I finally remembered when I encountered a factory issue where the plastic was wrong and everything was too small - it was a few waves of Heroclix. It was some kind of formula issue and borked several waves. No idea if that's what's going on here, but I distinctly remember Wizkids having to explain that it wasn't a cost saving measure but a chemistry eff up. Really infuriating to get a year of tiny Supermen and Hulks though.
Law & Order being revealed makes me hopeful we are JUST that much closer to the ultimate combo: Spearhead & Max. Come on, Hasbro, you know you want to articulate a bobcat, you KNOW it.
(Also Dusty and his coyote.)
@docsilence yes, Dusty is definitely the next one I'd hope for after the bobcat.
that much closer to the ultimate combo: Spearhead & Max
My ultimate combo is: Desert Scorpion
Was it Jerry Macaluso that said years ago when he owned SOTA, the plastic costs between a 6, 5, and 7 inch figure were pretty negligible? Not sure how that holds up in todays market though.
Although I do like heights differences between characters, I didn’t expect Leatherneck or Saw Viper to be smaller. I also forgot that the windowless packaged Joes had their heights listed on the back. I recently picked up an extra LT Falcon and he’s listed as 6’4. I’m out of town and nowhere near my collection so I can’t see if the heights are listed in the current window boxes.
When the 4H started Mythic Legions, they were thinking of 1/18 scale, but ended up going with the scale they did was because the cost between them was negligible.
Would making figures slightly smaller produce any real savings on materials or shipping costs?
In the long term; probably? Hard to say for sure because we don't really know what their costs on anything are. But it can certainly add up over the millions of units they're producing. It's also worth considering that if a downshift in size fits even one more piece into a tool, then over a half-dozen figures, or a dozen figures, that could mean actually producing one less steel tool. And that would be a savings of like 30 grand right there. That's a half of a percent of one CEO bonus right there.
Add that savings to the potentially thousands of dollars saved in material costs over a run of each figure. And to get really petty about it - a figure that's 9% smaller might use what... 2% less material in the paint deco? Again - nothing for one or two figures, but if it becomes a trend then you might also be talking thousands of dollars in the long term. Yeah you could be talking about a decent sum overall.
But again... PURE speculation and I'm not suggesting that's what's happening. In fact, I think it's more likely that these are being produced in a different factory and the factory fucked up. We can't know for sure either way. Could be neither.
Dial-Tone is such a weird figure for me. I have literally never cared about the character or any of his figures. But for some reason that Classified figure just speaks to me. Something about the overall design, the colors, the wacky retro-ness of the backpack. I kind of want it but I also feel like I need to convince myself not to just get stuff I don't actually care about because it -always- ends up in the sell pile within a year or two.
It sounds like most of the savings would be if the scaling down was done across the board on all or most figures rather than for a single one-off. Definitely see how the materials cost could add up across that many units, and I hadn't thought about the potential savings on the tooling pieces or marginal paint. I know we don't know this information, but I wonder what the average production run of any individual Classified figure is. 25,000? 50?
This reminds me of the story that gets trotted out all the time, about American Airlines cutting out a single olive from each of the meals they served across all their flights. Wow, they saved $40,000! An absolutely minuscule sum saved in the grand scheme of their operations, but a highly visible value reduction to their customers. It probably is just a mistake like you said, but based on the AA story, yeah - I can totally see some exec thinking it's a good idea.
Once we get Wetsuit and if he’s taller than Leatherneck, we’re gonna have some problems.
If this were Marvel Legends I would say with 100% certainty that they would use the Torpedo buck as a base for Wet Suit and to put him up against Leatherneck to get an idea of the scale. However, Classified has shown that they will go the extra mile, so it's 50/50 whether Wet Suit will be a reuse with new overlay or all-new.
Is it unrealistic to think the retro tele viper will come with all three heads again?
Probably.Is it unrealistic to think the retro tele viper will come with all three heads again?
I imagine it will be a stripped down release with most of the accessories, but the extra heads won't be part of the pack. Most likely due to them probably giving the Retro TV the rolled up sleeves look so they'll have to settle on one skin tone which probably means caucasian.
Ah good point! Thank you
Maybe the fully masked head though?
@ru1977, it was strongly suggested by Lenny that there's going to be a head with a backwards text display in the visor like in the cartoon.
Unless somebody's already mentioned that here, in which case it's still true but I won't sound so smug about telling you.
@fletch I didn't pick up smugness so I'll have to go back and read it again with that in mind, but I think your post is the first I'm hearing about it.
Falcon and Quarrel are down to $35 but I'm done returning things to Walmart for now.
@theknightdamien I wonder if a comparison of retail prices over the years could shed any light on that. It seems to me like the gap between 3.75" and 6" is closer now than it has ever been. However that could just be my misconception.
I know retail price is not related to manufacturing costs directly, but there has to be some causal link so maybe there is some way to get an idea without insider knowledge.
I think the only way for that comparison to be useful is if we have a solid idea of the relationship between the different costs. It might have nothing to do with raw materials. In 2006 it was like 60 bucks per barrel and in 2020 it was 41. But it's not like action figure prices went DOWN, right? (Of course, even if ALL their costs went down, no company is lowering the price of action figures because corporate greed is a thing that rules our entire existence). In 2022 I think oil prices spiked at over 100/barrel, but now we're back down around 75-85 or so? Still.. prices didn't go down.
Of course that's not just corporate greed. Chinese factory wages have also gone up since the early 2000s. Even then.. kind of useless information, really. I think, on average, Chinese factory workers are making like 50% more than they were in 2007. But in the grand scheme of things that's still a fairly small amount of money per item when manufacturing tens of thousands of units. I guess what I'm saying is - it's actually mostly just corporate greed.
In any case, I think part of the reason smaller figures cost as much as larger figures, or near to, is more about 'because they can' and less about 'because they have to.' But I'm sure it also has something to do with the labour costs involved in making the product not really changing. With larger companies like Hasbro, there's also other fixed costs like corporate bonuses, advertising and marketing, etc, that aren't really going to change with scale, but do need to be factored in probably as a fixed amount in each production run.
Defeating my own original argument in a way, but of course every penny matters and none of this means a company wouldn't want to minimize costs in whatever way they can. Even hundreds of dollars per production run is still hundreds of dollars, hundreds of times per year. Maybe one day I'll get a job at Hasbro and I can whistleblow this shit all over the place.
@h-bird Yeah, I still think intentional underscaling for material cost reasons is the least likely scenario here. Just not impossible by any stretch. And you're right that it would need to be something across the board. That's why I mentioned that it seems to have also been the case with Danny Ketch -- an all new sculpt and SAW Viper - an all new sculpt. I could see this being something that phases in slowly as they release totally new figures. Especially figures that aren't going to get a lot of re-use and therefore not as much scrutiny, perhaps.
And I've made the argument that, like grapes on a plane, it all adds up. Still, though, this is probably 'Saving money by using a Vietnamese factory' reasons and not 'saving money by using less plastic' reasons.
Although, again, it could even be both. They could have used a cheaper factory and the factory could have intentionally underscaled the files they were sent to use less plastic while charging the already-agreed price.
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