It’s that time of year again!

Once a year, at Mattel’s  headquarters in El Segundo, they hold their annual holiday tent sale.  This sale typically runs from Halloween until just before Christmas around the corner from their main building in an adjacent parking lot.   The sale is primarily made up of bulk overstock toy of this year, but occasionally there will be some older items as well.   If you want to look back at some of my past coverage of this annual event, you can read my original 2011 report here,  you can read my 2012 report here and my 2013 report here.

Whatever items  they put out there they always have a LOT lot of them, like pallets or bins full any given item.   There are always some oddities like Spanish language talking Elmos, unsold Barbie and Kens, and various other kid’s toys. The stock ranges from Fisher Price to MattyCollector.com Adult Collectibles.  There are new shipmentsto the sale each day and it’s a revolving door of product.

But occasionally there will be some collector gold in the mix.   The first year I went to the tent sale was 2006.   I got an amazing deal on the first waves of Disney/Pixar Cars.  They had a huge bin of them for $1.00 apiece.   I was able to get about 20 of them as I pawed through the 3 foot tall bin with 6 mothers..  in 2010 I picked up the 1:24th scale 66 Batcycle for $12.00.   It was marked $25, but there are always 50% off coupons for the Mattel store floating around.

Previous years there were bins of JLU singles and DSIH singles, pallets of JLU Eclipso and Hawkpeople 6-packs, pallets of deluxe Dark Knight figures, pallets Infinite Heroes 3-packs and as you might imagine… almost the entire Avatar line.  There’s almost always something from the MattyCollector.com Ghostbusters line on a pallet. (There still was this year, but it was in the regular company store and not the tent)

This year when I went it felt a little lighter on product… which ultimately is good news for Mattel because that means they had less overstock on products.  That also may change as they get shipments several times a week so stock will continue to be added.

The Tent Sale

The tent itself is in the back parking lot of Mattel’s headquarters in El Segundo.   Just like their year-round HQ company store, the sales tent is open to the public.  While it is a “tent” and a temporary structure it’s huge, solidly constructed and has things like electricity and a heater system in it.

From the inside you can see the vast structure, and it’s open, warehouse-like appearance.   It’s always been busy every year when I go.

I took some shots of the collector products that I thought AFi readers might be interested in seeing.

This year we see the leftovers from both the Man of Steel  and The Dark Knight Rises movie lines.   The Man of Steel Movie Masters figures were the tail end series that had Zod in cuffs and Superman with the Kryptionian key.

Other product of interest this year for collectors comes from WWE and Max Steel:

There was also several pallets of Monster High and Ever After High products:

Every year there are some Barbie products.  This year there was a Barbie bathroom set complete with a Barbie toilet with a roll of toilet tissue!

And then, on my way out the door, in the middle of a basket, tossed aside, all by himself… a lone DCUC Reverse Flash.

This year was not the best year for collector items at the Mattel Tent sale, at least on the day I visited.  I do plan to go back later this week and see if any of the MattyCollector Black Friday/Cyber Monday items that didn’t sell out might show up at the sale.

There’s more in the back that they bring out each day:

The more interesting items, especially for collectors, were still over at the Mattel HQ company store, so I headed over there to take a look at what was on sale this week.   The Mattel Company Store also gets new shipments of stock almost every day, sometime multiple trucks in a day.

The Company Store

At the store we found a full aisle of Imaginext products:

An endcap of pop culture Hot Wheels including the new Marvel cars.  I picked up that last BSG Cylon Raider:

A wall of WWE (I had to get one of the 2-packs with the 6″ scale Scooby Doo):

A few Barbies from my alma mater -

There is some MOTUC overstock in the form of the Fighting Foe Men, Lord Dactus and Geldor:

And then we come to all of the DC Comics stuff.   They had more Man of Steel Movie Masters figures, a whole endcap of DC Multiverse (with lots of the unmasked 1989 Batman), a few Young Justice 2-packs, DC Total Heroes,  some DCUC and several DC Signature Collection figures,

That’s the annual report of the 2014 Mattel tent sale.   It was a bit hit or miss from what I saw this year, but it’s always fun to check out.  Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!