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Masters of the Universe Classics Jet Sled, DC Universe Classics Huntress and Comedian Headline Mattycollector September Sale

For a month with the regular Club Eternia figure pushed out by a month (October will have Lord Dactus and Mantenna doubled up), it still feels like there’s a lot to buy. That’s because the Jet Sled vehicle, potentially the front half to a Battle Ram, is on sale with a pilot called Sky High. The Jet Sled and pilot cost $50, raising the question of why include another random figure. Sure, there were palace guards that rode the Jet Sleds during the original cartoon, but things really got exciting when Teela, Man-at-Arms, or He-Man jumped on one to go chase some Evil Warriors. I think Mattel missed out on a potential army builder vehicle here.

On the DC front,we’re coming down to the wire on Club Infinite Earths and Watchmen with Huntress and the Comedian. I’m still a little shocked that I’m going from three subs this year down to none in 2014, since I’ve decided to cherry-pick Masters of the Universe Classics (when Mattel offers day of sale) and DC was canceled.

Early Access starts Thursday at 8AM PST and will run for a day. Kudos to Mattel – even though their announcement makes no mention of it, the Jet Sled will be available, joining DCUC Poison Ivy and MOTUC Stratos. For convenience, here’s the link to Early Access. The regular sale starts on Monday at 9AM PST.

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Soapbox Sunday: Five Lessons Mattel Can Learn from the Four Horsemen

It’s like a Tale of Two Cities – the Four Horsemen are involved in a couple of product pre-order campaigns running in parallel. On one side, they’re the design shop behind Mattel’s Mattycollector Club Eternia and Club Infinite Earths subscriptions for Masters of the Universe Classics and DC Universe Classics. On the other, they’re taking pre-orders for their own Gothitropolis Ravens line through the crowd-funding platform, Kickstarter.

As we’ve seen over the past week, folks from Mattel and the Four Horsemen are tearing their hair out over whether the Club Eternia and Club Infinite Earths subscriptions will hit the minimums needed to survive. Meanwhile, the Four Horsemen’s Ravens are flying high. Their Kickstarter campaign hit the funding target during its first week, and proceeded to blast through every stretch goal they started with and even a few more they had to put together along the way.

You might think it easy to dismiss the stark differences in the success of the campaigns as coming from collectors’ growing dislike of Mattel and their service partner Digital River. And while I see a fair amount of anecdotal evidence for Mattel-hate, I believe there are some clear differences in how they run their campaigns that is causing the Mattycollector subscription fallout. If the Mattycollector subs live to fill in product silhouettes again next year, here’s some things Mattel can learn from the Four Horsemen, to make the sign-up period less traumatic and uncertain.

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SDCC 2013: Mattel Mattypalooza 2013! Panel Presentation Slides

Mattel provided their Mattypalooza 2013 presentation as a PDF in their SDCC wrap-up, but we’ve done you a solid and it to images you can just flip through right here in your browser.

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SDCC 2013: Mattel Mattypalooza 2013! Panel Video

Toy Guru and the team hosted its annual Mattypalooza panel yesterday, and here’s the video. The SDCC staff has been very aggressive with video footage this year – they are asking us not to shoot the video screens, even though this has been standard practice for the toy panels since I’ve been to Comic-Con. So for a lot of this panel, it meant shooting the talking heads – although I did manage to capture the significant reveals.

They covered the current clubs (DC Universe Classics, the two Masters of the Universe Classics subs, and Watchmen) and the plans for 2014. There’s more coming for Ghostbusters, but for Back to the Future… still no figures! Also, watch the whole video for an appearance (and Mattel collaboration) with an icon in the industry. Excelsior!

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SDCC 2013: Mattel DC Universe

I should reserve judgment until after the various Mattel panels (including Mattypalooza and the DC partnership ones), but my initial impression is that it will be another thin year for collector-oriented DC product. The exception, of course, is the Batman classic TV series line – but I can’t see that being a line with strong longevity.

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