Written by It’ssss back!
Per Mattel, the Masters of the Universe: Origins Snake Lair Playset is scheduled to hit collectors’ hands next year (provided fans successfully crowdfund it.)
Now appearing once again on the Mattel Global Customer Support page, the Snake Lair has returned with a clear 2026 release date. Check it out:
While the image used on Mattel’s page features last year’s Snake Lair design (the same design a great deal of fans were displeased with), we still expect the latest rendition of the Snake Lair to look different and be aesthetically improved.
For anyone who is not aware, a crowdfunding campaign for the Snake Lair was due to originally launch August 12th, 2024.
The Snake Lair (bottom left) was selected by fans in 2023 as the next large-scale Masters of the Universe item they wanted to be made available through crowdfunding.
However when the new Snake Lair playset was revealed at the San Diego Comic-Con, it hardly resembled the concept art fans actually voted for.
So after a customer survey, Mattel canceled the crowdfunding campaign and promised a future retool of the Snake Lair.
And now it feels its imminent. We are expecting a new crowdfunding campaign announcement for the Snake Lair soon.
We’ll see you next time!
It better look more like the art. Changing the design after they asked people to pick a design was just dumb.
About time.
I’m fascinated by this.
If it doesn’t look like the artwork people will rightly be upset.
If it does look like the artwork people will rightly ask why it isn’t at retail.Â
If it essentially is a retail set with extras the price needs to be keen because they’ve already messed up badly, but now they have to factor in tariffs that may or may not exist in any given week.
It doesn’t need to be a true crowdfund UNLESS they’re overcharging, they could simply say ‘here’s a clamshell ala vintage, we need X for this to be made to order’. Because that artwork people voted for was absolutely a clamshell. They’ve already established a big difference between retail and crowfund with clamshells and Eternia.
And the presented options included a vintage Fright Zone, remember, that’s now going to retail and completely different scale projects. In other words they’re seeing what they can get away with charging while having zero risk to themselves. Since when does a crowdfund come with a poll and no product pictures? They are winging it.
@sketchyskeletor Going back to the history of this project, the fact that the fans voted with their wallets was a good thing to at least cool down any tendency to come up with crazy ideas that might come to the designers’ minds. Overall, there were some great additions to the new playset, such as the Rattle Trap, which I still need! The datas seem to point to 2026 as the release date, don’t they? Which means that the crowdfunding will start this year, if that turns out to be correct. But frankly, how feasible are such offers in the economic crisis the world is in right now? Alarmingly suspenseful, isn’t it?
Yeah, and that’s another thing now, there’s the ‘Let’s have a look at what you could have won’ aspect with things like the Trap and no doubt aspects of the previous Lair that will no longer ‘fit’*. Minimum they need to be adding QUALITY stuff people haven’t seen before. Stretch goaling stuff won’t cut it after this debacle unless the upfront price is relatively ‘cheap’ and even then there’ll be no momentum because many will wait and hope others make the set viable for them at the end.
As you imply, it’s precisely the wrong time to be having a wonky crowdfund lol.
* I would love the Trap and other aspects to be available, I think they’re great, but they should have been included in the poll options from the start. Hell, details of anything would have been nice! It’s pretty damn obvious the Snake Lair was Mattel’s choice whatever the poll results anyway!
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Watch it look exactly the same only made smaller.
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