Frustrated with Matty Collector (Masters of the Universe Classics)

[acrovader]

I've been buying these for several years now. I never considered joining the 'fan club', since it seemed like another opportunity to squeeze money out of the fans of the toys. But I wonder, after all this time, maybe I should've joined. As you may know- the Matty Collector website has only a handful of MOTU figures at any time, and it's the usual suspects. And when new toys go on sale, club members get first dibs (as I'd expect they would, they paid for a subscription). The thing is, a lot of these club members (not all) are scalpers, and Matty has almost zero limit on how many figures anyone can buy. Isn't it about time Mattel starts putting these in stores? There is obviously a big demand for these, since I hear from a lot of people who like the new figures. Problem for me is, it seems most of the figures have been produced all ready and there is not much left (that I can). I already paid 200% to 300% from scalpers for most of the MOTU figs I have. It's like Matty Collector is feeding the scalping business. I don't ever see these new MOTU figures ever going up in value, probably not for another 2 or 3 decades- if that. It's like scalpers had a field day the mid-90's Power of the Force Star Wars figures by Kenner. Now they are pretty much worth pennies on the dollar.

[jayraytee]

The scalpers take advantage of the market to make money, if people stopped buying from them they would stop buying up the figures. I am not defending them, but they exist because people buy from them.

[enyawd72]

Mattel plays a game with it's customers...they create false "sellouts" in an asinine attempt to create artificial hype and demand around their product. Why they wouldn't want to just leave figures on their site to sell is beyond me, but that's Mattel for ya. A ton of their supposedly "sold out" toys have turned up at Big Lots and Ollies for a fraction of the original price. I found their $100 12" Ghostbuster figures for $10 each at Big Lots. Same with MOTU Classics.

[acrovader]

People really have no choice but buy from them, since the scalpers scoop everything up.

[acrovader]

How long ago did you find the figures at Big Lots?

[enyawd72]

^I bought some just before Christmas, but they have more now.

[Teemu]

Mattel plays a game with it's customers...they create false "sellouts" in an asinine attempt to create artificial hype and demand around their product. Why they wouldn't want to just leave figures on their site to sell is beyond me, but that's Mattel for ya. A ton of their supposedly "sold out" toys have turned up at Big Lots and Ollies for a fraction of the original price. I found their $100 12" Ghostbuster figures for $10 each at Big Lots. Same with MOTU Classics.

this ^^^^ they always pull stock and are never really sold out

[hedrap]

I feel ya, but it's not as zero-sum as we tend to believe.

I thought the same thing as you, but I then spent a good deal of time reading the He-Man org forums and I came to find out...

1. If the resellers didn't buy multiple subscriptions, the line would have died a few years ago.

2. The resellers do not move all their product, which is why markup explodes for the more wanted items.

The big unknown is Matty's internal numbers. It really does feel like a rigged game because not just do they set the subscription goal number, they keep it private and then announce yea or nay. You can really screw people over with that lack of transparency, I tend to believe they have. Consider Mattel wants to cushion themselves from risk, like the majority of companies, so they're going to pad their goal number by at least 25%. Now because no one knows nothing, they can either pad that 25% into total subscriptions or into each figure price. Then add in shipping which I still cannot tell if its a fair rate since they're collectibles or if that's padded, too.