The thing about the Deluxe figures is that they're not.
Mad Hatter said it pretty well that these still feel over-priced. Yeah, they cut 20 bucks off, but they also cut out like 90% of the accessories, so the math still isn't working out. At this price point S7 should be including at least another set of hands and the dagger version of the SoO. As-is, there's not much value here. Especially considering it's not like I'm talking about including newly-sculpted unique accessories. Just take a few more things that already exist and put them in the box so it feels like a more complete figure.
The Ultimates are 20 bucks more but come with tons of accessories - plenty of which you'll never use.
The Deluxe is 20 bucks less but comes with almost nothing?
It feels cynical. Like 'these stupid plebs keep complaining about our prices so we'll throw a figure in a box with two accessories and still overcharge for it, but overcharge less than we do for all the accessories we took out that most people won't use.'
I dunno. Seems fuckin' lame, honestly. Just more Super7 being so incredibly, painfully Super7. They always seem to come so close to figuring it out and then just trip over their own shoelaces and knock their teeth out on a metal fence while pissing themselves.
I think Damien has the right of it. There's an argument that making the cheaper option too attractive would dent their Ultimates! sales to which I say YES! That's what we want. Cut all the deep-dive trivia items and just give us the must-haves.
I'd pay $40 easy for Thundercats Essentials! figures.
Yeah, here's the thing about it: I understand, and appreciate, that this is a response to calls that Ultimates are too expensive, and that price is a limiting factor if you're trying to both grow your consumer base and get into retail outlets. It's -smart- to recognize the pricing issue and try to do something about it.
The problem is that they started from the position that Ultimates are correctly/fairly priced and worked backwards from there to come to their Deluxe price point. But in doing so, they made the wobbly wheels fall off, because we get to see the kind of value they're ascribing to accessories a lot of people don't care about. I've seen even hardcore TC fans pointing out that all the claw options for Lion-O are redundant and a waste.
But as I've said for years and years, Super7's whole thing is to use the -relatively- low cost of accessories to pad out the packaging to make it look like you're getting more value than you actually are.
People try to say 'oh, if you bought a custom head it would be 20 dollars by itself.' Great. I'm not buying a custom head. It's a head included in a production figure by a major toy company. C'mon. If I buy a custom Joe it's going to run me over 100 bucks, but I'll be damned if Hasbro is going to charge me 100 bucks for a Classified figure. So that's a non-starter of an argument.
Instead of Super7 re-evaluating how they price their Ultimates in response to the complaints, they basically doubled-down on their pricing structure, which only showed off how bad it is. In my opinion.
I mean... talk your shit, I get it. But what you want is NEVER going to happen. It isn't. I understand the points you make but they don't matter. You're yelling at a wall.
The company isn't going to walk back it's pricing strategy now. They aren't going to suddenly reverse course and admit that - yes, indeed, we've been grossly overcharging you for years now, so we're rolling back prices to give you the exact same product for $20 less than we had been charging. It isn't happening.
You can vote with your wallet - and you have - and you can moan on-line - which you do, but at the end of the day we're at where we're at.
I'm pleased with this move. More access to these figures at a lower price is good for me. I already have these characters in this format, but I love me some custom fodder and $35 (or less if I apply Red Card savings and Target Circle bonus discounts) is cheap for MOTUC/Ultimates adjacent fodder. I hope these do really well and this program expands for more of the Thundercats line and then more Ultimates products overall.
so we're rolling back prices to give you the exact same product for $20 less than we had been charging. It isn't happening.
That literally isn't what I said, though. Feels a bit strawmany.
What I said was include more in the Deluxe set, but not all the extraneous stuff the Ultimates come with. In no way did I say 'the exact same product for 20 dollars less.' Then we're just arguing over how many accessories constitutes the difference between 'Deluxe' and 'Ultimate.'
Also, while I agree they probably (certainly) -won't- rethink their pricing strategy, my argument is that they -should-. Moreover, it's the perfect time to do so because it can be couched in the ability to get Ultimates-style figures in retail stores. We're always told figures cost more because they're "made-to-order" (complete bullshit, as we've talked about). So that means figures at retail should cost -less-, right? So even a regular Ultimates figure at Target would not be 55 dollars... right? Economy of scale. The whole reason they can claim selling direct means they need to charge more.
It's literally the perfect time to re-evaluate the pricing WITHOUT actually having to admit they've been pricing things unreasonably. They can just be like 'oh, how fortunate - we have this cool Target deal and now we can lower prices on some figures!' The Deluxe thing is an even better way to do that because they can also point out that they're not just lowering prices by being at retail, they're also dropping some of the more deep-cut accessories and unnecessary extras to make the figures even less expensive than a regular Ultimates at retail would be.
And thus come to a 35 dollar price for a figure with a reasonable amount of extras, but not nearly the amount Ultimates come with. I don't think the Lion-O figure we're getting as a Deluxe - but with an extra set of hands and MAYBE the dagger version of his sword is unreasonable at all for a 35 dollar figure. NECA does it at retail. Why can't Super7?
I'm arguing this from the position of not just a consumer, but what I genuinely feel is actively good business sense. As someone that actually runs a successful business (granted, not toys). I'm not just talking out of my ass because 'I want toys to be cheaper' (although I do, and I think there's every reason they should be).
You can absolutely cheerlead for Super7, praise every time they manage to make a figure with elbows that can make it all the way to a 90 degree bend, and say they're doing a pretty good job because this time the figure didn't disintegrate in your hands or whatever. I get it. Some people just genuinely like what they do and are fine with things exactly as-is. Totally cool. You're 100% entitled to that.
I'm merely saying that even when they seem to want to correct course, they make stupid decisions because (in my opinion) it's a company run by stupid people that barely understand their only clientele. I don't even need to work hard on that one, since Brian Flynn constantly says stupid shit like how collectors that grew up with 2003 Turtles are used to lots of articulation but people that collect 1980s Turtles aren't. Silly, out-of-touch nonsense that we all laugh about because it's silly and out of touch. But it speaks to a deeper lack of understanding between the company and its potential customers that is constantly on display.
You don't have to agree, though. You know that's cool with me. But I'mma say what I say regardless.
I'm not even denying that what you say has merit. I'm saying that the company straight up can't admit they've been grossly overcharging us for the product for the last 6 years and now are reversing course.
And I do agree that they should be able to include a bit more in the Deluxe offering than they have with these first two. Extra heads is probably more than they'll do but an extra set of hands or two and appropriate necessary weaponry should definitely be in the package.
I hope they find that sweet spot and that the Deluxe form factor is a success for them that gets to keep going.
With the number of times Super7 has changed factories since starting the Thundercats line - I also wonder what tooling they still actively have access to. Would they have to re-do a Panthro or do they still have the parts to make him? Is that why we got Monkian and not Jackal Man out of the gate? There is probably a fine line between making the figures that people will buy and those that will hang around. I wouldn't be surprised if the next set offered - if there is a next set offered - isn't Cheetarah and Tygra.
Interestingly - a new "Deluxe" format 'Iconic Pose' Conan was announced at the $35 price. The only included accessory was his sword. But then I looked at the $55 version and it only included one extra head, two extra hands, an extra necklace and the sword. So for $20 less all you're missing is a head, two hands and a necklace. That's one expensive extra portrait.
@panthercult The Conan thing is weird because I feel like those are some of the worst value figures in Ultimates, and I don't get why. I can't imagine the Conan license is -that- expensive (in comparison to other licenses that they're holding). What's causing S7 to dump so hard on providing extras with those figures?
I've banged on this a lot but also like.... this many Conan releases and they can't even fix the sword so that it scales correctly.
I said before that if they did the Mounds Conan and just gave him a corrected sword - I would buy it. Because I'm a sucker.
I get what you mean about them not wanting to show reversing course, or maybe not even being capable of knowing they need to? That's why I mentioned I thought this was a really good chance for them because they -could- do it and do it in a way that isn't them just outright saying 'we were overcharging.' They can couch it in all kinds of business lingo to make it seem like a new price point they can do because of other circumstances, rather than just because they could have done this all along.
And my hope for that was bolstered by the rumours that Brian isn't solely making the decisions anymore, so maybe there's someone else making decisions, or being an important voice in decisions, that could have a good head about this. And just... no. And that sucks. Such a great opportunity to do better AND grow the market share AND garner some much-needed goodwill with their existing customers. Weird to watch them just kind of BLECH all over it.
@panthercult The Conan thing is weird because I feel like those are some of the worst value figures in Ultimates, and I don't get why. I can't imagine the Conan license is -that- expensive (in comparison to other licenses that they're holding). What's causing S7 to dump so hard on providing extras with those figures?
I've banged on this a lot but also like.... this many Conan releases and they can't even fix the sword so that it scales correctly.I said before that if they did the Mounds Conan and just gave him a corrected sword - I would buy it. Because I'm a sucker.
I get what you mean about them not wanting to show reversing course, or maybe not even being capable of knowing they need to? That's why I mentioned I thought this was a really good chance for them because they -could- do it and do it in a way that isn't them just outright saying 'we were overcharging.' They can couch it in all kinds of business lingo to make it seem like a new price point they can do because of other circumstances, rather than just because they could have done this all along.
And my hope for that was bolstered by the rumours that Brian isn't solely making the decisions anymore, so maybe there's someone else making decisions, or being an important voice in decisions, that could have a good head about this. And just... no. And that sucks. Such a great opportunity to do better AND grow the market share AND garner some much-needed goodwill with their existing customers. Weird to watch them just kind of BLECH all over it.
The Sword thing is bonkers. It is STUPID out of scale. Very frustrating for a huge Conan fan across all media, especialy the first movie. All of these releases... even the Throne Conan, now the deluxe, and no fixing it. Super-7 gonna SUper-7.
I canceled the preorder after seeing the Instagram photos. I'll take a chance at finding them in-store to decide whether to buy. Actionfigureinsider bought Lion-O in Nevada and posted to his Instagram.
Yeah, that Lion-O ... .doesn't look great.
Just discovered these "Deluxe" Super 7 releases exist, I guess. Too lazy to read what everyone's discussed already but I'll dump my thoughts out here anyways, it'll probably be a lot of retread, so apologies.
On one hand, I'm somewhat excited. Cheaper alternatives to the Thundercats figures? Fuck yeah! And they look somewhat better? Thank god.
But I could only feel that if Super 7 were the only toy company to exist. While this Lion-O is a small step up visually... it's still so bad in terms of engineering. And HOW is this price justified? I get that that's not a licensed toy, but Operation: Monster Force is just coming out and has significantly more accessories, overlays on the figure itself, and a basic build that requires significantly more parts to tool than this Thundercats figure, while also being infinitely better for play.
Accounting for cost of license, we should still at LEAST get something with engineering on par with a Hasbro or NECA figure, and at least a few hands and alternate parts. If Jada can do Street Fighter (a previously unproven license for toys) with a pair of hands, an alternate head, and a massive blast effect in every figure... why does this only come with bare essentials for $10 extra?
The overall presentation, articulation, and accessories of these reminds me less of a $35 price point and more of those $10 Lanard Predator figures that were Walmart exclusives. Mind you, I loved those things, they were dirt cheap 6"-ish scale Predator figures. That's a steal even if their paint and articulation sucks. $35 for that with better paint and like 3 extra joints?? You're insane.
The moral of this story: Super 7 is still idiotic, will not listen to consumer complaints properly, and really, really love to charge customers exorbitant amounts just to feed them slop that expired in 2002. In other news, the desert is dry.
I'm praying whatever Mattel does features Masterverse style figures of the Thundercats. It'd be so wonderful to have one more property freed from Super 7's clutches.
Just saw some more pics of the deluxe Lion-o and it looks pretty poor. It’s no taller than the original one, the head looks small and the paint on the eyes is bad. The only thing that looks better is the torso re-sculpt and the shorts are a bit better. Thinking of cancelling my order for the light up eyes version.
Man, I really don't like how small the new Lion-O is. He is supposed to be the biggest of the cats.
Man, I really don't like how small the new Lion-O is. He is supposed to be the biggest of the cats.
Is he smaller than the previous Super 7 Cats? That would be a weird decision for them to make.
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