SDCC 2009 Screw ups - Runner Up, Mattel

By our reckoning, Mattel Comic-con exclusives were the second most in demand of the event behind DC Direct’s Green Lantern 5-figure set (which also suffered major foul ups).

To their credit, at least Mattel learned a valuable lesson from last year’s show and moved the sale of their exclusives out of their show booth and over to a separate sale booth. However, they greatly underestimated the crush of the crowds everyday that wanted to buy their merchandise. The booth and the aisles all around it were a zoo from the moment the door opened on preview night. From the start, every Mattel employee told everyone that was turned away daily the same lie…”not to worry, we have rationed out new inventory to arrive everyday of the show. So you’ll have plenty of opportunity to come back and try again.”

It was complete bullshit or they simply changed their minds on Friday and decided to sell through everything they had. By Thursday morning they had sold out of the He-Man artbook. By the end of Friday, they had completely sold out of several of the most in demand figure exclusives including Wonder Twins sets with Gleek, from the Masters of the Universe they had sold the ’09 He-Ro exclusive along with He-Man, Beast Man and Skeletor. Aside from their purchasing limit of two copies per customer of the He-Man book, they never limited the number of toy exclusives one could buy.

We know the Mattel staff couldn’t give a rip but how about some consideration for the poor bastards that could only purchase single day tickets to the con? If one could only attend the show on a Saturday or Sunday and Mattel kept telling people stock would be there but lied about it, that’s a screw job. We call the Mattel Toy Shop or Matty Shop or whatever the hell they call themselves, the second biggest f*ck ups of the 2009 Comic-con.

Hey Mattel, next year, shop limit should be 2 figures per person, per day. Weeds out the scalpers in line loading up. Second, figure out how to reprint the He-Man book. Comic Book companies do this all the time. Add new content, change the cover, add a figure as a bonus, whatever, but figure it out.

And by the way, as we write this post, we noticed MattyCollector.com still has not listed any of the Mattel SDCC exclusives (left over) on it's site as promised. In comparison, the Hasbro Toy Shop has had it's con exclusives up for sale since the Monday after the show ended.