It’s Marvel week in the Q&A! DSTChuck answers all your Marvel related questions after the break!

Rob Campbell

The Juggernaut you’ve sculpted for Diamond is near perfect. 9 out of 10. In my opinion it could easily become a 10 and the best MS figure ever produced with very mild tweaking. Have you considered lengthening his currently short quads by say 1/2 an inch to 3/4s of an inch? And lengthening his lower torso by about 1/4 to 1/3 of an inch? Short questions: Have you excellent sculptors or Diamond discussed plans for Silver Surfer, Dr Strange, Vision, Dormammu, classic Thor, Ultron, and other fan faves depicted in all their Bronze Age glory? Thanks -Rob

DSTChuck: Rob, at this point the Juggeranut figure is done, it would not be possible to make even small changes to the sculpt. I think the folks over at Gentle Giant did a fantastic job, but your comments are appreciated. I don’t think any of the ones you listed have really been discussed and I don’t think we’ve ever looked at the Bronze Age characters for Marvel Select.

Andre Lie

hi Art Asylum, want to asked u about marvel select deadpool 1. how height it is? 2. how many and what weapon / acc will include, I hope it’s come with many weapons 3. is it come with incterchangeable head marvel select juggernaut 1. how tall it is? I hope its around 8,5″-9″ because thats was juggernaut actually height 2. is the helmet interchangeable, I already saw the helmet sample, and I think its too small, its should be more big thank you, I’m waiting for the answer from my email sir Art Asylum ‘ve a nice day

DSTChuck:

1. The Deadpool figure will be the same height as the standard male figure in the Marvel Select line- 7”
2. He will come with a pair of Katana swords and a pair of guns.
3. He and Juggernaut will NOT come with interchangeable heads.
4. If you mean the Juggernaut helmet is too small – I am sorry you’re not happy with it.

Eric Hulgan

What happened to the UQS Han Solo Mos Eisley and Luke Tat? All of the stores are canceling preorders and not taking any new preorders for them. Is the line dead? And does this mean that we can forget Darth Vader as well?

DSTChuck: Darth Vader has been canceled. Han and ObiWan will be in stores in September.

James Clements

Are thee any plans on making a Marvel Select Archangel, Apocalypse and Imperial Guard Gladiator action figure.

DSTChuck: Right now none of those are in the planning stages – sorry.

Adrian Crafton

Will you guys ever make Black Panther figure? Since he’s popular again.

DSTChuck: Right now he is not in the plans- sorry.

James White

Hey Chuck, Hows it going? 1.Since you are going to be doing Marvel UQS figures with no sound chips and extra accessories have you thought about doing this with the Star Wars line as well? 2. Speaking of Star Wars UQS. How is Vader coming along? That is the one I have been waiting for. 3. Any plans being tossed around for a UQS Boba Fett?

DSTChuck: I am fine thanks for asking! Yes we have considered it for SW as we;; but it does not seem to be distinct enough from what’s already in the marketplace. I am sorry though the UQS SW line is on hold. The last two to ship will be Han and Obi Wan.

Ashley Wilbanks

So is the Transformers brand officially finished at Art Asylum? I was hoping for more mini busts to add to the collection (not banks). Thanks

DSTChuck: Yes Ashley, the Transformers line is not in production right now- maybe when the third movie gets rolling.

Todd Tedsen

ASK DST QUESTION: Do you remember when toy collecting was full of surprises?. You could walk into a Toys R US or Wal-Mart or target and find a brand new action figure you had no idea was coming - those days are long gone. With the overflow of information available to consumers via the internet, most collector’s are seeing prototypes, production art, previews and pre-orders of upcoming products often up to a full year before that product ever becomes available at a retail level. The problem is that now we can see your scheduled product so far in advance, we are given the chance not only to get excited to purchase from you, but in many cases to actually pre-order and often even pre-pay for the products from our local or online retailers, only to find that after months of revised (postponed) release dates we are told that products are “delayed indefinitely”, and sometimes even cancelled permanently. I am assuming that a certain amount of market research is done to determine the popularity and projected sales numbers for a given character long before any specific action figure is developed into photo-ready prototype form. I have no doubt the amount of time and energy involved in sculpting and painting a prototype figure is extremely costly, and is not the sort of investment you would walk away from for no reason. That being the case, the only reason you would cancel sending a product into production and releasing it into the market would be if you did not recieve enough orders from your retailers to make the costs of production worthwhile. I would then assume that somewhere in your accounting department there is a formula that essentially determines the cost/benefit ratio of manufacturing and releasing a particular product. The idea there being that you must sell a minimum of X units at Y price point in order to make enough of a profit margin to make the investment of developing and manufacturing a given product worthwhile. This makes perfect sense, as it would be bad business for you to make very little (or worse yet, negative) profit on your investment, and doing so would quickly drive your business into the ground. What I’m wondering is, what’s the benefit to keeping that “cut off number” hidden from the consumers & retailers, the ones who have the power to affect the market by purchasing more of your product? Clearly you know in advance what the minimum number of units is that you will need to sell long before you go into production, and you are releasing pre-order information via the Previews catalog knowing full well how many orders you will need in order to keep an item from being cancelled. Is there any specific reason you could not simply make an announcement along the lines of “We are planning to release this item in July 2011, at which point we need to have recieved orders for at least 250,000 pieces or the line will not be produced.” (the dates and numbers here are just an example, of course) This could then be accompanied by a counter on the webpage that shows how many have been ordered, and how many more need to be ordered in order to meet the production minimum. This way w! e as collector’s could see what the numbers really are and understand just how close (or far) we are from standing a real chance at getting the product. It seems like doing something like this might help make those collectors who send you angry emails about you cancelling their long anticipated product take notice that when you say things like “our research indicates the market simply won’t support that product at this time” that you have the cold hard numbers to back it up. I’d love to know more about this process, any insight would be great, thanks! -Todd

DSTChuck: Todd, WOW thanks for the thoughts and well thought out feedback. Much of what you say is VERY correct. Some of your guesses are a little of but much of what you say is correct. Before we design, sculpt or do anything with a project we have a number the think we need to hit to make it viable. Once we get the project over to the factory we have an exact number. We really don’t like to give out what a break even number for us is because its kind of a trade secret. We don’t want every other company knowing our production runs, it can out us at a disadvantage down the road. The other issue is most of our orders come in retail from the sales department in one big batch. If we end up short after that, they need to go back and see if they can get retail to up their orders or find a new buyer. At that time most retailers have taken a gauge from their customers or based on experience have decided what they need. It would take something pretty big in most cases to get them to change their minds and up their orders. DST does not need a big number to go into production on most projects, I think you would be shocked how lwo that number is if you knew it. Thanks for the ideas and thoughts.

David (last name withheld)

I’m extremely disappointed to hear about yet another long delay of the bttf 3 car. Your company seems to not care about customer satisfaction as it continues to put out sub par products that are overpriced! I remember first hearing about how the bttf cars would have the dmc marks, be 1/14th scale, and be out early summer. Instead the end result was a late car without markings,in 1/15th scale, confusing packaging with both cars having the bttf2 logos, and an insane price of 40 dollars. Not to mention mine had a cracked windshield, ill fitted hood , and sloppy paint. I only bought mine as a collector so i could beef up my bttf collection, but I did not expect such POOR quality control from your factories. And i’m not the only one. Heck you could’ve cut the price in half to be fair and stil have made a profit. This stuff is made in china for like 10 cents a piece! Plus it’s obvious that it is molded straight from sun stars:( Instead of looking at past products made by other companies to see what you should improve you merely made a cheap copy….in plastic. This reminds me of the Iron man 2 figures. Really! Diamond couldn’t have painted the eyes and fixed the globby paint? Even after you guys realize these big mistakes the price isn’t altered. And you never have intentions of fixing them!! Do you honestly expect people to pay 20 dollars for those cheap figures when there are so many other companies making stuff? It’s unfortunate because you produce such cool looking prototypes yet none of your products resemble them, nor meet up to fans’ standards. Whether it’s licensing issues, overlooked paint specs, and or quality control there is no excuse.So many of us are struggling with holding jobs yet Diamond seems to almost get away with releasing crap product . I don’t even want this to be in the q&a but would appreciate it if you could pass this along to the Diamond people. It’s the least us collectors deserve.

DSTChuck: David, I am sorry you are so displeased with DST as a company, I assure you no one is sitting here trsiting our hands trying to think of how we can make David’s life miserable. If something that is suppose to bring joy to you makes you so unhappy I am sorry to say maybe you should not collect DST items.

I will try and turn your statements into questions and address them as best I can, assuming that is what you wanted when you sent this email.

1. I am very sorry about the delay in producing the BTTF3 car. When orders came in for this car they were lower than we expected so we had to wait to get more orders for the BTTF2 car and combine them.
2. We were asked to remove the DMC logos and marks by the trademark owner, seems our time machine looked too much like the car to be allowable. Sorry for the change.
3. The perceived change in scale was a typo that appeared in one ad and for that we apologize. The size of the car detailed in the ad was accurate to the piece.
4. We do not have the rights to the BTTF1 logo so used the logo from the second movie which of course features both versions of the car and the car is packed in a full window box so I am sure a detail oriented collector like yourself could see the difference simply by looking at the item.
5. I assure you the retail price is very fair, based on our royalty, design and production cost, and no we would not make a profit at half the price. If you do not feel the retail price DST sets its items at is fair then they just are not the items for you. The detail and quality of the piece go hand and hand with the price.
6. If you have a broken windshield then please return it to your retailer or DST for a replacement, there is no reason you should keep a damaged item.
7. I am not sure I can turn any of the rest into a question so I will just say we do the best we can and we do make mistakes from time to time and sometimes we can fix them and sometimes we can’t. What goes on here or at the factory no one outside of us knows. So it’s not really fair to put words or ideas in anyone’s mouth. That’s your right of course to think that- but it’s not realistic to think the only purpose we serve is to aggravate you or disappoint you. If you are so frustrated by all we do, then we’re sorry to lose you as a customer but maybe it’s better for you. Maybe you should find something to spend your time and money on that provides you joy. IF you choose to stick with us, we’ll do all we can to make better products and do what we can to fix mistakes we make. Good luck David!