Sunday, March 29, 2009

New figures on the internet? Ebay?

Mattel fans,

A lot of fans have asked this week about unannounced figures from different lines as well as packaged images of figures showing up first on Ebay or other sites as well as why some fan sites have figures for "review" before they are in stores. Allow me to shed some light.

First off, the figures for review are sent out by me or Toyguru to different fan sites for PR. We get a very small sample of early figure for our review and I try to send them out to key fan sites so that all of our fans can enjoy final product images as a sneak before they hit stores.

As for unannounced figures or packaged images showing up on Ebay, well all I can say is 1: sometimes these are custom figures we have nothing to do with, and 2: sometimes these are figures removed from our vendors without permission and Mattel vigilantly will go after anyone involved in these auctions from the seller to the buyer. Our best advise; stay as uninvolved in these auctions as you can. Everyone at Mattel is very proud of our product and the hard working people who work on it. Auctions of non final product hurts everyone. It hurts our sales, it hurts our licensors and it hurts our fans as many times this product is not final (both toy and package) and gives the wrong impression of what product will be like leading to false conclusion.

Until product is revealed officially either here or on a fan site (and by officially on a fan site we mean as in when we send a sample out for review like we did with a few JLU figures and Mer-Man last week).

Mattel will continue to legally defend its property and have it returned to us. Bootleg and prototype theft has always been a problem with highly collectable lines for every manufacture in the business and I highly recommend fans not getting involved in it. It is not something you want to poke around with as this is Mattel property and we will go after it and involve resources needed to do so.

We will continue to use this forum and the fan sites to get the most up to date OFFICIAL images to our fans. We have many figures "in the cooker" for all of our lines, some will see the light of day sooner than others, some may not come out anytime soon for multiple reasons (legal, logistic, otherwise) which is why we try to hold back any images or announcements until we know the figure is officially coming out and final.

And on a cheerier note, look for some big announcement later this week of all new official product that IS coming out later this summer on my Facebook page!

Matty

Of course being a portal that houses as much of JLU info as we could find we are of course at a crossroads. We went ahead and asked ToyGuru where the DC Hall of Justice stands in this as well. We basically archive as much of the news around the net (which means not ALL of the news is from us but we try to put it in one source). We've asked him if we are to ignore the auctions entirely or if we're allowed to reflect the news yet disclaim.

We'll let you know as soon as we have the answer.


-Christophe


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