[...]Hi there! This post couldn’t be written any better! Reading through this post reminds me of my previous roommate! He always kept preaching about this. I will send this article to him. Pretty sure he’ll have a good read. I appreciate you for sha…

You’re totally right, it’s not fair.

Fast food toys have internal mechanisms, a new assortment every month, millions of toy shipped to every city in America and most places internationally every month, on time, they have to deal with a new studio/license/property every month, they have far more stringent safety standards to match, higher oversight, and stricter engineering,and they have to do it all with a fraction of the costs of an action figure so you can get it free with your meal.

It is completely not fair to hold action figures up to that high standard.

But even if this was about anything current with Mattel, so what? If I want to apologize for Mattel (I don’t) then I’ll come right out and do it. This is my site and you’re free to read it or not, but I’m under no obligation to give you a forum to attack me or my motives. And for the record, I don’t get anything free from Mattel, I don’t collect any of their products outside of various DCUC, and I’m just as frustrated by some of their decisions as anyone. But that’s not what this article was about, and the comments aren’t going to turn into the usual flame war.

Tribsaint, I tried to be clear in the beginning of the article, but maybe I need to be clearer (I’m not being snarky, I literally mean this): it’s not that you can’t fix things at the factory. We made MILLIONS of fast food toys every month, with no recalls, breakage, paint errors, etc. But Mattel obviously has a priority for the profit margin over quality and satisfaction. This is OBVIOUS. People act like Scott or any brand manager just aren’t doing their job, but the truth is that the corporate culture at Mattel is designed for cranking out Barbie and Hot Wheels (both comparatively easy to manufacture) and not complex boy’s toys.

Without Scott we would have never had MOTUC, Ghostbusters, and much of the DC characters we did. You would have had Infinite Heroes x 10 across the board. And without the 4 Horsemen you would have had even that. People just don’t realize that Mattel is not, and never will be, Toy Biz, Hasbro, Neca. They are not set up that way, they don’t want to be that way. This period in Mattel’s recent history is an anomaly. Even the original MOTU and Secret Wars were built around repaints and universal bodies.

Anyway, let this be the end of the Mattel comments, OK?

While I’m sure there are many industry standards that aren’t universal some of what you wrote about the factory setting and the ability to control quality seem questionable and far removed for what I have seen. You made it sound like errors are not just unavoidable but unfixable. I personally have done onsite audits of thousands of parts; I have checked thousands under a microscope (literally) for defects in response to a customer complaint, chartered private jets (yes private jets at our expense) to fly a few hundred parts to a customer site to keep them running and seen production of multi-shot plastic injected parts with and without inserts run less than a 100 PPM (parts pre million) defect rate for months and a many run very low PPM for years.

It seems like internal auditing (or the demand for) by toy companies is sub par. Does anyone have the right to expect any company to be prefect? No, but many companies including Mattel are demanding more from costumers (price, subscriptions, and support) this is demand for more is counter intuitive to the traditional customer/seller relationship, so it is no small wonder that we are having a hard time with it.

There are unreasonable collectors a plenty but there are also collectors like me that simply have a hard time accepting some of the more questionable statements, and the logic that the more expensive and rare a toy gets the more accepting of errors collectors should be. The simple fact is that toy prices have risen at a rate much greater than inflation, which honestly is fine as long as the toy company is bringing their A game and lets face it many including Mattel are not.

As to the bulk of the article that speaks to dealing with licenser licensee relationship I have no knowledge, but as a customer I shouldn’t have to your either going to give me what I want or I’ll spend my money elsewhere. And on that account it seems pretty telling that DCUC, Legends(I know this ones coming back), MOTU200x, Movie Maniacs, Ghostbusters, among others are gone, going or shrinking.

Sorry so long. Last thing in my experience if you open up by saying I’m not trying to be blank, it usually means your going be or do blank.

Thanks for a forum and please consider how you choose to limit the duologue.

Vendetta???

Eric, thanks, your comments mean a lot to me. I really like writing these long-form things, I just wish I had the time to do more. I still can’t believe our time in the trenches together led us down our career paths…

Scott himself seems confused about if his lines are NECA or Mattel product – when he;s hyping them, they’re NECA – nimble and aimed at collectors; when he’s explaining how everything is SNAFU, they’re Mattel – handcuffed by corporate restrictions and licensors.

Your article was fine and I’m sure readers appreciate first-hand insight into the process that they may not have themselves. I always enjoy when people share their specific horror stories – because we all have some. Commenting on Scott here may not have been the most appropriate venue, but my response was really driven by the ongoing “Mattel is wonderful” “Scott is great” message of the site and the glaringly obvious goal of the article as it follows right after Scott’s most recent apology/explantation.

I can’t remember a stretch of Mattel toys (for boys anyway) that wasn’t dismal (maybe Major Matt Mason for the first couple of years?). I’ll give credit to their WWE team though – nice work there for the most part, and putting the DC product to shame. But if you want to credit Scott with their recent “accomplishments, I’ll have to disagree. Evolution in the toy marketplace was going to catch up with them eventually, or they were going to have to walk away from Boys. What has Mattel done that’s groundbreaking or even particularly good? It seems to me that everything they do in boys is rehashed from Hasbro, Toy Biz and Jakks.

You say the freebies don’t impact the writing? Okay maybe they don’t, but there’s no denying the site absolutely has a Mattel-friendly, Scott-friendly bias.

Anyway, happy to agree to disagree but “Get over it”? C’mon dude.

Thanks for the great comments everyone.

Jroug – freebies have nothing to do with anything. Mattel sends all the sites review copies. It doesn’t really impact what we write. However, unlike you, we do have a view inside a lot of these companies and we know what limitations they have to deal with. My article is strictly about the two events I was involved with in regards to licensors.

Collectors who get so upset are going to have to realize at some point that Mattel is not, and never will be driven by a desire to pamper collectors over making money. They are not NECA. Collectors got lucky with Scott, but they don’t not look for the Scotts of the world when they hire. Does no one remember the dismal stretch of Mattel toys from 1988-2002? That corporate culture still exists. And if Hasbro hadn’t dropped the DC License, Mattel would still be making crap.

Get over it.

I really and truly enjoyed this article that explained how the inner workings of the manufacturing of toys. I feel vindicated!

Very enjoyable and entertaining tale. Thanks so much!

Are you kidding?

As the number one Mattel apologist site on the internet, I can’t believe you’d draw attention to that.

The credibility of this site is already compromised (and I’m being very, very kind). We know you want to keep the freebies coming, but really, wake up and smell the coffee – ToyGuru may have the best intentions in the world, but his work (and even moreso, his communications to fans) has been (& continues to be unprofessional and borderline appalling).

This guys is in charge of a line directed at fans, but problems are consistent, and many things were never addressed – like the figure-warping poses & elastics after 20 WAVES of DCU. Stuff doesn’t show up at the warehouse and they only know about the problem DAYS (not weeks) before? Digital River sucks and it never gets addtessed? Stupid Q & A’s with nothing but softball questions and empty replies? Scott jamming horrible character choices (clearly at his sole discretion) into lines that are sold at retail (Green Lantern #1,999,876,439 anyone? Black Vulcan? Scott’s own MOTU design from the 80′s that no one cares about?).

I keep hearing about how Mattel is a great place to work – it must be if you’re Scott – apparently he has pictures of someone up the foodchain mounting a goat – because any sane organization that was looking to be profitable would’ve fired his ass after so many ongoing failures. I cannot believe Mattel has any in-house PR, because no sane publicist would let Scott issue the rants he does without at least PROOFREADING them. But maybe they are just looking to give Scott enough rope to hang himself – lord knows there are few Scott fans among the people I speak to at Mattel HQ – and fewer in the field.

A good product manager knows his product AND his market – he doesn’t just waste company money to satisfy his own whims, sales be damned. And the subscription results are showing that the “fans” that used to think he was doing them a favor have seen the emperor has no clothes. When will Mattel realize it?

It seems quite counterintuitive to not have someone in those positions who actually knows the characters. Mattel’s ToyGuru, for example, knows his DCU.

Anyway, great article! Thanks!