't always seem willing to do.
One thing that I think is being overlooked in this discussion as well is the parent company's pull back from Disney+ altogether in the overall business strategy. There has been alot of talk in the trades about criticism at the top of Disney that part of the Marvel brand struggle was over-saturation and too much content being flooded into the market via Disney+ and so there was a deliberate pull back to ratchet down releases, thin out the release schedule and refocus on the types of things that made the MCU the hot property it was.
If the entertainment company itself is pulling back on Disney+ content and slowing down the release pace of theatrical releases, it is not hard to follow that they are no longer pushing Hasbro with any sort of intensity to include MCU waves in their release calendar.
Before there was likely a much harder push from Disney to synergize hasbro product with their movie and Disney+ releases. With a change in marketing strategy and release focus that has likely dialed way back.
That coupled with, as many people have noted, the uncertainty of when certain properties are being released, makes synergy with toy manufacture and release exceedingly difficult.
I think it's for both of those reasons we have seen such an extreme slowdown of movie related figure releases. I am curious to see what - if any - figure support the upcoming Venom movie gets. That Venom Horse in the trailer would seem like a toy designer's dream to work on.
The venom stuff always seems to get released a movie behind.
The venom stuff always seems to get released a movie behind.
Yeah... but since this is the last Venom movie... that won't work, so might as well just go in...
That would be nice but.... Eh.
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