MOTUC fans,

 

As many of you know, over on Mattycollector.com’s fan forums we have a section called “Ask Matty” designed as a forum for you the fan and customer to ask questions about the brand and product directly to Mattel employees. Lately we’ve been getting a lot of the same question regarding the line up for 2014 and 2015. While we have posted this info before, with the 2015 sub sales coming up in a few weeks, thought it might be a good time to recap where we are.

 

So to take a step back, originally back in 2009 we created a long term road map to ensure each year of MOTUC was robust with the widest variety of figures possible. Back when figures were $20.00 our goal was to make as many figures as possible for the largest selection of figures in the long run. Then the inevitable happened.

Labor and raw material costs (as well as shipping which is also tied to fuel prices) started to skyrocket. In 2012, recognizing  this trend we re-drew the “roadmap” and a line that originally stretched out to 2017-2018 was condensed into a 2 year roll out to “complete the line” by 2015, before the figures cost more to produce than fans would be willing to pay.

 

What this meant was cutting out some of the “filler”  or less demanded figures and focusing on the most demanded figures to complete fan’s collections. This meant that between 2014 and 2015 we would focus on:

 

1: All vintage MOTU figures including variants from 1982-1987. We would look into the possibility of beasts when possible, but the focus would be on ensuring all the 5” figures were done in Classics.

 

2: All original characters from the 1984-1986 POP line. While we did love the variants for this line, getting out two more Catra’s was a little iffy when we had other more requested figures to get to and limited slots.

 

3: All A list New Adventures figures.

 

4: All A list figures from media like Filmation, mini comics and 200X.

 

5: A few surprises!

 

Now a lot of fans have been asking on our forums lately what we mean by “A” list figures. The perfect way to illustrate this is to look at the fan vote figures. We REALLY wanted to get to both Huntara and Lord Masque, but we just couldn’t find a slot for both of them. (i.e. do we not do “Perfuma” or “Ninjor” so we can do Lord Masque? You can see the issue!). The solution was to let the fans vote between the two for whom would get into the 2014-2015 line up. The same goes for the NA fan vote with Mara, Tuskador and Darius. We wanted all three, but there just wasn’t an opportunity.

 

So if you are trying to understand if your personal favorite New Adventures or Filmation figure will make it into the 2014-2015 roadmap, the best way to do so is use the Fan’s choice winners, Huntara and Mara as your benchmarks. They both represent about as “obscure” as those two factions will go over the next two years. So if you ask yourself, is character X more popular/demanded vs. Mara (for NA) or Huntara (for Filmation) you can pretty much make a good guess. For example, Scoripa and Hydron are more popular vs. Mara and Huntara, so they will be in the 2014-2015 line. Kayo and Crackers the Clown, not so much.

 

Hopefully this helps put into perspective whom is still coming in the next two years. By the time we get to SDCC all of 2014 will be revealed as well as the first quarter of 2015. That should give you a pretty good idea whom is left. If he, she, it falls into category 1-4 above, that characters is likely to be released over the next two years. After that… well pending we sell in a 2015 sub we will “start” looking into a potential 2016 line. Nothing is even close to set right now and there is always the chance 2015 could be the final year.

 

If it is, we want to make sure it is a great one!

 

News about 2015 sub sales will be posted soon. Now will be the chance to complete your collection! While we may not get to every fans favorite figures and characters, we hope that by the end of 2015, should that be the final year, the majority of customers will look at their collection and feel a sense of completion!

 

We’ll always be over on the Ask Matty forums, but hopefully this post clears up some questions and you can direct your friends and fellow fans to this note.

 

Next stop, San Diego Comic Con!

 

Best,

 

Scott “ToyGuru”  Neitlich