Matty Collector Kills The DC Universe

For the past couple of weeks since SDCC I have been waiting to see if this year’s DCU Club Infinite Earths subscription would pull through and go forward. Well on the Friday before the final day it was at 51% and looking like it wasn’t going to make it, and honestly many DC fans knew it. Seemed as if many of us were tired of Mattel and Toy Guru’s crap meter, constant babbling on things are getting better, to stop dwelling on the past, and the “sub or die” wording.

With the partial lineup revealed showing 90’s Aquaman, Superboy, Ice it looked promising that this line up would be good one up until we saw 2 tiers for Doomsday (Prison suit being tier one and Unleashed at tier 2). Right there I knew there was little chance of the sub going through because many fans wanted a scaled “Unleashed” Doomsday. Even with their desperate announcement on the 16th of August stating Damian Wayne, which was originally to be part of the Batman Unlimited line, would be part of this year’s subscription it was too late. On Monday August 19th the sub finished at 63%. I was upset as a fairly new fan and collector of the DC Universe, but could only imagine my buddies who are hardcore DC fans are being frustrated and angry that this poor sub model that screwed the fans.

The fact of the matter is Mattel failed us from the beginning and continued to drop the ball. The main issue was the model they used for the subscription and lack of characters shown this year. The choice of Aquaman was poor as we already have an Aquaman in the line so the fact they lead out with him was a bit of confusing choice for me. Superboy being high demand figure was a good step but the sculpt of the face needed work, but getting Ice soon after the release of Fire, made me happy and showed a glimmer of hope that next year Matty might finish some teams.

With the line in hiatus looks like fans will have quite a few incomplete teams. I was looking forward to eventually getting Mento for my Doom Patrol, Magnus for my Metal Men, other Legionaires, and Granny Goodness, which was a highly demanded figure not just myself but many other fans. Now with the retail line gone seems that many collectors will be left waiting for the next DC line, and being forced to go to DC Collectibles. Myself, being mainly a Marvel guy, will have Hasbro’s Marvel Legends to continue my collection and hoping Mattel can learn from them, rebranding the line to for retail.

At this point I’m waiting on Mattel to make a decision on the line to either release the known characters quarterly, releasing all 12 at a higher non-subscription price, or letting the line die. Where they should (but would never happen) let the fans who subscribed get the 4 figures shown, and release Doomsday as either a con exclusive or do a Kickstarter type of model showing us what is need to go forwards with this. All I can do now is wait with everyone to see what will happen, and expect to be disappointed and annoyed by Mattel sending Toy Guru to do a video blaming the fans for the line not continuing.