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SDCC14: Q&A With Marvel Hasbro Team
We Have The Questions, The Hasbro Marvel Teams Has The Answers...
We had the opportunity to speak to Hasbro's Marvel Design team - Laura Guilbault, Bobby Vala and Dwight Stahl - at this year's Comic-Con to discuss all things from the House of M. Read on!
FIGURES.COM: We really like the idea of meshing the Marvel movies with the comic figures in one Legends assortment. This was a great idea as retailers tend to focus heavily on media-based products when choosing what to place in their store aisles. This is a great strategy to get those fan-demanded comic Legends figures out there. Speaking of fan-demanded characters, can you offer any insight on the illusive Blade action figure that never saw release? Is there any chance of getting this figure out sooner than later as a retailer exclusive or other opportunities you have considered?
HASBRO: We are looking into it. Blade is a little bit tougher because he doesn't fall into any of those key marketable buckets for the recent Marvel movies. We don't have any plans at this time but Marvel is going a little bit more into that universe it seems with the upcoming NetFlix TV series so depending on how that performs we may be able to fit him into an assortment in the future but that is yet to be seen. For now we are sticking to the movie selections that marketing has set with the movie tie-ins because they are paying us huge dividends right now.
FIGURES.COM: Yeah that makes sense because the movie tie-in strategy is working out great and offers a great opportunity for those core Marvel Legends fans to pick up the comic characters if they don't care for the movie based figures. But for those who want to complete the build-a-figure, they will need to buy the entire assortment so that is very smart from a marketing standpoint.
FIGURES.COM: When it comes to choosing what build-a-figure to include in an assortment, is it primarily determined depending on the set budget for molds, tooling, deco shots etc that is set for that assortment? Do all of these particulars come into play when deciding the scale of the build-a-figure?
HASBRO: Yeah, I would say that the biggest challenge we have right now is the package size. The package we have out there now is very beautiful but it's a little tighter in scale in comparison to we've had in past years and that is one of our biggest limitations right now, as well as the amount of figures we have in a case pack. We have a limit of eight figures in a wave so basically we need to include an action figure that requires no more than eight pieces. For example we couldn't do a Fing Fang Foom in eight pieces any more and you would get half a dragon nowadays if your lucky. We basically sit down and discuss whats important in comics, whats important in the upcoming films and where can we do either classic versions of said characters or a direct tie into their movie counterparts.
FIGURES.COM: So I guess oversized characters are out of the question since the build-a-figure pieces won't fit in today's smaller legends package?
HASBRO: Well, there would not be that limitation if it were one piece though. We are looking into some larger -scaled figures as stand-alone releases like Mandroid and we have some other big guys that you will see in 2015.
FIGURES.COM: So you will be adding a new larger scale figure SKU to the Legends assortment next year?
HASBRO: Not really but as you can see we have some upcoming Legends exclusives on display in the cases which will be coming out and we haven't had exclusives for this line in quite a long time. So while we can't give you a dragon in the build-a-figure waves theres no reason why we couldn't give you a dragon as a stand-alone single item somehow.
FIGURES.COM: Yeah, for example we had the larger figure SKU in the Marvel Universe line years back which made it possible to release the awesome oversized Galactus and Sentinel figures. So it would be really cool to see a new selection of larger characters for Legends which are in scale to the 6" figure line.
HASBRO: Yeah, it seems like your kind of reading our minds on this one! "laughs"
FIGURES.COM: Yeah well I've been collecting for over 20 years and I know what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to the process of making the figures. Its very easy for people to lay blame on the company because their favorite figure doesn't get made or what not but you got to sit back and look at the big picture you know.
HASBRO: It's ok, design always lays blame on the marketing team! "laughs"
FIGURES: The Marvel Universe toy line is a very robust line and there was not limits to what could be achieved in the line however, why the drastic change in packaging design? The Marvel Universe card art was very cool both visually and physically. You had the really cool printed inserts and comic art which really enhanced the overall collect-ability of the line. Now we have a very toned down and smaller package which has very little to no package art to showcase and enhance the character.
HASBRO: Well we certainly feel like the Infinite series line felt a little bit more premium and we wanted to streamline it a bit. We still have the great back of pack photography which we plan on continuing with. We certainly understand about the great art work that we saw in the Universe line and we certainly will bringing in some of that great art specifically on the Legends line for now. We have some great artwork planned for the Marvel lines.
FIGURES.COM: Yeah because I'm sure that the Infinite series package design will not have a major appeal to mint-on-card collectors.
HASBRO: Yeah, we understand and we have plans to enhance the line.
FIGURES.COM: Can you explain why the mid torso articulation has been removed from the upcoming figures in the 3.75" line? For example, Collectors are finally getting Beast but will be unable to place the mutant in dynamic poses that are iconic to the character. Was this primarily a strategy to avoid increasing the price of the figures due to rising costs of materials?
HASBRO: Well in 2015 we are coming out with several brand new sculpts which will be using as new base bodies throughout the line and into the future. This will be a great way for us to offer new characters to fans that were not possible before. You will still see mid torso articulation on future figures like our upcoming Sandman which utilizes the existing Luke Cage body.
We would like to thank Laura Guilbault, Bobby Vala and Dwight Stahl from the Hasbro Marvel team for setting the time aside during amid the havoc of this year's Comic-Con to answer our questions.
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