Spotted Online – The Fwoosh on Mattel and Pre-Orders

Earlier this month I wrote my thoughts on why Mattel’s Matty Collector website should be using the Kickstarter site to judge fan demand for figures and eliminate a lot of the risk of their Masters of the Universe Classics action figure series. I truly believe that Mattel would find success with Kickstarter and acquire new/old fans.

Well, there’s another option they could choose — simple pre-orders — and Samuron at The Fwoosh outlines why they should take pre-orders . . . and why they won’t. Worth a read, but there’s one point under the “won’t” category that I want to touch on. Especially since it helps illustrate how Kickstarter could help Mattel out.

2) Mattel’s production facilities have minimums. Toy Guru has also said that if quantities fall below certain minimums, there’s a premium on the the production costs.

This is not at all unusual. At the office we deal with the same sort of factory minimums, and even then a lot of times the true minimum is dictated more by tooling and setup costs than it is the factory’s unwillingness to produce X number of units (where X is their minimum; every factory and type of product has a different minimum and I cannot even guess at Mattel’s minimums).

Kickstarter, fortunately, does not take anyone’s money unless the goal is met. And the project owner sets the goal. So if Mattel’s factory has a minimum (which I completely believe they do) then all Mattel has to do is set the Kickstarter goal so that they must meet the factory minimum. They could do something similar with a pre-order system they run — tell fans upfront that unless Y orders is met the project will be cancelled — but after the problems they have running their website I think Mattel would be better off using a proven website rather than trying to create their own system from scratch.

The entire article at The Fwoosh — MattyCollector Pre-Orders – Why Mattel Should Bite the Bullet, and Why They Won’t — is definitely worth a read. And if you agree that Mattel should try something — either a basic pre-order system or Kickstarter — then speak up. Post a comment here. Post a comment at The Fwoosh. At the Matty Collector site. Twitter. Anywhere that Mattel will see it. You never know, Mattel may just explore options beyond their failing subscriptions model.

Related articles

• Masters of the Universe Classics Subscriptions and the Four Horsemen (battlegrip.com)
• Masters of the Universe Classics Series in “Danger?” (battlegrip.com)
• Castle Grayskullman: Presentation is Everything (battlegrip.com)