Twice a month the gang from Mattel are kind enough to answer five questions from AFi readers.  The Mattel marketing and PR team, have replied with the answers to our latest round of questions that AFi readers have posted in our forums.   Mattel recently changed the guidelines for these Q&As so they only involve items and lines sold on MattyCollector.com.  These do not cover any retail lines.

Don’t forget, a brand new batch of MattyCollector.com items just went on sale Friday 11/15 so head over to MattyCollector.com and check them out.

Q1.  Is there a way Matty can create or use the Mattel European Distribution Centre as the current shipping and custom fees the Europe is crippling the European subscriptions.  If they had a European distribution centre it would make every purchase more cost effective.

A1.  No. The Mattel distribution centers around the world are set up and function to send out bulk product to retailers, it is not set up for individual customer fulfillment.

Q2.  Will they ever make a life size prop replica of He-Man’s Sword Of Power and She-Ra’s Sword of Protection?

A2.  That would be a great item to see one day, but no plans right now!

Q3.  Any chance for a semi movie accurate sword of power for the MOTUC figures?

A3.  No plans at this time.

Q4.  Are there plans to do more with the Back to the Future license? What are we to do with our 6″ scale hoverboards?

A4.  At this time we do not have plans for additional BTTF figures or Epic Creation SKUs.

Q5.  I understand that the spreading of tooling costs for the tooling of Unleashed Doomsday can no longer come from the sub due to it not going through. And appreciate the $35 price for the containment suit Doomsday at SDCC next year (was worried it would be more).

BUT… you’ve stated that SDCC and convention exclusives are granted their own budget, so is there any chance that the Unleashed version can be made as an exclusive for either retail or conventions, as part of a 2pk with the long requested light blue suited Superman under a separate budget?
The Supes would be a straight repaint people have wanted for ages, (no new tooling there, just money for old rope). If you priced it at around $50 to $60 max it would sell. If you can sell the 66 Batmobile for $60 (and that is pretty much just a plastic shell), then you could easily sell this 2pk.

A5. The catch is that the budgets for newly developed SDCC items are often to support new/upcoming company  programs and are designed and produced by the retail team (even though they may be sold on Mattycollector.com). As there are no longer enough customers to support a 6″ 4HM line, the retail team will most likely put their convention resources into developing product that supports upcoming retail initiatives and current toy lines. The opportunity to support more 6″ 4HM figures has come and gone with the sub. We can only make figures when we have customers buying them and the  sub not going through was basically the last call for more 6″ 4HM skus.

If you’d like to ask a question for the December 15th  submission then feel free to post your questions in our Mattel Q&A question submissions thread (see link below)!   Remember they can be about any Mattel product including MOTUC, Ghostbusters, WWE, any of the Mattel DC lines, Voltron and Cars. Twice a month we draw our submission question directly from the ones that AFi readers post.

You can submit new questions in this thread.

Thanks again to the team at Mattel for taking time to answer our questions!