People are boohooing all over the place on he-man.org over the Red Spirit Hordak. I think this is a great idea from Mattel to just randomly do this.

Is it a great idea to violate the terms of service with your subscribers?
http://forums.mattycollector.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/5681027317/m/6861002128

Yes and no ian. I could see them doing this with their con exclusives. They've done it with figures in the past shows and I'm ok with that. But as abuddah pointed out, it does seem like they are violating the policy they put this in place when they listed this.

I'd be ticked if I gave a carp about this particular figure.
How many have shown up on Feebay so far?

http://forums.mattycollector.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/5681027317/m/4981012128

TG: Not in May, but he will be in Early Access at some point in the year. Although we can't guarantee their will be enough for every sub holder for every sub. If you happen to be lucky enough to find him however, I wouldn't suggest waiting or passing!

Early access. That's all I wanted. Back to reality...

I can PROMISE they will have metric tons of this figure and this was a ploy to sell out a otherwise bland repaint of sorts.

I feel pretty sad for people when they start saying breach of contract over missing out on a $25 toy.

There are 16 on eBay right now. The lowest BIN is $89.95 and the highest is $135 for an item no one has in-hand yet.

Noisy wrote a piece on his site and I have to agree with the last part. This has the potential to really damage sub sales because what is the point of subscribing to get "all" of the product and be told you'd get early access to any non-sub item if something like this appears without warning and at random especially if Mattel decides that this is a good idea to repeat.

Matty just can't do anything right in the eyes of some.
It's a repaint. If it was a brand new character, I'd say the outrage would be justified. But this seems much to do about nothing.

I don't think it's so much the character aspect of this release that has people upset, more that Matty just threw something up on the site with no announcement, no hints, and in very limited quantities.

I won't go so far as to join the "breach of contract" crowd, but it does seem a bit shady and underhanded to do this on a site that "caters to collectors" and wants to get as many people as possible to "sub in".

If something like this were to happen on a line I was invested in collecting, again, regardless of the character/repaint, I would be very hesitant to want to re-up my subscription.

In this day and age of the customer having so many options to spend their very hard earned and seldom "disposable" income, it really does come down to customer service. And this event/stunt/release/whatever just doesn't seem to cater to the audience they are trying so hard to market to.

As far as I'm concerned, it's not an essential figure. If he wasn't released at all, I won't feel like there was a figure missing. I don't have the Spirit of Greyskull nor the Silver She-Ra yet I'm fine with that. Likewise, the point of the figure is to pop-up every so often on the Matty site. There's more of him to come and it's not like he's gone forever.

Not calling out anyone in particular, but the "Mattel is out to screw us" diatribe and extreme entitlement that has run rampant the past 48 hours on the various boards is utterly ridiculous. Mattel attempts to do something fun and different, but instead it's the usual complaining because not everyone can have the same thing, and that we all "deserve" to have this. Putting this up for sale during a weekday certainly is curious and frustrating, but some of the stuff I have read in the past 48 hours is downright scary...this entire hobby needs to back away from the keyboard and have a time-out.

I know random drops are annoying. I see it often with 3A Toys...there are more than a few figures that were released unannounced that I never had a chance to buy, even some that were 'cartjacked' from me during the checkout process, and they now go for upwards of $800. Obviously that's a huge bummer, but I've learned to let it go. If I allow anger and resentment to influence my collecting habits, then what is the point of all this? Collecting is supposed to be fun.

I look at it this way - if it's an action figure I really want, then somehow, someway, someday I will get it, whether it's through eBay, scalpers, friends, trade, whatever. If I feel the need to be a completist, then I'll figure out a way to obtain it. Instead of being angry that someone else has what I don't, I choose to be happy that it's actually being produced and I have the opportunity to add it to my collection at some point.

Life is much less stressful and much happier this way, but of course, YMMV.

As usual, I'm late to the party.



I totally agree with the "we deserve our toys" craziness. But there are some legit complaints there too. More than 10 seconds thought ahead of time should have made it clear how much doing that would pleeple off a big chunk of the customer base. If Scott thought that it would be "fun" then he's absolutely delusional. I could understand it better if they'd given people a few minutes warning via email, then have it sort of "roam" the website for a few hours from EA, to MOTU, to DC, etc. That would still draw complaints, but it would have been much better than what they did. I know it's not quite apples to apples, but imagine if that stunt had been pulled with Wally West Flash. I think it was a good idea in theory, but just wasn't thought through.

On a much more positive note though, I think the Rock Warriors look great. Rokkon for some reason to me looks like an Autobot which I think is very cool.

I just think Mattel is getting insanely penny wise and pound foolish. Alienating its loyal sub holders just to play this game of pretending 'this simple repaint is rare. Its whatever cause mattels games have liberated me I went from a loyal must have them all to a ehhhhhh I will pick and choose then wait for clearance. Just sad

Well put. I thought it was a fun, unusual marketing move, and it did generate a lot of talk. I'm glad Mattel is at least trying something different to drum up interest in a waning line.

The figure will come back again. The only thing most collectors really missed getting this time around was bragging rights.