Masters of the Universe Classics was first teased at San Diego Comic-Con 2007, and now its been 10 years of the line. This panel celebrates the how this line came about. The panelists include the Four Horsemen, Scott Neitlich, Bill Benecke, and David Voss.
Above, are the panelists, which posed for us after the end of the panel.
It took the effort of Scott and Bill to kick off the line and were behind many of the early design concepts and line-up. The Horsemen had some early in-put and Mattel gave this group a chance, as well as the keys and resources needed to drive this style of figures.
Around 14,000-15,000 figures were made thanks to the efforts of Scott, Bill and the Horsemen.
Mattel had to hire new people in house to set up Mattycollector, a new way for people to buy product.
Four Horsemen worked on 200X for Mattel, and they brought over the first prototype to Comic-Con 2007 and showed several people at Mattel during a Breakfast. It was decided to stick it into the case and see what happens. The overjoy from fans caused Mattel to offer this and jumpstart what became Mattycollector.
The original plan was to use 200X pieces, Ice Armor He-Man as King Grayskull to bring back MOTU. This was going to be the last 200X figure. All the pieces came together and fell into place to bring Classics into existence.
King Grayskull was chosen in 2008 as the first figure because that was the original plan. It was already in production for Comic-Con. They switched the 200X parts to the new Classics parts in production according to Scott Neitlich.
The new hashtags #TellMattel #WeWantMoreSheRa #WeWantMoreMOTU wasn’t required back then, they were able to get the sales they needed to drive getting these figures made. The Matty Subscriptions were needed to guarantee sales and get Executives off their back according to Scott. That is why Scott kept driving for subscription sales. Once the team hit the numbers, this would get management off their back and they were given the resources that they needed to do these figures.
The 2016 line was a full year and then Mattel cut it into a half year, and for the most part the 2016 figures were now released by Super7 such as Lodar and Stridor. Scott was surprised Mattel only did one horse, as the original plan was to do two to get their monies worth.
What fans are getting from Super7 were, for the most part, originally planned for 2016.
Scott states Roboto was a nightmare. The tooling had to be done 5 times, which is why the shoulders were reversed.Scott and Bill spent more time on this figure compared to any other in the line, and were very disappointed by the shoulders.
ThunderCats – the Horsemen had sculpted three additional figures, Grune and Jaga included. There are multiple people at Mattel that want to revisit ThunderCats Classics. Fans need to be vocal to get ThunderCats made. Mattel was in talks with Warner Brothers to get ThunderCats figures made for years. David Voss suggested to fans to write to WB about this.
Ghostbusters – started because of Mattycollector – This was a way to drive figures towards the collector base.
Being negative online hurts the brands, according to Scott. Be positive. This came up in meetings and look to see what people are saying and it was mostly fan rage and this is why the brand lost resources because they took this seriously.
Q&A:
When Scott left, this left a gap as he was doing the job of two people. There was a lot of uncertainty as no one wanted to do this or had the passion for the last several months of the line before it was passed over to Super7. At this point, Mattel was not set up for this.
MOTU DC 2 packs, Batman vs. Man-At-Arms illustration was finished – very few things were left over as most of their plans were released.
He-Man Movie – since the Horsemen teamed up with them in 1999, there has been a He-Man Movie planned for the past 20 years. There have been scripts, some good, some not so good. Meetings at Mattel were held to discuss this. The Director left the latest installment, and they had to start from scratch, and he lasted another 6 months or a year.
Panel Ends.
