So apparently the McFarlane Super Powers crowd-funding campaign successfully funded in its final days. Sort of. When it launched, the goal was $600K. With a few weeks to go they were nowhere near that mark, so they extended, and discretely lowered the goal to $145K. With the extension, it finally hit the $145 mark, so yay, successfully funded. Except they had to move the goalposts near the end of the campaign to make it look like a success. And the scuttlebutt is they had to cut a deal with one of the big online toy stores like Entertainment Earth of Big Bad Toy Store to make a massive pledge at the end at an extreme discount on the wholesale prices to get it over the finish line even then (again this is rumor not confirmed).

This, combined with nothing scheduled to be announced for the line at NYCC in just a couple of months, has people conjecturing that the line may be discontinued. It's a line that has more repaints and variants than female figures released (there's only been 1-Wonder Woman), and whole waves of figures and vehicles seem to find their way to the clearance racks within weeks of their appearing at Walmart (each of our two local Walmarts had 20+ John Stewart figures on clearance for $3-$4 each and several Wonder Woman, Deathstrokes, and Nightwings at similar prices to try to get rid of that overproduced wave (and they weren't put out on the pegs until the previous wave sold out, which was months after the second wave was available online through places like EE and BBTS) and Batwings and Super Mobiles were priced at $5 each at our local Walmarts for about 3 weeks after last holiday season (the few that are left are still on clearance but now only marked down to $15, not sure what happened there).

I really like this line, and the fact it is hitting some B and C list characters (like Metamorpho and Guy Gardner) and it gave me a Bug to own, but it is not passing the eye test as a successful line, for whatever reason. I am just not sure this scale (3 3/4) has enough appeal in the current market for a line of it to be viable long term. The Kenner Marvel Legends Retro 3 3/4 line suffered the same fate. The Spin Masters line of DC started well, and still has some presence, but they are less expensive, and aimed at younger market that actually plays with the toys, and not the adult collector market, which things like the Super Powers and Marvel Retro line are clearly aimed at because of the nostalgia factor. But that collector demographic seems locked into the 6/7 inch scale or the high end 1/12 stuff from Mezco and the like, not the small scale. They key for the 3 3/4 scale, from the initial Star Wars figures form Kenner, through G.I. Joe and onward was that it was scaled well for vehicles and playsets, whose sales propped up the figure lines and gave the lines greater shelf presence in toy aisles and toy stores. That environment and market doesn't exist anymore and playsets are solely the purview of crowdfunding these days, and even the vehicles for lines like Super Powers aren't cutting it. The 3 3/4 line seems to have been relegated to cheap figures geared towards younger kids for actual play or for budget versions of characters intended for discount and dollar stores. There are exceptions-Super 7 for example, but they charge high end prices for limited articulation and paint jobs and are not generally available in the mass market so you have to special order them directly or through select online retailers (like BBTS or EE for example). It doesn't seem to be a scale or product line that can thrive in the existing brick and mortar retail market, as limited as that is. Maybe the upcoming holiday season can extend the life of the line for a bit, but I am skeptical.

-M

Thinking about an automotive topic here, covering all the great cars/motorcycles featured in toylines. Does anyone think that’d be of interest to anyone?

So for those who missed the discussion about it in the Meanwhile thread-Mego made a couple of "big" announcements about upcoming releases tonight on their youtube channel (Icctrombone linked the vid in the Meanwhile thread-link for it below).

Apparently the rights holder of the Atlas/Seaboard Comics has made a deal with Walmart to promote the characters (there's a Devilina movie in the works under the Paramount umbrella and all those options that happened around the pandemic are currently in pre-production or production) and Walmart is having their first booth ever at NYCC in a couple of weeks. They approached Mego about doing a line of Atlas Megos to have available for the show that will be WalMart exclusives after that. The first wave will be 4 characters (Devilina is one; Wulf is confirmed as NOT being in the first wave, no other reveals yet, but the rest of the first wave is due to be released this weekend). 100 of each will be available each day of NYCC at the Walmart booth, as well as facsimile editions of several Atlas Seaboard Comics. Further waves are planned as Walmart is committed to this deal. Plan is for preorders for them to go up on the Walmart website sometime after NYCC, most likely early to mid December with possible being on pegs in time for X-Mas.

There was also some Mego Marvel news. Marvel/Disney agreed to let Mego do Marvel figures as part of the 50th Anniversary line, but only if the figures were exclusively distributed by Disney and not available elsewhere in the mass market. So they will only be available at Disney Theme Parks, at Disney Stores, or through the Disney website. So no Big Bad Toy Store, Entertainment Earth, Amazon, Target, Walmart or any of that for the Marvel figs. Further, there will be 4 figures in the first wave, each individually packaged in vintage Mego packaging but only available to purchase as 4 packs-no single figures. 4 more waves of 4 figures each are already planned and approved for 2025, so 20 figures total in the initial deal, but again, only in 4 packs not as individual figs (it may be 5 waves in 2025, they were a bit fuzzy if it was 5 waves overall or 5 more in 2025 after this initial wave). They will debut at some event at Disneyland before the holidays (Marty mentioned being invited to attend a launch event at Disneyland and said he will be there but no other details were given) and hopefully be up for sale in time for the holiday season, but no details were confirmed, including which figures in the first wave other than a mention they will (probably) be ones that Mego produced as part of the WGS line in the 70s (Paul Clarke aka Dr. Mego, did the Diamond exclusive Megos several years back and Wolverine and Deadpool were part of that line so are technically previously made figures and I could one or both being part of the initial wave or at least in one of the future waves next year).

They also said there is hope this deal sets the stage for Mego to do more stuff like this with Disney for other properties they own, so stuff like Star Was or some of the Fox IPs like Aliens, Predator, etc. could be on the table but that's all speculation and wishful thinking right now and a lot hinges on how successful the launch is with the Marvel stuff. The 2025 waves are a committed go, anything beyond that is only in discussion and wising stages.

Hidden in the video are some discussions that Mego's booth at NYCC is part of their push to be a central hub for the collectible market moving forward and that the Atlas rights holder/owner is a film production company (no name mentioned) and they are planning a big media push with the characters moving forward.

Other details/items of interest:
-when Walmart approached Mego about getting these figures for NYCC, it only gave them a 6 week window.

-they showed the box for the Devilina figure but not the figure itself. It looked a little bigger than the standard Mego packaging, but they did say each figure (at least for the con) will have a new printing of a Atlas comic in the packaging, so the bigger box could be to accomodate that and not an indication the figs themselves are larger than the Mego 8 inch norm

-neither the owners of Atlas nor Walmart provided Mego with a style guide for the characters, so the looks were taken form the comics themselves

-samples of the actual for sale figures are already in Mego's hands and insiders (such as Brian of the Mego Museum) have seen them, the bulk of the first shipment is arriving via plane (not boat) in the US soon, in time to get set up at NYCC.

-they hope to lean in to some of the horror elements of the Atlas books early since the horror figs have been big sellers for Mego.

-some Atlas creator and editorial alum ae scheduled to appear at the Walmart booth at NYCC. Larry Hama and Jeff Rovin were namedropped as being among them.

-M

PS here's a link to Icc's post post & vid in Meanwhile