Post by The Hegemon on Jan 7, 2023 5:09:09 GMT
Visiting my local Walmart in the days before Christmas, I was pleasantly surprised to see that nearly their entire stock of Mega was sold out. This is particularly encouraging because I expected those sets to sit on the shelf untouched for months before finally landing on the clearance rack.
The only sets still remaining at that time were a single copy of a Bulbasaur set and some kind of windmill set whose name escapes me at the moment.
My town isn't a hotbed of Mega fandom, so this really threw me for a loop and gives me a bit of hope for the months ahead.
Even cooler, however, is something I noticed in the windmill set. Mega seems to be incorporating more Technic-style gearing into its lower-ticket sets, and this might be the best decision they've made in years. For too long Mattel (and Mega before them) have invested in ill-considered "stunt stick" gimmicks and the like, that seriously limit playability by effectively limiting a figure or vehicle to a very narrow range of "action" possibilities while adding little or no customizability. I firmly believe that the Legends of King Arthur line would have done better if the knights weren't hobbled in this way, and do any of you recall the XTreme Sports reboot a few years back? And that awful "electronic" Mantis model? Overpriced with almost no play value. Just imagine what they could do with integrated gearing in a set like that!
Granted, we've seen limited use of gearing in past sets, like the Leopard tank and a few others, but with the introduction of large sets like the Pikachu display, they may finally be breathing some much-needed life into the brand.
With this evolution toward gear integration, they're putting creativity back in the hands of the builders, rather than handing them a stick and saying "this is how you will be creative." The catalog of gear elements is quite small, especially compared with Lego and its dozens of iterations, but I like the possibilities.
I have no idea if they're actually moving in that direction, and it's still entirely possible to foul it up, but I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that they have at long last realized a way forward with a brand that seems largely to have stagnated in the past few years.
The only sets still remaining at that time were a single copy of a Bulbasaur set and some kind of windmill set whose name escapes me at the moment.
My town isn't a hotbed of Mega fandom, so this really threw me for a loop and gives me a bit of hope for the months ahead.
Even cooler, however, is something I noticed in the windmill set. Mega seems to be incorporating more Technic-style gearing into its lower-ticket sets, and this might be the best decision they've made in years. For too long Mattel (and Mega before them) have invested in ill-considered "stunt stick" gimmicks and the like, that seriously limit playability by effectively limiting a figure or vehicle to a very narrow range of "action" possibilities while adding little or no customizability. I firmly believe that the Legends of King Arthur line would have done better if the knights weren't hobbled in this way, and do any of you recall the XTreme Sports reboot a few years back? And that awful "electronic" Mantis model? Overpriced with almost no play value. Just imagine what they could do with integrated gearing in a set like that!
Granted, we've seen limited use of gearing in past sets, like the Leopard tank and a few others, but with the introduction of large sets like the Pikachu display, they may finally be breathing some much-needed life into the brand.
With this evolution toward gear integration, they're putting creativity back in the hands of the builders, rather than handing them a stick and saying "this is how you will be creative." The catalog of gear elements is quite small, especially compared with Lego and its dozens of iterations, but I like the possibilities.
I have no idea if they're actually moving in that direction, and it's still entirely possible to foul it up, but I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that they have at long last realized a way forward with a brand that seems largely to have stagnated in the past few years.