Posted by: @smitty-81

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@zodac so far the FF figures have come with the same mini comic as their original release. Maybe Prince Adam and Mekaneck will come with a new comic featuring those two on some adventure. Alternatively Mekaneck could come with the Thunder Punch He-Man/ King Hiss mini and Adam could come with the wave 1 or 4 mini comic.

That's probably more likely than them suddenly creating an all-new mini to go with either of those characters. Weirdly enough, I had a dream last night I was in a Wal-Mart and found the single-carded re-release of Mekaneck, and while he came with no comic at all, he did come in two different versions- the standard colored armor, and that salmon colored armor that the vintage variant came with. In the dream I scrambled to find Toy Habits' social media outlets on my phone so I could send them photos for their next youtube livestream. It was a very strange dream (I'm sometimes skeptical of some of their speculation/rumour videos, so it was funny to me that they were the first people I thought of when I found the variant on the pegs!).

@daavid @lasastard you two do make a good point about packaging on high-end collector items. They should all have easily resealable packaging and the ability to be easily repacked for storage, transportation or resale. Mattel has done this with some of the MC figures, but not all of them and not as consistently as I think they should. They definitely should have done it for Eternia but I suspect they were trying to keep the weight under 50 pounds to avoid extra shipping costs.

HasLab's Unicron was over 50 pounds and USPS charged an extra $50 because of that. Money that Hasbro never got and that got many collectors upset.

Oh mother glory! My Eternia set just arrived in darn near perfect condition! Just one small dent on the back where there was a hole in the shipper box, which I don't care about. I was monitoring my front door camera for FedEx to arrive and go out there when he pulls up. I'm waiting for him to emerge with this beautiful thing of dreams, halfway thinking the box will come out looking like an accordion, when I hear a hear big BANG! Then another BANG! BANG! BANG! as I see him rolling the box end over end inside his truck towards the door. I'm standing on my porch watching and cringing at the sound, worrying he's damaging it and as soon as he makes eye contact, I'm like "hey man, I'll pay you extra if you're super careful with it!" He smiles and carries it up to the porch and sits it down. I thank him for his labors and notice that one end of the shipper box had gotten all dirty and wet previously so I quickly drag it inside and open it. Luckily, she's a beauty! And a behemoth! I totally feel for those who care about the box condition and have received damaged ones. Hopefully, Mattel will step up and provide replacement boxes or something. I'm definitely relieved, and totally feel like I survived the game of "Eternia Roulette" with my box condition... Whew! Now it's time to crack this thing open!

Rokkon Instagram! 

View this post on Instagram

Im more excited about Modulok!

@brasco me too. I know I've often said that packaging art is not a 100% guarantee of upcoming figures but with VC going exclusively to MC and ToG being a short line I think it more likely that art = upcoming figures.

@smitty-81 yes but it makes me optimistic. Also that leak you posted about the rumored figs gives me hope that origins will continue

I am hopeful that the line still has some life in it. But I am not sure that the direct-to-consumer model is necessarily the way to go. On the plus side, Mattel has control over every step of that process, including "investment" of how many figures they make and also, obviously, how many they need to sell for the line to keep going. If at one point the sales dip under that line, I imagine they will stop. On the minus side, MC is just not a very visible platform and they have no international partners on board - which simply makes it a bit of a pain for international buyers with the shipping costs coming out at ~50% of what a figure costs. To me this has the potential to choke out the line even though there may be many people interested in supporting it, in principle. 

Technically origins isn't dead at retail, but with the disaster that wave 7 caused Mattel needs to get on the ball with distribution. The CC and FF figures are already 2 waves in and there have been no retail sightings, and not just the usual post holiday droop off. 

@smitty-81 Wow artwork is great. Wasn't planning to get him but now I am wavering.

Finally bit the bullet on the 2nd sun man 3 pack. Been putting off as long as i could, waiting for them to go on clearance, since target canceled preorders. I dont go to target enough anymore, so i paid the price. 100 bucks for two bland sets

@banthafett they were on sale the week of Christmas. I got them for $35. Most of my targets still have them on the shelf

Toy Habits is reporting that Two-Bad will be this years SDCC exclusive. 

https://toyhabits.com/motu-origins-turtles-of-grayskull-lineup-sdcc-2024-exclusive-two-bad/  

@smitty-81 that same article also states that Demo man is a surprise coming to the origins line

@brasco yeah but I can't really get excited for Demo-Man. He seems like a lazy way of redeeming Keldor.

Nice for some of the news, not so nice for the sdcc. Two bad should be a regular figure, make demo man the exclusive. Yeah i know the whole line is exclusive now, but still.

@banthafett I like what you're putting down.

Posted by: @smitty-81

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Toy Habits is reporting that Two-Bad will be this years SDCC exclusive. 

https://toyhabits.com/motu-origins-turtles-of-grayskull-lineup-sdcc-2024-exclusive-two-bad/

Seriously Mattel?!?!?!

Two-Bad is part of the vintage original 70 figures. He was in the Filmation show, he even got a whole 200X episode devoted to his origin and is at least as key a character as Spikor and Stinkor let alone Demo-Man.

So why on earth is he being only made available to people who attend an already sold out convention at one end of one single country? Convention exclusives are not accessible to vast swathes of the customer base, especially the international market (who Mattel is making concessions for with the delay on Rokkon).

(And to be clear I wouldn't have a problem with a variant Two-Bad being a convention exclusive in addition to an accessible regular release. There's several variant options that could help the tooling budget - the inverted purple Tuvarr/blue Baddrah variant from 200X is an obvious niche repaint. A three pack with separate Tuvarr and Baddrah figures has demand for it.)

If that turns out to be true I would be very, very, very pissed. He is one of my favorite characters from the line. And main line characters are, imho , an absolute no-go for such a limited release. 

@lasastard I'm sure there's a good reason Mattel is making Two-Bad an SDCC exclusive. Just their size alone wouldn't really justify that, so I'm thinking that they are making them a set with the parts to make Tuvarr  Baddrah and Two-Bad.