And I for one am more than happy to see the JLU line from Mattel continue until I am an old, old man. What the hell am I talking about? Mattel announced over the holiday that the Justice League Unlimited toy line will continue in Spring 2010 with new figures available through Target.
We have some great singles, 3 packs and 6 packs in store including many more fan demanded character, a return to Apokolips and a few out of the blue surprises we think JLU fans are going to love!
Mattel remains very committed to this line. As long as their are fans looking to purchase more JLU figures, we will do all we can to keep them coming. Considering Grodd was slated to be the very last figure, both the fans and dedicated members of the Mattel brand team have fought tooth and nail to keep the line going with a collector focus. We do read the message boards and hear fans requests. While we may not have gotten to every request, if you look back at the last 16 months, look at how many impossible or fan demanded characters we have been able to get to: The Question, Captain Atom, Cheetah, Batman Beyond, Mr. Terrific, Supergirl, Shazam… the list really does go on and on!
At retail we will still need to pair collector figures with more kid friendly selections to keep the line going, but you can be sure JLU will still be around, at least for the first half of 2010.
But there is some sad news about the line…
Turns out the exclusive 4 packs Mattel was selling on line will get dumped in 2010.
You see, for the 4 packs to work, we needed to sell a minimum amount of each pack to what we call the “die hard completionist” collector. Obviously some packs will sell better to others be it fans who only buy “in show” characters, or fans of a certain group like LOSH or Bat-villains. This factor might give each pack an added boost. But in order for the sku to work in the long run, we needed a certain baseline of fans who were interested in any JLU 4 pack offered regardless of theme. (This is similar to how the MOTUC line works BTW). While we offered a large variety of themed packs in 2009, we just did not hit the needed baseline to keep them going. (and we did have some more great ones planned!)
Damn Minimums! I know there are a lot of JLU fans out there, and I wonder if Mattel would have had bigger success with the four pack line (the most recent being the Doom Patrol), had there been more advertising or publicity about the online specials. While having a dedicated Facebook page, and the very fun Matty Collector website, unless one is an uber-fan, the average person on the street who may be buying these figures for fun, or for their kids know nothing about these specials. I’ve said it once, and I’ll continue to say it – companies need to drop money on advertising to make sales. Word of mouth and stories on fantastic websites like Major Spoilers, do help, but a well placed banner ad (like the one on the top of this site) go a long way to getting the message in front of the intended audience for longer than a day.
Oh well, let’s hope those fantastic four packs find a way to fans hands someway.