Craig Drobis is the SVP of Marketing for boys action figures and collectors for Jakks Pacific. Craig will be answering your questions for all Ask Jakks submissions. ToyHypeUSA will be sending him monthly questions and we will have your answers back on or around the beginning of each month. Send us your questions to [email protected] by July 31st.
1. Will you ever make a 5inch Pitt / dark Pitt from kid icarus?
There are no current plans for the Kid Icarus characters. We have been staying with the core franchises and frankly Nintendo has so many great games coming out in the near future that there are plenty of great characters for us to turn into figures.
2. Will we see anymore deluxe figures? I haven’t seen any since wind waker gannon and the metriod… Maybe ridley or mother brain from metriod?
The idea behind the larger figures was to make some of the bigger characters, as they would be in scale in the game with either our 4” scale or 2.5” scale figures. I think as standalone items, the connection wasn’t necessarily made as intended and as a result the sales weren’t very strong. We do like the idea to make the in game scale connection for those that appreciate it. We are working on some diorama multipacks using the figures we do have to see if positioning them better will help them sell better and make it easier for us to extend the offering in the future. More to come on that.
3. I got the new Wonder Woman big fig with cloak based on the movie. I have to say the sculpt it beautiful and the best representation of Gal Gadots Wonder Woman so far. Are there supposed to be more different versions of the figure? I heard that a shield and sword version would be available while the cloak version is a Wal Mart exclusive?
We really appreciate the compliment and our design team takes great pride in using our oversized scale to get as many of the finer details of a head sculpt in there as we can while keeping the product at a reasonable price. We spent a lot of time with our partners at Warner Brothers making sure we had a much more improved sculpt than we had for the BvS version of Wonder Woman. If all goes as planned, we will talk about that process on our Comic Con panel. As for your question, the cloak version of WW is exclusive to Walmart and is available now for anyone who has missed it. Our next version will be released in the Justice League line at the end of the year.
4. I saw that BigBigToyStore have the DC Tribute big figs for pre-order coming in July. I thought the DC Tribute series was an Amazon.com exclusive. Has this changed or BBTS just stocked up from Amazon?
Yes, after the initial introduction on Amazon, we have moved some of the inventory to other accounts with BBTS being one of them. The limited edition run is the same (no new production was made). We just wanted to have the product available in more places where the fans of these editions shop.
5. Any chances that we will see new Power Rangers big figs? Would like to see Might Morphin Power Rangers big figs. We can start with 2 figures and it sales are good maybe we can get a full team eventually?
When we first did the MegaForce Rangers a few years ago, they did not sell as well as we hoped. We had a lot more success with the Power Rangers Movie product so that is causing us to re-evaluate the opportunity. If we were to do it, it would likely be to go back to Mighty Morphin, but at this point there are no plans to make additional Power Rangers Big Figs.