There has been a surprising lack of details regarding this year’s Ghostbusters Figure releases. Especially considering some of us signed up to buy the first six already. The first figure released this year was Courtroom Peter Venkman, which I reviewed recently. Finally Matty has shed a little more light on their plans for this year:
Hey Ghost fans,
I know everyone has been itching from some news for the line. Obviously we are gearing up for NYTF where we will update collectors on all of our Matty.com toy lines, but to help get some needed info out there, here is the latest scoop.
1: The next figure will be Vinz Clortho in March. Also in March will be the Club Ecto Marshmallow Mess Ray which ships only to Club Members and was covered by the cost of membership!
2: After Vinz will be a new figure in May that will include a new pack in Ghost.
3: Winston with slime blower will be out in July.
4: We also have 2 GB2 12″ 2-packs coming out this year (that was a lot of 2s!). The first will be Winston and Peter in April. Both packs will come with a TON of 12″ accessories including protonstreams!
5: The PKE meter did great. We are looking into other prop replicas down the road. No plans right now for a re-release but it might happen in time (such as in a movie year).
6: The Retro Action RGB figures should be hitting Toys R Us and “emerging channel accounts (i.e. online retailers) soon. They will not be available here at this time.
Okay, so that is the catch up on releases. To hit a few points fans have brought up and are concerned about:
A: The line is doing great! We have a total of 7 figures coming out this year including 4 variants of the GB boys and 2 new characters (one is Vinz!). Plus a really amazing SDCC item to reveal in April-ish.
B: We do hear all the requests. More Ghosts, more equipment, more proton streams, removable packs, more characters and so on.
There is a lot planned. We do need to spread out key releases and key refreshes to keep the line going strong. We’ve already front loaded the line with the iconic movie 1 versions of each character. With a little time, we’d like to get to most if not all of these requests.
C: There are more re-releases of older figures planned. We won’t offer re-releases every month, but much as we did for Cyber Monday last year, you can expect the main guys to be up for sale again.
D: We know there is a lot of demand of Real GB 6″ scale figures. The catch with that is based on the baseline sale of the 6″ movie style line, the demand just isn’t there (well the vocal online demand is, the sales number are not). GB Classics sells well, but at this time not at the numbers that would justify a 6″ RGB expansion which requires A LOT of new tooling.
We know fans want RG. Personally, I do to. But in the end, it is pretty accepted that the movie style is overall more popular (meaning not just the hardcore fans, the casual fans need to purchase too to keep the line going and for the casual fan the movie is more popular). And if the movie style is not doing the numbers we need to see for an expansion, expanding into a more tooling intensive (and overall less popular) style is not a wise business model. (I am not saying Animated is not popular, just that it is not AS popular as movie style).
Personally I really want RGB toys, especially for the vintage nods we could do. It might be something we can get to in time. Right now we are doing 1-2 newly 100% tool’d figures a year (like Vinz Clortho) and 4 partially tool’d figures in movie style. All of the RGB figs require almost 100% new tools and we just don’t have the resources right now for this (based on sales).
So to wrap up, do keep those suggestions going! We want to deliver product GB fans are going to love and we need your feedback to do that. I will continue to be most available on the “Ask Matty” section of this board. If you feel like GB info is not getting out there, just post a question here and I will try to answer. That is the best way to get direct info answered (but it is not a forum for asking about unreleased figs etc.. do check out the “tips” post before posting!)
See you in New York for Toy Fair! (I love this town!)
Scott
Man I cannot wait for some of these. Thanks to GhostbustersNews.com for posting this up!