How about a decent Punisher figure?

Maybe my tastes aren't demanding enough, but I always really liked this one:



One of the better figures to come out of that line.

I want a line in the 12 inch GI Joe scale for Jonny Quest complete with all kinds of vehicles and playset accessories. Benton Quest is a spitting image double for a ginger bearded GI Joe and Race could be one of the clean-shaven Joes with white hair. Jonny and Haji would have to be in the 10 inch tall range. A Jade figure is a must too. Villains (like say Frogmen and Yeti, a SPider-drone vehicle, some jeeps and planes for the Quest crew...it would be awesome.

-M

I STILL want a complete set of New Teen Titans figures, and it amazes me that, even with the over abundance of figures DC has put out in the past ten years, there still doesn't appear to be a way to assemble a complete set of these characters (circa 1980s look) on the same size scale.


It also occurred to my wife and I last night how weird it is that Funko hasn't done a Retro Action set on any of those '80s children's fantasy films that never ended up getting toy lines. Dark Crystal came close, but still no cigar.

We need to get a direct hotline to Funko fast. This is a brilliant idea.

I have seen them. I want to be excited, but...they're hideous

And I'm also afraid we'll run into the same problem we've seen with every figure line that's ever had a wave of Titans figures -- they never do them all. Will we get a classic Beast Boy, Jericho, Terra, a teen-aged Robin? I know the company is waiting to see if I'll buy these guys before making more, but I'm waiting to see if they'll make more before buying these guys.

Well that's the vicious circle. The customer base for these things doesn't support more than 5-10K units produced for the most in-demand of it, and far less for the obscure/secodary/tertiary characters, so it's hard to get the factories in China to agree to run the productions as they have much larger, more profitable runs they can do, and they fit these small runs into gaps or lulls in the production schedules, so producers have to keep the waves small or they take forever to produce them, but the sales of one wave is what funds the production of the next wave. These aren't large corporations with unlimited funding to do lines-those companies won;t touch a line like the New Teen Titans in classic form because the demand is so insignificant compared to what they can produce on other lines it's not worth their time and effort. If they do anything Titans related, it would be based on Teen Titans Go not the classic look.

When you get a classic line the other issue is that the base where demand is is divided. Some, want the retro stuff to look like the vintage stuff, others want it to have the production quality of stuff like the Sideshow stuff. Sideshow can do some more obscure figures because they have people who buy their brand regardless of the figure, but they are never going to do a whole classic line.

The other half of the vicious circle is that when Titans lines have been done, the more popular characters haven't sold well enough to justify continuing the line with the more obscure characters and the more obscure characters won't sell enough to justify a line of figures without sales on the more popular propping up the line.

So small companies who would do the obscure characters can't if you don't buy the more popular ones first to fund those later waves, and big companies who could afford to produce the whole set at once won't because the line as a whole and the obscure characters in particular, aren't worth their time and effort to do because their is such a tiny fragmented market that would buy them. The only hope for the obscure characters is if a smaller company does well enough with the initial wave to greenlight a second wave, but if those who might buy them are waiting to see if there is a second wave before buying, there will never be a second wave. It's pretty much a situation where you have to vote with your dollars if you want to see lines continue because the big dogs would rather do the umpteenth variation of Batman or Deadpool than the first Jericho or some such.

As for Titans in particular, I think most of the line has been produced by DC Direct in some form or other with a few gaps, but not all part of the same series with the same packaging. The scale would be the same, but the eras off. Anything mass market from DC/Mattel now though is going to be new52/Rebirth era looks not classic though, and anything retro is limited to smaller collector based series that have to be diverse (not theme specific) to cast as wide a net for potential buyers as possible.

Also, it is easier for smaller companies to do retro Mego figures than the 3 3/4 or DC Direct/Marvel Legends scale because the Mego style only needs 2-3 total body sculpts (male, female, larger frame i.e. Hulk body) with the heads being the primary expense. Smaller scale susually require every body to be it's own sculpt which raises production costs not only because each has to be sculpted, but the machines have to then run each body on its own in snaller numbers than the whole of the line.

I know some collector's will say, I want what I want, but the economic reality is that it is next to impossible for some of these to happen without someone losing their shirt. If you want what you want and it's not enough to carry an actual product line, you better start looking at custom kitbashing or investing in a 3-D printer, the artistic/technical skills to design what you want the way you want, and make your own. The smaller companies are making ends meet, but that's it, and the bigger companies only want what will turn a minimum acceptable revenue stream to not only justify production costs but make enough to beef up quarterly reports for stockholders.

So you are likely going to be waiting a long, long time for a complete set of Titans to be available all at once if you don't buy it as the waves are released, unless you make your own.

-M