The State of Buying/Collecting in 2025: Even An Hour Can Be Too Late

[basilfan]

I contacted Disney about their Mego figures. Contacting businesses rarely gets the desired results, but it's something I do. I was super-polite: no ranting, no accusations, no empty promises (I'm never buying anything Disney again!), just stating my disappointment at ordinary shopping trips being turned into futile 'events'.

I was impressed with Disney's answer to my email, because they clearly read what I said and responded intelligently, instead of just sending a canned reaction to a few keywords. As I said, it was impressive, though not helpful. Their response was basically an apology. Okay. But what happened next made me laugh.

I received my usual email ad from Disney Shopping, and it included a pic of the FF Megos with a message that they are still available in the parks. Great! Let me take tomorrow off work on a moment's notice, fly my private jet down to Florida, buy a park pass for $100, pick up my action figures, and fly home in time for dinner.

If the email was supposed to help me in some way, it failed.

[Dan2Dan]

I contacted Disney about their Mego figures.....

I received my usual email ad from Disney Shopping, and it included a pic of the FF Megos with a message that they are still available in the parks. Great! Let me take tomorrow off work on a moment's notice, fly my private jet down to Florida, buy a park pass for $100, pick up my action figures, and fly home in time for dinner.

Credit to you for contacting Disney in a spirit of constructive criticism rather than mere pointless venting.

That said, I've personally always assumed (without any first-hand knowledge) that these figures are limited to Disney stores because of restrictions related to other licensors' licenses. So to me, if that's accurate, I feel like from Disney's perspective, these Marvel Mego figure sets (made in very limited quantities) are mostly about trying to create some brief online viral marketing for their parks, and not really about generating revenue from selling the actual figure sets, let alone making a small group of adult collectors happy.

I feel that same way about the Atlas Mego figures last year. I felt like, after Mego rushed to get, like, 10 of each of the four Atlas Mego figures to NY Toy Fair last year on very short notice, and the current owners of the Atlas IP were then able to use them there to promote their hoped-for movie and TV projects, the actual Mego figures had already provided 95% of their intended usefulness at that point. So if, ultimately, Walmart only sold the figures online 8 months later, and only for a few days, and they were $30 apiece, that wasn't really the point of them anyway. That revenue was a side benefit afterthought.

I feel this same way when Arby's sells sets of Arby's logo'd D&D dice every year. They're made in extremely limited quantities and sell out in minutes on their online store, and then are immediately offered for re-sale for 3-10X the original price. This has happened several years in a row. Arby's keeps doing it. I assume that's because the real value to them isn't generating revenue from selling D&D dice, but rather the 'free' publicity and online buzz it now reliably generates for them for a few days each year among what presumably is a target market for their fast food.