April 2008 - Every couple of weeks, Mattel will answer three questions per web site about their various product lines. Here are the answers for the past few rounds:
1. With the evolution of THE BATMAN cartoon into THE BRAVE & THE BOLD cartoon, will the action figure line evolve into B&B as well?
Answer: This depends on many factors but we do hope retailers will be interested in a Brave and the Bold animated line. It certainly sounds like the fans would be interested.
2. About Mattel's PIXAR Cars toys... At San Diego Comic-Con last year, a huge variety of new Piston Cup Racer die-cast cars was shown. To date, only a handful of these Cars have been released at retail. Are there plans to release all of them to retail? In particular, when will the Apple car be available?
Answer: This set will be available on Hotwheelscollector.com in May. It will indeed include the Apple Car.
3. Will the summer convention-exclusive Lobo figure come with his motorcycle, or will it be just the figure?
Answer: We will have details about our summer convention exclusives at the NY CC on April 19th. Mattel has not announced a "Lobo" figure or anyone else at this point.
4. Will the upcoming JLU exclusives being released as 3 and 6 packs, will essential accessories be included? It was implied in ToyFare that "Bug" in the New Gods 6pack would have his shield, but what about other characters? (For instance, a possible re-release of: Green Arrow WITH BOW, StarGirl or Blue Devil WITH STAFF, or Booster Gold WITH SKEETS! or any more of the Green Lantern characters WITH LANTERN.) Also, what are the chances of seeing some of the "more rare" characters being re-released? For example: Volcana, StarGirl, Parasite, Aquaman (with TWO HANDS, no hook), Shade, Starman, Aztek, Etrigan, THE RAY and "Tracksuit Shayera"/HawkGirl, among others?
Answer: JLU figure will get accessories when tooling costs and logistics allow. Our goal is to provide accessories where appropriate. Some of the figures you mentioned have been slotted in for both 2008 and 2009 in order to give more fans access to harder to find figures. We can confirm that the Ray and tracksuit Hawkgirl in yellow will not be re-released because they were Comic Con exclusives.
5. Would you do Barry Allen as a variant to Wally West, when you do them, or by himself?
Answer: When we do the Flash, we would not make Wally and Barry variants of each other. Both versions of the scarlet speedster are big enough characters to deserve their own figure. Zoom on the other hand might be a good variant...
