Zedhatch

Tell that to retailers who only want characters that the target demographics know. You do that and convince kids/parents to buy characters that they've never heard of instead, and this line could go on forever. Hasbro has gone out of their way with Waves 2 and 3 to bring in characters that only fans would recognize. Hell, Death's Head and Whirlwind might be the most obscure character choices to date, so if putting CA and IM into Wave 1 meant we got those characters then collectors really need to take a look at the big picture of things. We think the big names ruin the line because we see them everywhere, but IM and CA aren't what's going to doom the line; it's characters like Nighthawk, Puck, Absorbing Man, Inhumans, GotG (prior to the movies), etc. that most people don't know or care enough about to buy that will clog pegs and sink sales. Please, if that were the case IM and Cap wouldn't clog the shelves. It's the same accross the board with Hasbro for crying out loud. They blame the retailers but yet they are the only company losing in sales. Hell Lego overtook them last year. The'achors" are clearly a problem and honestly the target demographic quit being kids a long time ago. All the marketing is collector focused and has been for the past decade. Even if you could get kids interested the distribution and horrid case ratios of all the lines from Hasbro would turn them off rather quickly. Only the hardcore collectors are still hanging on and most of them are over 25 The argument in Lego's favor has already been made (multiple franchises, TV shows, and a movie will always help product move). The problem with MU/AI is that it tries too hard to be all things to all consumers: for kids, it's a chance to have figures of characters they've seen on TV and in movies; for adults, it's collecting figures of characters they've seen or read about in comics. Big retailers care more about the kids because collectors are a niche market and won't move sales to such an extreme to warrant a broader cast of characters. When they do, they generally have a hard time moving the product because there isn't enough interest for all parties involved. We, as collectors, want obscure characters that no one else in their right mind would ask for. However, those same figures pegwarm (I'm looking at you Wave 20) because we only want certain characters and only in a certain quantity and can't understand why Hasbro would push more recognizable characters that will eventually sell to kids or parents. We want to have our cake and eat it too; we just can't accept that we aren't the only ones at the table. Wave 20? I admit that I haven't been looking as much as I used to and just resort to online, but I barely saw any of those on the shelf (Puck mostly and the arguement could be made that his case was a bang for your buck situation rather than anything else). Angel I only saw once, Herc I never saw, Nighthawk was the other exception (which I kind of expected but even hardcore fans scoffed at that one for his resemblance to Harvey Birdman). Nova I saw a few times but I could probably count that on one hand. So how is wave 20 so bad? It seemed to sell quite well at the LCS and while a few figures lingered, the carry forwards did much more pegwarming than the new ones. I admit there have been better waves (18 & 19 come to mind with only one "Super popular" character in Spider-Man who seemed to linger much longer than the rest) so again where is the basis for this arguement. Big retailers have no clue what's in what wave. The order sheets etc simply state "Wave 1" or "Wave 19" or whatever without a listing of the figures (That info is public but most of the time Big retailers are filling shelf space with what lines they see selling) The real issue comes in when a wave's carry overs start to pegwarm and the stores don't order any of the next wave. That hurts more than anything (Prime examples being Cap and IM who already have been overexposed). I do think once a character has their own line they shouldn't be in the main MU/AI line, just doesn't make sense to saturate your market like that. And if we AREN'T the ones at the table, why does Hasbro only market to US? Look at their marketing strategy and point out where kids are included in it? Hasbro hasn't marketed to kids in over a decade and that probably won't change because they know where the market is despite the fact they want to publicly deny it. Their actions don'e match their statements in that regard and if you ask them they brush it off and refuse to answer. The company is a mess and there are so many signs of it yet some fanboys want to deny for unknown reasons.

Tell that to retailers who only want characters that the target demographics know. You do that and convince kids/parents to buy characters that they've never heard of instead, and this line could go on forever. Hasbro has gone out of their way with Waves 2 and 3 to bring in characters that only fans would recognize. Hell, Death's Head and Whirlwind might be the most obscure character choices to date, so if putting CA and IM into Wave 1 meant we got those characters then collectors really need to take a look at the big picture of things. We think the big names ruin the line because we see them everywhere, but IM and CA aren't what's going to doom the line; it's characters like Nighthawk, Puck, Absorbing Man, Inhumans, GotG (prior to the movies), etc. that most people don't know or care enough about to buy that will clog pegs and sink sales. Please, if that were the case IM and Cap wouldn't clog the shelves. It's the same accross the board with Hasbro for crying out loud. They blame the retailers but yet they are the only company losing in sales. Hell Lego overtook them last year. The'achors" are clearly a problem and honestly the target demographic quit being kids a long time ago. All the marketing is collector focused and has been for the past decade. Even if you could get kids interested the distribution and horrid case ratios of all the lines from Hasbro would turn them off rather quickly. Only the hardcore collectors are still hanging on and most of them are over 25

I agree! this is a strange occurrence from time to time with Marvel figures. Even the modern GI Joe figures didn't have the falling off leg issue. The other thing is the packaging that either warps the legs or arms out of shape; or the packaging is so tight that if yor not careful and cut it away from the figure, you will break the damn thing before you can even get it out! This is a pain... I always cut the figures out of the package with scissors, then have to boil them and and bend them back to normal There is also the fact that Joes use metal to hold the leg in place where as Marvel uses plastic. The plastic doesn't hold quite as well.

I'm sure Hasbro knows exactly what they are doing. Creating that artificial demand so collectors like us will keep buying. Look at how they case pack the Wave 2 of Marvel Legends Captain America Infinite Series. Black Widow is 1 PER case of 8 and contains the chest piece for the Mandroid BAF. Hasbro only packs one per case of female characters (minus Jubilee wave). If that's the case they should have figured out by now it's not working. They are actually turning collectors away out of pure frustration. Sales are down and Hasbro has even lost the #2 toy company slot to Lego (Who utilizes both Marvel and SW licenses as well which says quite a bit about their marketing and strategies). Hasbro has Transformers all to themselves as well as Marvel and SW and can't keep up. The distro issues are a huge part of that but there is so much more like case ratios and poor character selection in those ratios and NONE of that has ever been addressed by Hasbro (Distro has been to a mild degree in Star Wars but nothing has been done about it still). It's a huge mess no one in big H is taking care of nor attempting to find solutions to.

Agreed, and this is a problem across all their lines.

If history repeats, about 30 seconds.

Of course it should be pointed out that Hasbro had (has) the knack of NOT delivering any GI Joes to Walmart, this has gone on for the past decade. Noting too that "Non-Marvel" includes the action figure juggernaught that is Star Wars makes some of this a bit tougher to believe. I can't see WM backing away from that. Also what is WM's interest in the 6 inch lines, what do they care (enough to cause all of this). Lastly, a huge factor is the prices, at nearly $20 the larger lines are becoming a harder sell in this tough economy, nothing is mentioned in this rumor about that.

Aww, right when I am leaving for a late shift to work, will catch up later.

I actually thought it worked great and was not a radical departure at all, the comedy of it (and I am not trying to spoil it but specificly wih the Hydra troop and the "top" under the jaw just made be giggle). It balanced out perfectly which is hard, hard thing to accomplish. Great work.

WOOT!, that was awesome once again. While more violent than I am used to from you I couldn't help but laugh at some of the violent parts, call me sick but it was just hilarous to me LOL. Thanks once again for sharing.

I forgot to mention I am really likeing the newer style of effects with things like Thor's Hammer and Thanos' fists. Great work and looks like it was tough to make.

Very, very awesome, love how you incorperated that alternate spidey costume and the fights, effects and everything was just top notch. Also you hit my weak point by making a Marvel Two-in-one (probably one of my favorite overall series) thanks for sharing.

ML 3 is thus far my fav, he is the one I grew up with and is the look of Thor I love. There are tons of variations Hasbro could do, but for whatever reason they don't.

AWESOME!!! Been waiting for this. Some great cameos in there, wasn't expecting big steel (trying not to spoil) but he was very welcome. Awesome effects as well, darn near perfect in fact. One of your best efforts to date in that area. Awesome story, engaging and action packed, and tied up nicely. Seriously this one has to be my fav of all the comics you have done thus far (Of course you have cameos by some of my fav characters too so that helps ;-) ). Just can't say enough here.

Very cool once again, I really dig the splash page on page 3 (with thor, trying not to spoil), and also the call back to it later. Oh and cool ending too. Great action and fun, awesome.

And we know all this because...... Everything I am looking up just suggests he is as much responcible for the complaints about this line as many of the complements he is being handed, so far I am seeing nothing besides conjecture suggesting he did the GREAT things and wasn't responcible for the bad things. In the above interview he even mentions getting more IM armors into the IM2 line, which became the big complaint. Not seeing how all this sudden praise is being lobbed on him suddenly. Guy was never hardly mentioned until a few weeks ago. It's too early to say HE was the only one making what worked in this line, in fact it looks like the exact opposite from what I have read. I mean is there anything, anywhere that might say different?

Soooo do we know this to be real truth? I found an old interview from Cool Toy Review and much of what Vonner said seems to indicate he is the guy responcible for so much recycling in the various lines: On a new female body: In fact one of the few things mentioned about diverse characters was said by Jerry Jivoin: Vonner really said very little and even was justifying mistakes on Cap in wolvie/cap (pegwarming) pack and the (YAWN) IM/Thor pack. Is there anything that really flat out states Vonner did what we are giving him credit for? I am starting to doubt it myself. This seems to suggest Vonner is the reason we saw so many IM's ect. http://www.cooltoyreview.com/story/front/H...al_2_132193.asp

I've been pretty heavy into that era of Marvel of late, especially Dr. Strange, Defenders, and Ghost Rider. Just not been happy with modern stories. But yeah the vibe is strong. Thought it was, I had thought I had seen it before in your comics too (Although I couldn't recall where exactly). Cool can't wait. and you're welcome. HA, I was watching an ad for some med (can't remember what one now) and literally it was "Do you suffer from ____ then try _____" and the rest of the ad was side effects, I had seen ads like that before but for some reason this one stuck out and I was like "REALLY!?" I had to poke fun. Just been SOOOOOO slow this season, don't need zombie carnage every week but there was so much NOT happening this season until these last few eps. I do generally like the show (and comic) though LOL, just this time it was too long to get to the point IMO>

Ninjak that was fantastic. I'm not sure if I had mentioned it to you before, but I love how your comics have that old school feel to them, really pulls that nostalgia factor out from me. Just a set question, was that break away table from the WWE line? I thought I recognized it from one of my old WWE (or possibly WCW) figures, wow I haven't looked at them in forever LOL.

I saw th arguement all the time after the 2002 relaunch of GI Joe, and what happened, eventually they abandoned the 3 & 3/4 inches for Sigma Six, then after that got no support they went and started on a path to get some quality stuff. Blindly supporting any line will just lead to disappointment. Also MU is still reuseing those crappy molds from the initial releases (Iron Fist is the same crappy mold, Psylocke is the same old Female buck we've seen over and over as is storm) so the arguement support=quality is not exactly true.

Sorry I have to point out a huge flaw in that reasoning, if that were true then Hasbro wouldn't use the same model for movie lines that they did with Indy and failed. Hasbro comes accross as not haveing a clue what is actually selling all the time (As in all the MU Iron Mans pegwarming and then putting the same pegwarmer into a revision case. So you are just saying they are perfectly justified in overpriceing, OK. Sorry I just disagree Actually you are dead wrong there, Comic book sales accross the board have been dropping like crazy. The price increase was, in fact, NOT negilgible. One just needs to look at the sales charts from Diamond to figure that out. As for Marvel making the same amount of money, that is a peice of misdirection, the slumping comic sales have been replaced by Movies and Merchanise. The last Marvel quarterly report said just thst. But you are saying that because they upped the price and are pulling the same money in that the comic sales didn't drop and that simply isn't true. There are a ton of questionable practices that is holding back comics today (regulating to specialty comic shops, prices, availibilty, ect) and there is a serious, serious threat of the comic lines fading away. Talk to a comic shop owner about how business has nosedived, see what you get. And statements like that I have to chuckle at, support something or you lose it arguements were worn out with Star Wars EP 2 toys and Spy Troop GI Joes. and in both cases Hasbro took the money, ran and didn't listen to fans for another 5 years.

Agreed, if you look at other products made from petro (everything from DVD's to pencil boxes) the increases there are not proportionate to the toy market with ML and DCU. It's incredibly annoying and (in many ways) niave to think gas prices are the main cause of this. It's a simplistic answer that is easily explained away. A few years ago (on Yakface forums I believe, but might have been another SW board) Hasbro's Q&A session got very nasty about the price increase question (this is when gas was actually going down) and pretty much said that they were not answerable to the fans for prices and it was too complex to get into (they also implied that fans just were too simple to understand the idea). It was pretty mean spirited responce which kind of suprized me when I saw it since the Q&A's are intended to be a PR thing, basicly they were not putting thier best foot forward. The GL 4 inch figs really hit home the idea that Mattel (and by assosiation Hasbro) are just trying to get as much money out of whatever they produce as cheaply as possible (ie Hasbro repainting the same bodies over and over). I do sometimes think that the action figure industry is making the same mistakes the comic industry made ten or so years ago, produce crap, price the hell out of it to get as much profit as possible, screw the future. Of course we know this additude has nearly destroyed comics as a whole and while I have nothing but conjecture to base that on, but then again the gas prices excuse has the same basis. Oh and hating on the business practices of Hasbro is not hating on ML's, marvel or any other product, Hasbro is the company that sets up the crap we complain about, doesn't mean the product isn't worthwhile, but if you made widits of gold and charged 3 times what they were worth, that is still a bad business practice, probably undercuts your sales, and most likely you will end up with warehouses full of widgets. Don't mean the widgets aren't cool or valuable, but expecting more than they are worth is unrealistic.

Happy New year to you too. I know what you mean about time. Generally I have to do my stuff when it's my wife's TV nights, however sometimes she insists on me spending time with her (even though I hate Grey's anatomy for instance LOL). It's a very weird moment of me in the recliner snapping shots and her watching TV but I tell her I have to get it done or I will miss my update times LOL.

Ha thanks, glad you liked that little joke. PS was finally able to read over the Bats stuff and great job just as with the Marvels. Can't get enough of that coolness, it's tons of fun to read over the setups and pics done in an exact way that a comic is done. Great work all around.

Pouring over the Bats stuff now, cool. Nice to see Red Skull and Crossbones, they were very unexpected, Great job as usual.