Mattel Q & A

With the holidays passing us by and New York Comic Con and Toy Fair coming up, Mattel answered 10 questions for us:

1) What is the street date for the new wave of Movie Master figures?

There won’t be a specific “street date” with any of the new Movie Masters (or DCUC figures for that matter). Most major retailers are not set up to release toys on a set date (like they do with DVDs). The next wave of Movie Masters will be out in the next 45 days or so.

2) We've seen the Batman Movie Masters that are coming through March of 09, is there any set date that we will see the Superman Movie Masters yet and also are they going to be the Christoopher Reeve Movies?

We would love to do Movie Masters for some of the older Superman films. And doing so requires a lot of coordination between multiple parties. This is something we are looking into, but it will take time to get all of the right parties together to make it happen. Sorry we can’t be more specific, but we don’t want to announce anything until we know it is happening.

3) With Mattel taking over the WWE license in 2010, is Mattel already working on this line or do they have to wait for Jakks' to run out before they start anything? Will there be CAC line where you can actually build a in scale Big Show, Great Khali or even Andre the Giant?

Our WWE toys will premier in early 2010, but it is too early to comment on any specifics. Look for more news at the summer conventions!

4) There have been some issue with some of the DCUC figures legs melting to the body, around the hip joint. Is Mattel aware of this issue & if so what are you planning on doing to fix it?

Quality will absolutely continue to improve. Here is a little bit of insight that might help. Once we receive feedback we immediately make plans to correct any errors, fix paint ops or change plastic quality. Unfortunatly, unlike a newspaper which can print a retraction in one day, it can take 2 -9 months before new product is produced, shipped and then available for purchase.

We are absolutely committed to improving our product as quick as possible. In the toy world for logistic reasons this just takes some time.

5) Not sure if the Legion of Super-Heroes is on your list of figure to make, but if you are in a planning stage, which verison of the Legion are you looking at (1st Appearance, 70's, 80's, current, etc.)?

We do have a LOSH JLU 4 pack coming up later in 2009. All the figures are in the costumes they wore on the show (hey there were a lot of LOSH members in those big fight scenes!). As for doing LOSH in the 6” line, when we get to the Legion we would likely find a way to do figures with variants to try an put out multiple versions since Legion of Super Heroes is one of those few teams that has had quite a few signifigant and different reboots and redesigns over the years.

6) The female figues seem to be lacking muscle as opposed to the male figures. The arms almost seem to thin on the Wonder Woman figure. Is there any chance of going back & fixing that?

We are actually more then thrilled with the way the Horsemen sculpted Wonder Woman and our other new female figures. We do have new females figures planed for 2009 and when new parts are needed we will look at always continuing to improve sculpts for accuracy and detail.

7) Without asking what characters are you doing, as I'm sure you get a lot of those, if you do a Wonder Girl figure, would her scale be the same as the Robin & Kid Flash figure?

Wonder Girl would use a (as yet unseen)Teen Female body the same way Kid Flash uses the Teen Male Body.

8) There was a list of DC Universe figures that will supposably be available at Wal-Mart (http://www.actionfigureinsider.com/main/?p=1530). Can you either confirm or deny the figures on this list?

We can’t comment on any figures past Wave 8 at this time do to the ever changing logistics in the toy industry. The biggest thing we want to avoid is announcing a figure and then having to retract that because something changes. A lot of details can throw off a figure’s schedule which is why we wait until we absolutely know it is coming to market to announce it.

9) A question about Wave 8. You have Hawkgirl in this wave, which is really great. But did your decision on using Shayera Hol, instead of Kendra Saunders, who is the current Hawkgirl, have to do with the popularity of the JLU cartoon?

Doing Shayera over Kendra was not tied directly into the JLU cartoon. Shayera just happens to be coming out first. We will get to Kendra in time. The Horsemen wanted to do Shayera first and went with their call. They are amazing partners and often the specific styling on figures is a choice they make. We like to give them as much creative freedom as possible to create the best looking figures.

10) Any hint on what we might see at New York Comic Con or Toy Fair?

For DCUC we will have Wave 9 at NYCC and NYTF. For MOTUC we will likely have through the June figure on display. For JLU we will have the next few three packs and singles shown. We got a bit ahead of ourselves on JLU with such a huge reveal last summer at SDCC so we are still catching up a bit on this line before we are ready to reveal more new figures