Well, they've screwed themselves by moving to (essentially) online-only sales for their larger and more in-demand sets. They clog the shelves with stuff that might be described as "of miminal interest," so that customers form their impressions based on the 68 copies of Bulbasaur that they see at Walmart.
It's as if Mattel is saying "trust us, this $300 set is totally worth it, even though you can't really touch it or heft the box or get a good look at it. That sort of customer-focused marketing isn't our style; if that's what you want, then you should buy Lego."
Their target market seems to be resellers, who happily snap up these hard-to-find sets and then offer them up at twice MSRP.
I see literally no upside to this marketing scheme, and it's been killing them slowly for years.
For me i thoght a lot of stupid ppl working at Mattel, messing distribution up for years now. A lot bad and wrong decitions and all. Not only at Mega, take the Masters of the Universe franchise. Collectors club to order figures or expensive exclusive sets. This is goin on for years and nothing changes.
Basicly the Origins figures are so bad in quality, they even left out the original action features.
Some adult collectors buy it, but after that the trash stays in stock and you see discounts. I mean Origins Castle Grayskull at 35€ at set the retailprice was a lot more. You see a lot that most items do not sell.
Why is that so? I guess the items are not bought by kids anymore and so they are to high priced for the quality you get.
Take the Mega Castle Grayskull, a great set to build and to play with for Kids and great for collectors, but what kid can spend 300$ on such a kit? Even 100$ is a lot for kids. Some others are 50-70$ too. What do i get for that money?
Given the fact Mega stuff is cool, but when i compare the Mattel Masters origins figures to the Palisades Muppet figures, the figures Mattel offers are a joke and cost more.
While collectors still buy this crap, support this exclusive shit and even buy high priced from scalpers, nothing will change.
I was told Mattel is just to big and it seems to complicated to change something. And yes you can see it everywhere how bad Mattel handles things. High pricing, distribution, support, online services, ordering and so on.
All you can do is to join the dark side and take advantage of the collectors to have some money to pay for the items you want.
For me i see i offer a service, import Mega stuff not released in Germany and sell here for more.
I have to because importing is expensive, high shipping costs plus tax and dutys.
But this works more for the Masters and big hot wheels line. The thing is with thouse decitions Mattel makes they start to drive collectors away. I know a lot ppl that stopped collecting the Masters line because of the bad distribution and high scalpers prices.
But yeah i cant change its and Mattel wont, so all you can do take advantage of it, what a lot ppl do in big scale.
Take the Battle for Eternia 2 kit with 6 figures. I ordered 2 packs for me at amazon germany and got em. Others did order a lot more anbd after Mattel decided to stop production for whatever stupid reason the kits where sold at 300€ on Ebay while amazon did sell em for 25€.
They are still offered at 60€ because Amazon gotten some more stock but was sold out in some Minutes.
While 60€ could be still ok for 6 figures its still way more the retail was.
So yeah why care fo it anymore, its only sad, that Mega could do much better without Mattel.
