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Soapbox Sunday: Could Hasbro Revitalize the G.I. JOE Brand with a 6-Inch Figure Line?

I’m not a good G.I. JOE fan. When I was a kid, I had a lot of the original 3.75-inch Joes from the mid-80s. I watched the cartoon whenever I could, and I’d wage a lot of war against Cobra on the floor of my bedroom. But as an adult collector, I don’t buy a lot of G.I. JOEs anymore. And although the Hasbro brand has seen some resurgence after a lackluster first live action movie outing with a better received sequel in G.I. JOE: Retaliation, that hasn’t exactly translated into better sales in the toy aisles to kids and their moms either. With the brand losing shelf space at retail, it’s looking rather bleak for the toy line for 2014.

A couple years ago, I picked up a bootleg Snake Eyes in the 6-inch scale. I don’t know the origin of the toy, but it holds together like something made in a factory. It’s got the articulation setup of the 25th Anniversary Joes. And it’s got almost everything that I’d want to see in a G.I. JOE toy line for the adult me.

That leads me to my topic today – could Hasbro breathe life into G.I. JOE with a new six-inch action figure line?

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Ask Matty Q&A for 8/31

Just in time for labor day weekend, here’s the Ask Matty Q&A for 8/31. Thanks to Toy Guru and team for answering our questions.

1) You’ve said that 2014 and 2015 would have characters that required more tooling, like Two Bad and Modulok. What does that mean for the number of subscribers needed to support the line? For example, do you need to increase the minimum subscribers needed to support more tooling?

No, the min number of sub holders has stayed the same year to year, we are just very strategic in banking a few fully tool’d figures with other partial tool figures so the year balances out.

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STGCC 2013: Interview with Army of Snipers by Jedd

Luke Chueh, Aaron “Angry Woebots” Martin, and Jesse “J*RYU” Yu of Army of Snipers

At last year’s Singapore Toy, Game, and Comic Convention, Jedd conducted a great interview with Max Toy Co’s Mark Nagata. This year, he shares with us a great conversation he had with with Angry Woebots, J*RYU, and Luke Chueh from the Army of Snipers. The Army of Snipers is an international collective of artists, with a wide variety of backgrounds including street artists, videographers, photographers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and graphic designers.

Angry Woebots, aka Aaron, started the group in 2011, and is well known for his designer resin figures and vinyl toys. J*RYU is a west coast-based sculptor and artist well-known for his Forest of Sorrows, the ongoing story of the ghost girl who haunts his works. And Luke Chueh is an award-winning graphic designer and painter active in the artist community in Los Angeles.

Jedd: Aaron, in 2008 you designed the album artwork for Fall Out Boy. If you could choose another musician to work with, who would it be and why?

Aaron: I’m a huge Muse fan, I’d love to work with Muse. I’m a huge Explosions in the Sky fan, and also Mogwai. Even the Killers, I’m a huge Killers fan, or Beck too. I think those are…Cornelius I would love to work with.

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Soapbox Sunday: Sour Grapes – Club Infinite Earths Doomsday was too Big

The Club Infinite Earths subscription was declared officially dead last week. So what? – the club exclusive Doomsday, if he had gotten enough subscribers to get him made, was too damn big anyways.

For this edition of Soapbox Sunday, let’s take a look at how Doomsday was portrayed with Superman in the comics that led to their mutual destruction – spoiler! If you’re not convinced that the Doomsday(s) we were shown at San Diego Comic-Con (and subsequently did not support enough to save Club Infinite Earths and get him made) was way too big to be in scale with DC Universe Classics, then you’re probably one of the weak-willed individuals that signed up for Club Infinite Earths, and will never wield a Green Lantern power ring (just like weak-willed me).

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Just One More Reason to Hate Digital River

Update: Thanks to Kevin, who left a comment below, I checked my credit card activity and only have a pending charge for $38.15. So instead of having another reason to hate DR, I just dislike them a little more for being confusing. Please don’t let this discourage you from subbing to any of the Mattycollector subscriptions. Like I have suggested before – compare what figures you’re likely to get from the sub (pretty easy to do in case of Masters) against what you want from the line, and let that guide your decision-making. How you feel about Mattel, Toy Guru, or Digital River is just noise.

It’s more like seventy-five reasons – that’s what I was charged to pre-order the Club Infinite Earths subscription from Mattycollector. For two items that I will (potentially, if the sub actually goes through) get four and six months from now, I was charged the full price for the figures, the shipping, and tax. “Why are you surprised?” you may be asking – after all, I have subbed from the beginning. So I used the dreadful Customer Service link to find my previous orders to compare.

For reasons that are beyond my ability to fathom, the cost has gone up. Last year, for THREE subs, I was charged in the neighborhood of $150. Two years ago, for TWO subs, it was around $100. So, Digital River has found a way to increase what I’m charged four months in advance by 50% ($75 for one sub compared to $50).

But I suppose the more interesting thing here is that while this crappy practice of Digital River sitting on our money has been going on since the beginning, I didn’t even bat an eyelash before, even though the amounts were higher. I guess my dissatisfaction with Mattycollector and how Digital River handles the front end has been building up to the point where I don’t feeling good about buying from them. For someone who loves the toys, that’s saying a lot.

Anyways, time’s nearly up. What did you guys end up doing for the Mattycollector subs?