This thread is mean.

Considering I only have Batman, Superman, and Silver Banshee, I'll go with Silver Banshee!

I guess of the rest of the figs I would want Vibe and Commander Steel the most, to complete the ghetto JLA Detroit!

Actually, the real thing this thread points out to me is that THIS is the set that made me give up on the JLU line. The inability to get these 6 packs made me uninterested in putting any additional effort into collecting the line. Before this, I went to Target on a regular basis. After not getting this set, my collection was no longer complete. So why bother dealing with Matty.com? Why put up with Digital River? I picked up some figures I found after this, but this really was the beginning of the end of JLU for me.

jlu has been a hassle. Honestly what started losing me with jlu was the end of kb toys. i found everything there. miss it alot. Great place to go especially for jlu. Then tarhet got the liscense. I thought okay. ill put up with this but im not happy. Target was okay and 7 times out of ten got everything when they were supposed to come in on time. yet no volcana and none of these packs ( east coast ) and yet i get a volcana 4 years later on the shelf in a target for 8 bucks. So i collected that for years and then target cancelled it and we had to buy off matty and everything on matty was a hassle as far as orders go and it just got to the point that if i wasnt such a buff about the show and the line i would have dropped it easily and im sure thats what happened to thier retail baseline.

You know, when they became Target exclusives, I thought they would easier to find. But instead, it meant if Target didn't get them, nobody did. And if all Targets on the East Coast didn't get them, it meant we East Coasters didn't get them. And then Mattel told us how all the sets had been shipped and if we hadn't seen them we were SOL. Fun times. And what was the deal with the first run of the Grodd 6-pack that they advertised but barely shipped any of?

I'm kind of jealous of you giving up on the line - part of me wishes I had pulled the plug long ago. But now we have the "final" 3-packs coming out and they're pulling me back in again. (And I still keep hoping someday the poorly distributed figures will be found at reasonable prices somehow).

But I think maybe JLU was just ahead of it's time - distribution for lots of lines has sucked horribly lately and maybe JLU was just setting the trend of frustration and fruitless toy runs.

My favorite of these would be Atomic Skull, too.

I eBayed these figures. After Volcana (which I bought online and still congratulate myself for), I instituted a strict two-week protocol. If they didn't get to my stores within two weeks of the initial sighting, I bought them online. At that point, I always paid a premium ($30 each for these packs), but the price/availability hadn't really settled down, so they didn't skyrocket in value until much later. My policy served me well many times after that. Sometimes I regretted it, but mostly I ended up ahead of the game. I certainly couldn't get these for $30 each now.

That said, never again. I will never again get this invested in a toy line. From now on, if the manufacturer can't get the toys to me, they don't get my money.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure my local Target never got these packs, since I checked it almost everyday, and it's in a fairly small town (Kelso Washington). I really was anticipating these packs, but at the time, I thought the $40-50 I saw them usually going for on Ebay by the time I checked for them was too expensive and that I'd eventually find them. Little did I know they'd be selling for over $200 a pack...

Deadman and Silver Banshee

Your assessment sounds likely to me, but it does go against Mattel's official statement on this in an "Ask Matty." There they stated that these hard to find six packs were produced in the same quantities as the previous two from that same holiday season. The fact that half the country never saw them and those that did reported the case packs that were coming in to include two of the new ones and two of the previous ones, as well as the insane aftermarket prices leads me to believe that Matty's answer on this was either an outright lie, an honest mistake from bad information, or a huge amount of the packs that were made were either lost or destroyed prior to making it to store shelves. I'm still hopeful I'll find them cheap sometime.

Whatever ship that was to bring half of those 6-packs from the Chinese factory to the United States must have veered way off course and ended up in the Bermuda Triangle

Or there was some factory worker over in China that used to carry around the world's largest lunch box

I love the looks of the atomic skull and the costume of deadman, tose are the best of the set.

Hopefully these 6 packs get re-released with Volcana and Classic Aquaman. That would make so many fans happy plus I'm sure a $60 price would be reasonable enough for them. But I would have to say that my favorite from the secret society pack is The Key. Crimson Fox is my favorite from the legends of the league pack. I don't have any of them so I'm hoping Mattel would do us a huge favor again and put them on their site.

Crimson Fox and Silver Banshee for sure, but then again I only collect the JLU females so...

I´m with An-Gel. The Key is awesome. Its head is perfectly sculpted.
B´wana Beast and Vibe for the heros.
I have them all. Ebayed all, but a reasonable price. if those packs were impossible for you, just imagine for the overseas collectors.

Other than Grundy-- these were the only items I had to resort to ebay for-- and I did it after about 2 months of them being out-- and at the time I hated paying 45.00 a piece for them.. (although finding the Hawks and Eclipso 6 packs for 7.00 a piece made up a little of the cost later) And dont get me started on Mattels-"equal" production numbers-- my comments on possible numbers and personal dealing with Target from a Manufacturers point of view comments are well documented in historical threads.. Although I did find these figures all loose for between 10-20.00 each at a LCBS within the past year...

By the way-- I think mine is KGBEAST-- because animated batman villians trump pretty much everything else from the JLU..