Q & A Round 4! Options

[Dutch-Napalm]

Answers expected Sept 18th?

[Airborne Rigger]

Sorry for the delay but I'm out of town and I passed out early last night.



1. Why do we keep getting the same characters over and over? We are getting Snow Job again and 3 different Dukes in the first 3 waves of 2010. Why can't we get the other Joes that have yet to see a figure like Low-Light, Lifeline, Iceberg, Blizzard, or a revised Tunnel Rat that didn't have closed eyes? One of the reasons why the Sighma 6 line failed, was there were too many Dukes, Snake Eyes', and Storm Shadows repainted and redone every wave, and not enough new blood. Can we get more new characters added to the line up instead of too many of the same person?

We are constantly trying to balance between three audiences 1) Kids who
are interested in the fantasy and want many versions of their favorite
characters from the movie 2) Fans from the 80's who may or may not have
purchased the 25th Anniversary and are interested in characters (i.e. Wild
Bill) who were not in the movie, but part of the 80's and 3) Our
collectors who know the line extremely well and are interested in
characters that have not been done in the past few years. We are doing
out best to deliver to all three of these segments and you will see many
characters coming out over the next year.

2. There have been some growing concerns with the community at the lack of proper representation with certain iconic characters; either with wrong characterization, lack of unique heads, or needless race or gender changes. For example, at the con we were told a movie Reactive Armor Breaker figure wasn't planned when everyone else in the armor was made, Dial-Tone was turned into a woman, the upcoming jungle expert Recondo has no jungle camouflage and is bald, and Repeater; who was formerly Caucasian (both in prior figure and the new filecard art) is now another bald, African-American heavy machine gunner in the same vein as Roadblock and pre-movie Heavy Duty. Furthermore, we keep seeing the same heads being used for several different characters. Grand Slam shares the Flash and Ace heads, but he has never, ever been given his own unique face in the entire history of the 3 3/4" line. Gung-Ho’s head is also used for Cutter and Leatherneck, and there are more. Finally, we’re seeing different file names given to different people. Airborne and Air Raid have the same real names. Speed Metal has Heavy Metal’s file name instead of Rampage, but Rampage was supposed to be Heavy Metal. Yes, we understand some names can’t be used due to trademark or copyright issues, but these could have been new characters with new names, instead of trying to assign the same person several different codenames. Seeing familiar characters return and others updated are certainly welcomed, but there needs to be a continuity based around that character to make it work. Dial-Tone as a woman has no history, and therefore is not Dial-Tone. Roadblock-clone Repeater is not Repeater, and thus he has no history. He could have been Hardball instead, and no one would have complained. In the upcoming waves, can we please see new heads for each new character, and greater attention paid to adhering to the spirit of classic characters if they are to be updated?


As far as the sharing of heads goes, throughout the history of Joe, the
sharing of heads has not been uncommon. Sometimes the limitations of
schedule and budget require the sharing of certain tools to help create
the most intriguing figures possible. As to your questions about the
characters...The line has evolved over the years and with it, it's
characters have evolved as well. The changes to the characters you have
mentioned were certainly not made with any intent to disappoint the
collector community. The Rise of Cobra verse has simply given us a new
universe where we can re-envision classic characters in a way that is more
relevant to a new generation of kids.


3. DVD Battles pack #5, by and large, never made it into the hands of collectors. Please, no assurances that it eventually will. Not unless there's a plan to do an exclusive run of the set to sell as an HTS or GIJCC exclusive at any rate. At this point, retailers are too busy with the movie line, to worry about a subset that they were done with months ago. So, would it be possible to simply reissue Alpine with the last piece of the MASS Device as part of the movie line? Perhaps repaint Alpine to fit into one of next year's environmental themes, and give him the MASS piece as an accessory in place of the usual oversized missile launcher? Or even as part of a newer TRU battle pack next year? How about it?


This is not part of the current plan, but should be suggested to the
Collectors' Club as a potential JoeCon item.


EDIT(9/22/09): Question #2 now has an answer!

[Werecat]

Pending answer?!

[Airborne Rigger]

Pending answer?!

Yep, that's all I got! If they don't actually get an answer back to me, they better give my 4 next go around!

[Werecat]

Oh no, we're gonna get a reply to that!

[Scrap Iron]

Wow, one of my questions finally makes the cut, and the answer we get is basically Hasbro passing the buck. It's not like I expected them to reply: "What a great idea, we'll get on that right away!" But I hoped at least for some acknowledgement that they're aware of the problem and are looking into ways to correct it. Instead we get: "Go ask the club." (Sigh)

This post has been edited by Scrap Iron: Sep 20 2009, 07:14 AM

[Count Blacktron]

"PENDING ANSWER"?

So, who at Hasbro is cleaning out their desk on Monday, and will the answer come then, or can I expect the answer by Friday when the new employee has reviewed all the data to give answer for it?

[Airborne Rigger]

I was supposed to have an answer to #2 by today but nada! If I don't get an answer by noon tomorrow, I'm emailing them again and requesting an answer! I'm pretty sure another site got the "Pending Answer" response as well but I can't remember which one to see if they actually got a response.

[Zartans Banker]

www.actionfigurepics.com got on Friday 09/18/2009 a question asked as follows:

1. Would it be possible to get pictures from the JoeCon slide shows? A lot of the pictures of the stuff from the JoeCon slide shows are hard to see and it be great if we could see nice quality versions of what was shown. They do this with Hasbro Star Wars con presentations, why not with Joe as well?

The answer they got was that they had to ask legal. They then got an update that said:

We really enjoy giving GI Joe fans who attend the conventions a sneak peek of the upcoming line at forums such as JoeCon, ComicCon and Toy Fair, however we prefer to distribute images when they more accurately reflect final production.


I really hope we can get an answer. It seems that this round there were a lot of we will get back to you answers and or clever answers that amount to nothing.

[Airborne Rigger]

Answer to #2 has been edited into the post with the Q & A's!

[Scrap Iron]

Hmmm... You'll forgive me if I don't see how changing the race or sex of certain characters makes them "more relevant to a new generation of kids." It would be different if this was to correct a lack of minority or female characters in the Joe mythos, but -- to use the examples in the question -- Hasbro is skipping over several existing African American and female characters in favor changing Repeater and Dialtone around.

Without any new parts, and perhaps some minor paint changes, Repeater could have just as easily been Hardball and Dialtone could have been Firewall.

[Mongoose]

Hmmm... You'll forgive me if I don't see how changing the race or sex of certain characters makes them "more relevant to a new generation of kids." It would be different if this was to correct a lack of minority or female characters in the Joe mythos, but -- to use the examples in the question -- Hasbro is skipping over several existing African American and female characters in favor changing Repeater and Dialtone around.

Without any new parts, and perhaps some minor paint changes, Repeater could have just as easily been Hardball and Dialtone could have been Firewall.

Yeah, Hasbro's answer doesn't make any sense.

[Werecat]

Without any new parts, and perhaps some minor paint changes, Repeater could have just as easily been Hardball and Dialtone could have been Firewall.

Exactly!

If I called for a re-envisioned Roadblock who was now Asian, or a new Snake Eyes that could talk, I'd be laughed out of the room.

[exile]

Cop out city. Thats all there is to say about that!

[JeepJedi]

Lame!



This post has been edited by JeepJedi: Sep 29 2009, 09:18 PM