MOTUC Fans,

If you were at Power-Con, saw the video from our Mattypalooza panel, or read the News story here, then you know we revealed some ridiculously awesome new figures, including Scorpia, Blade, and Glimmer.

When we got to Glimmer, some of you asked about her skirt and we promised to look into it. We did and here’s the deal…

First, the issue is that some of our newer female figures (Shakoti, Octavia, Glimmer) have wider and/or longer skirts compared with 2012’s Marlena or the paint master from the Four Horsemen for our 2014 Scorpia figure.

Marlena

We spoke with design manager Ruben Martinez and toy designer Mario Aguirre and they explained Marlena was able to feature a bodysuit-style tunic because she doesn’t articulate at the waist. As Mario tells us, “Marlena has a full bodysuit and because this suit covers her entire torso, it has more rigidity, which helps the suit curve more closely to her body. To do this, it meant articulation of her abdomen and waist were sacrificed in the process.”

Scorpia

Now in the case of Scorpia, what you’ve seen to date is the paint master provided to our design team by the Four Horsemen. A paint master is a hand-painted, hand-sculpted prototype figure that has zero articulation. From the paint master, the design team creates a figure that’s ready for production. Once the paint master is converted to an articulated plastic figure, features like how the tunic or skirt hangs naturally get modified, especially when articulation is added. We think you’d agree our design team does an amazing job staying true to the design of the paint masters, but it’s nearly impossible to machine-produce articulated figures with the same level of detail as an unarticulated prototype and stay at our current price point. So please keep in mind when you see a paint master that it’s a pre-production sculpt that will almost never look like a production piece.

Glimmer

So what about Glimmer? Fan feedback told us that articulation was one of the most important features you wanted in our figures, so the choice was made to give her an articulated waist and forgo the tighter fitting bodysuit-style tunic. At this point, she’s ready to go into production so what we showed at Power-Con is how she’ll be manufactured.

Going Forward

Ruben and Mario have completed a thorough investigation and every alternative meant we’d have to sacrifice articulation to stay at our current pricing, which is just not an option. So, for the foreseeable future, female figures will continue to have more of a skirt than a fitted bodysuit.

The good news is that 2014 is going to be our best year to date for releases. Be right here the afternoon of Thursday October 11 and the morning of Friday October 11 for more reveals straight from New York Comic-Con!

–Matty