I haven't posted our 'Ask Matty' answers for 2/1 yet... and I don't know if I will, since 4 of our 5 questions were answered with "Sorry, the DC Retail Team was unavailable this week for answers." If they come back next week with updated answers I'll post them, but I suspect with Toy Fair starting a week from Sunday we will not get those answers.

The only question they DID answer was:

Q1: Have you considered having fan choice months on club subscriptions. It was awesome that CIE subscribers got to choose the club exclusive figure in 2011. Maybe having a couple of fan choice months will motivate more people to subscribe. What are your thoughts on this?

A1: While this is something we like doing, with the limited resources we have for the Mattycollector.com business it has become a little more difficult. We are always looking to involve fans as much as possible, but it is doubtful we will do another fan choice slot anytime soon.

Limited resources??

It really isn't that hard to run an online poll. A select number of websites such as AFI could do all the work for them. Hasbro has utilized websites to poll fan choice figures in the Star Wars line before, so why can't Mattel do the same with its DC line?

For 'limited resources' look under 'can't be bothered' in the phrase dictionary. Basically it would require them being a bit proactive in getting such a thing set up. It wouldn't cost much if anything, but it would require a tiny bit of effort and willing. Plus it's not their idea so it'll get shot down straight away.

I still believe if they looked at their tooling budget for CIE, and drew up a list of possible characters that are viable for them to make, offered those out to fans to choose from, then made the winner, it would help generate interest and sales in the sub.

Take the upcoming Red Hood figure, if they had shown that version, the Biker jacket version and the classic Tux Joker version and asked us to vote which one we wanted, the one we're getting would've never stood a chance.

Limited Resources??? Too Hard???!?!?

For God's sake!!! THEIR OWN FORUMS ALREADY COME WITH "BUILT IN" POLLING TECHNOLOGY!!!!

See--> http://forums.mattycollector.com/eve/fo ... 4731017186

And--> http://forums.mattycollector.com/eve/fo ... lresults/Y

And if they were afraid of showing favoritism to one site by running it there, they could ask several sites to run it simultaneously. Each site sends it its results, which will probably be fairly close to each other, to Mattel. Done.

Anyone want to count the number of polls we've done here at AFi for Mattel in the past say 5 years? Have we ever asked for anything in return other than they look at the results?

Have the fans do your work for you. It doesn't get any cheaper than that.

The best incentive for people to buy into the sub is if they can choose the figures in it. Mattel just need to check with DC/WB on who they can make, then offer up a list of those characters in a poll and get us to vote on which ones we want. Surprise line ups were fine when DCUC was in waves at retail, but now we need to make sure we are seeing only the characters we want get made.