What is going on with Mattel, Target and the Masterverse New Eternia Whiplash?

Back on March 21st, a large blitz of Masters of the Universe figures (Masterverse and Origins) became available for pre-order at retailers like Amazon, BigBadToyStore and Entertainment Earth. Focusing momentarily on the seven inch Masterverse line, there were 13 Masterverse figures in total revealed.

Announced in an exciting promotional blitz just one day prior, when the pre-orders went live, three of the thirteen Masterverse figures were notably absent from the pre-order list… those being New Adventures Skeletor, a Deluxe Slushhead and Oversized Whiplash.

Now reports and assumptions based on past precedent suggested that these three missing Masterverse figures would be exclusive to the retail chain Target. It was a reasonable conclusion to make considering there has been many Target exclusive Masterverse figures before, and perhaps even two figures missing may be released under the “New Adventures” subline (a subline where its He-Man was already an exclusive to that chain.)

Now let’s fast forward to approximately two weeks ago. In a surprising move, Mattel shipped free advance copies of one of these unavailable for pre-order figures to select media influencers… and that figure was the Masterverse New Eternia Whiplash.

Apparently, at the same time, Mattel was also confirming to these media influencers that the evil tail thrashing Whiplash was indeed a Target Summer 2023 Exclusive. (And then later in the Fall, Whiplash would become available to other retailers as well, just like the Masterverse New Eternia “Two Bad” figure was announced as a pre-order by BigBadToyStore three months later after being a Target exclusive.) So everything still tracked.

But suddenly, things had changed. On June 1st, the Masterverse Whiplash figure surprisingly went up for pre-order on the website BigBadToyStore.com without a single Whiplash figure reportedly ever seen “out in the wild” on a Target store retail shelf.

This pre-order announcement felt at odds with the information disseminated to us earlier, especially when BigBadToyStore indicated that they would ship this Whiplash figure sometime in the third quarter (which means in July, August or September.) And with Summer ending September 23rd, this meant Bigbadtoystore would likely be shipping New Eternia Whiplash in Summer 2023 too.

So is New Eternia Whiplash suddenly not a Target Store Summer 2023 Exclusive? If it still is, we would imagine Target would not be thrilled once BigBadToyStore started taking orders for the figure. We suspect many collectors won’t even bother hunting for this figure in actual Target stores now, knowing that a figure will be mailed to them sooner rather than later. For a brick and mortar retailer like Target, this online competitive pre-order definitely diminishes the appeal of any exclusivity.

If this was indeed always the plan, then it is strange to inform media influencers something a little different a couple weeks before. They could have also offered Whiplash up for pre-orders originally with all the other then Masterverse figures during Mattel’s mega announcement as well. There are other figures initially available for pre-order like Webstor and Prince Adam that are also due in Quarter 3 just like Whiplash.

The net of it is, we do not know for certain if something has changed between Target and Mattel or not in regards to Whiplash or Masterverse in general (and we are not going to pretend to know) but whatever is going on, as a collector, it is certainly worthy to keep an eye on. Perhaps the Masterverse New Eternia Whiplash figures could surprise us and start appearing in Target Stores soon. But if they do, it will always remain a bit strange that pre-orders for a Target Store Exclusive figure, appeared at one of Target’s competitors first.

We’ll see you next time!

Update: Some additional context from the author:

What is interesting is the business relationship between Mattel and Target, the value of having exclusive rights, and is that no longer the case with Whiplash. With Two Bad, BBTS announced their pre-orders after roughly 90 days of Target’s exclusive rights. Here with Whiplash, Target doesn’t even have the figures yet and BBTS announced their pre-orders. So what happened? What changed? Is it no longer an exclusive? I know it doesn’t fascinate every collector but the business side fascinates me personally. Thanks for reading!

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