I'm starting to wonder if Mattel is making more money off of filing losses on insurance for underperformed products than actually when they have a hit product. Even as popular as Monster High is with girls, they had minimal showing and still haven't been on the ball when it comes to what's on the shelf. I just don't know about Mattel as a company anymore.

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A fellow collector summed it up best:



I collected Max Steel back in the day and started collecting again in 2007 when the Latin American stuff popped up on Ebay. As you can see from my other posting, I have a pretty sizable collection. So I'm pretty pissed off at this.

I don't thing you guys realize how successful Max Steel in in the South American market. Let me show you some stuff currently on Ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Max-SteelN-Tek- ... 43b821bec6

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Max-Steel-Colos ... 460c500e2e

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Max-Steel-Mega- ... 460c399fe5

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Max-Steel-Steal ... 43b821cd54

The first item is a Commander Center for 1/6 scale figures. This was released in December of 2012.

Item number 2 is a 20" tall battle armor that is on it's third repaint.

Item 3 is a 26" tall version of a Max Steel villain called Elementor.

BTW, the reason I know how big those items are is because I have the first version of each:


I really don't understand Mattel's reasoning here. The fact that such huge items were released seems to show how successful this line is. Why would Mattel abandon that to take a huge step back in quality?

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The cartoon better be awesome if they expect it to move that junk
http://toynewsi.com/news.php?catid=241&itemid=20032


So 5 PoA means fully poseable these days? Oi...

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If kids will like them, I guess good for Mattel. I don't like them. Really that's a good thing these days. I really don't need more things I want to buy... although that gray thing looks like it could be turned into an awesome Renegades bio-viper.

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What gray thing?

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It's gray to me. The thing in the picture jcast posted. I guess the image isn't showing for you?

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Oh, that.

I thought you meant the new, smaller stuff shown at ToyFair.
Because the big monster is 26" tall. Not exactly Joe-compatible.

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Yeah that would be a little much, haha. Still a neat layout to give a guideline of constructing something from more compatible parts.

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As long as Barbie and Hot Wheels remain the juggernauts they are, Mattel can afford to not care about anything more than mediocre (if you can call it that) product for anything else.

*Checks in to see if my assigned motto is still the only sane response to what they're doing, finds it is*

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Yeah, seriously. Mattel's non-DCIH stuff was already bad enough as it was without throwing in that horrible "preposed knees" thing on the Max figure!

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Hmmm... Looks like Mattel has made some 12" figures in the new style. They don't look bad, but I bet I won't see them here:

http://maxsteelreboot.blogspot.mx/2013/02/llegan-tiendas-las-figuras-max-steel.html

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I like the character design. Shame the smaller figures are such utter crap.

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