Mattel's response to me

[Brown Bear]

My RA guys display quite well next to my mego's. Obviously they'll never please everyone because they aren't EXACTLY mego's but when someone asks me if I own a Flash to go with my mego collection I answer "Yes".

[The Bat]

Saying that mego was perfect and well made is not really all that accurate.

True, but you have to admit that the Mego type 2 bodies were ten times better than Mattel's.

[thunderbolt]

^^^^ Sorry, but my Mego's were not all that much better. Stick on decals that fell off, boots that split, suits and capes that frayed, elastics that gave way. Saying that mego was perfect and well made is not really all that accurate.

[MEMEGO]

In a way , I am sad the line is ending and in another way I am not, some of the figures well nicely done, some were not. I hate the bodies, I hate the legs.I hate the decals crumbling up and falling off as soon as opened. I think mattel should have invested a few more dollars into the development of the figures. and perhaps done a bit of advertising. I look forward to the dr who line, which from what i see, also is not perfect (yet) Even EMCE Trek line had problems, Bands of a different colour, scotty's head being red. Hard to imagine and believe a small company like Mego who was known for cutting costs made such a wonderful and well done figure which have indured for over 30 yrs, one would think with todays tech a better Mego could be made. We all deserve better for our hard earned money. What ya all say?

[jayraytee]

Speculation doesn't equal fact.

One thing we don't know is manufacturing quantities. My brother and I produce CDs for a couple of bands and sell them on their websites, we print them in quantities of 1,000, which is the minimum required quantity. If we put up an album for sale after printing, for example 5,000 and they sell out, we will put "sold out" on the website until we get a new batch of however many we have reordered.

We don't know if Mattel does this with figures now do we? Its entirely possible that they run a small quantity for the MattyCollector site and sell that quantity out and then later order another smaller batch.

We do often take the CDs down and put "sold out" on the site when we are down to less than 10 copies, in case we have to resend one that got damaged in shipping or something. But its not like we hold back 1,000s, its usually a handful.

There are many scenarios of how this type thing could happen.

[THE FALCON]

I'm just hearing about the cancellation of the Retro line. I was really getting into these figures. Sadens me deeply to hear the line is dead. Hopefully we'll still see some surprises at SDCC. Still hoping for a Robin & Joker.

[ODBJBG]

Do we know this for a fact? DrMego stated that it doesn't make sense for Mattel to pull down a figure from the website if it didn't really sell out. Yet so many are making that claim. Others are stating Mattel do this because they keep a supply to exchange on returns, which doesn't speak well on their quality control or the shipping fiasco Mattel finally fixed after several waves of complaints. As these retros appeal to a collector market niche surely someone should have realized mailing inside an envelope wasn't good for the customer, brand, or product. I'd love to see Mattel offer all the exclusive GLs on Mattycollector.com so I can buy them all at once and save on shipping.

Yes we know this for a fact. It's what Mattel does. Check some of my earlier posts, this was explained.

DrMego did say it didn't make sense and it doesn't, but that's irrelevant, because whether it makes sense or not, that's what Mattel does.

The supply for exchange is actually much smaller and has little to do with them pulling them from the website. Mattel is doing a "Mad Matty Monday" coming up where they are giving away extra stock of figures at cut rate prices. I expect RA figures to be a big part of that, because of leftover stock.

[megocrazy]

Who said Mattel was making the character choices? It seemed to me it was EMCE who was deciding the character picks.

I think you are incredibly misinformed. Perhaps this came to you in a dream.

Two Face over Joker was the first major mistake.

When's the last time you saw a two-face hanging on a peg hook?

All the foes were Super Friends based instead of more well known characters. Mego made popular characters thats why Mego's line lasted several years. EMCE made less known characters to fill voids Mego left out.

Mattel felt the "RETRO" tag made it worthwhile to make figures from the Retro times. Hence the reason John Stewart has the 70's motif. It's also the reason they centered around the Super Friends theme. It was 70's - 80's based.

Some were great choices (Flash and Green Lantern) others were very bad choices and no surprise why Mego didn't touch them.

As much as we all love Mego figures they did pick Tarzan and Mr. Myx while passing on Flash and Green Lantern.

Mattel is bad on many levels but not all the fault lies there.

Body design, emblem design, character selection, and distribution and pricing. What else was there to mess up?

I hope these guys learn from this and if they are ever lucky enough to get the chance to produce figures for a major toy company again...what you may like to see made (Dr. Fate,Spectre) may not be what the majority of buyers will fork money over for.

Again the major toy company was the one that made these decisions. By the way. BBP made the Venture Bros decisions, Diamond makes the Trek decisions, etc. They are the license holders and the ones that have the control over what is made. Realize also that even with this catastrophic event from Mattel, EMCE has had more influence on the 8 inch action figure market than all the other Mego-like toy companies combined. Count the number of figures they've either produced or consulted on in the past 8 years and all others fall by the wayside. Nothing against any of them but EMCE being told "they need to learn from this" by you is pretty ridiculous to say the least. You should research the licensing and marketing sides of toys and perhaps you would understand better how the ball rolls.

[MegoMark71]

Well i for one am very happy for the figures we have received.

[CrimsonGhost]

Are you mad bro? I'm sorry my post hurt your feelings.

That's cute. No, I'm on your side. You're the guy that called it early. You deserve all the credit.

[LovethoseMegos]

Well, you certainly deserve all the credit, sir! You must be some kind of soothsayer! You were the only one that posted that the line would die!

Wait, no you weren't. It seems it was posted every 5 minutes so when the inevitable happens, they can gloat how right they were. Congratulations.

Are you mad bro? I'm sorry my post hurt your feelings.

[Werewolf]

Are you kidding me??? Someone actually said that? I guess I did miss some viciousness.

No joke. It was honestly that bad. It was really ugly there for quite awhile.

[jacoblb]

DC and Mattel made the choices not EMCE....Doc actually found out a few minutes before the wave 1 announcement at SDCC that two of the characters were being replaced with new choices

Yep. This has been stated in many types of media. I held off replying because I thought a lot of MM members would pile on and correct the person you've corrected. Surprisingly that hasn't happened.

[trekman101]

Who said Mattel was making the character choices? It seemed to me it was EMCE who was deciding the character picks. From the beginning they stated we would tell by the figures released that fanboys were picking the characters to produce. I mean Two Face over Joker was the first major mistake. All the foes were Super Friends based instead of more well known characters. Mego made popular characters thats why Mego's line lasted several years. EMCE made less known characters to fill voids Mego left out. Some were great choices (Flash and Green Lantern) others were very bad choices and no surprise why Mego didn't touch them. Wave 4 was the biggest mistake of all letting only Shazam be the major player and the other 3 be minor characters. Robin,Joker,Supergirl and Hawkman should have been released long ago. Yes Mattel is bad on many levels but not all the fault lies there. This line was not taken seriously enough by all involved. It seems to me they were more concerned with filling voids than making a hit line. You can't build a toyline with more 4th string characters than 1st and 2nd string characters. Too many bad guys was another problem. I hope these guys learn from this and if they are ever lucky enough to get the chance to produce figures for a major toy company again...what you may like to see made (Dr. Fate,Spectre) may not be what the majority of buyers will fork money over for.

DC and Mattel made the choices not EMCE....Doc actually found out a few minutes before the wave 1 announcement at SDCC that two of the characters were being replaced with new choices

[LOU]

Consider yourself lucky. I remember one poster went as far as saying the people that worked on the line should kill themselves.

Are you kidding me??? Someone actually said that? I guess I did miss some viciousness. That's just ridiculous to say something awful like that. No excuse.