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 June 5th.
After a brief hiatus, we have readers submissions for the months of March and April of 2018, making this a double edition. All the answers are below.
Jakks Pacific products can be ordered on Entertainment Earth, BigBadToyStore and Amazon.com
1. JakksPacific I bet you’re still under the embargo, but since you’re having a Q&A I thought I’d ask. Will you be releasing a Aquaman Black Manta Mera & Ocean Master BigFigs to coincide with the Warner Brothers film this fall?
We are still under embargo, but I will say that these figures are not included in the offering. We will have some announcements for Big Figs as a whole coming up soon for the Fall releases.
2. We have seen recent crowdsourcing campaigns to develop or meet demand for toy collector pieces. I share the great interest of my fellow online group members in Star Wars Big Figs and rue that Convention Exclusives aren’t always practical for me to procure. I live in Canada where even store stock Big Figs are often difficult to come by. Personally, I would be prepared to pay a convention-like premium (i.e. $49.99 USD + shipping) if we had the opportunity to fund an array of figures such as an ESB Snowtrooper, IG-88, ROTJ Imperial Guard, EpII Clone Trooper, ANH Princess Leia, Mouse Droid, Imperial Probe Droid, General Greivous, McQuarrie concept figures, etc. Is Jakks in a position to develop such a program? Thanks for your consideration
We have been closely watching what some of the other companies are doing because we do hope there is a business model there that can work for Jakks. Like you, we are fans and there are lots of characters and executions we would love to do in a Big Figs scale where the size of the scale can truly bring a character to life in a different way. I have a model of a 20 inch tall Samus from Nintendo’s Metroid which has metallic paint. I always know a big Nintendo fan by the reaction when they see it. We haven’t been able to make that available beyond my office. We are always trying to find ways to bring the characters to life for more fans. This may be an avenue but unfortunately at this time there are no imminent plans to do so. I do like the thinking.
3. I am loving the new Incredibles 2 line-up, and was wondering if Jakks was looking at also offering characters from Incredibles 1, such as Syndrome and Gazerbeam for the 2” and 4” lines?
Our focus with Pixar is the current movie characters in the product line. The great thing of course is that most of the key characters from the first movie return. I am also a big fan of the Supers in the first film, even though many of their on screen roles were short. We believe this is a franchise with sustainable legs beyond the movie window and if we are correct, by holiday 2019 we will be looking to engage all the characters from the franchise. I hope you enjoy the line we have out now. We tried to do a wide variety of toys and executions to excite all types of Incredibles fans.
4. What happened to Chewbacca’s rifle for the Solo Big Figs release? Interestingly enough, he is shown with it on the official Jakks website. His trigger finger needs that accessory! Could Jakks look at offering this as a separate release such as an accessories pack?
Chewbacca has always been a tough figure for us to produce. He is the largest and most expensive figure we make by far and as you probably know, we don’t sell the Big Figs within a scale at different prices. The hope was that we would be able to include the Bowcaster but unfortunately we couldn’t. I am not sure why that image was released, but thank you for pointing it out. We have not done accessories packs before, but that is a good idea for us to consider.
5. For this years San Diego Comic-Con exclusives, is there anything you can tell us about these such as licenses, or if fans will be able to have them shipped back home?
We don’t have any news to share on SDCC products at this time. We don’t have a ship to home solution, unfortunately.