What's New for Ghostbusters?

[JeffSaylor]

Mattel chimes in on a few details...

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Mattel reveals on their Matty Collector forum a few details regarding their exclusive Ghostbusters action figures. They state:

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.

Regarding a line of animated figures devoted to the Real Ghostbusters, Mattel had this to say:

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).

Source: forums.mattycollector.com

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