The following immediately made me think of Thundercats 2011. Would you say the toy sales were their downfall? It seemed to be a number of factors. Just thought I would post for discussion as the forums are a bit slow.
http://io9.com/7-cartoons-screwed-over-by-their-own-toylines-1637672006
The toys didn’t help. Then there was the scheduling of the show and the show itself. All of which sent it down the pan.
Now this is something I would be really interested in discussing.
In regards to the 2011 Thundercats series I would say the toyline played a part in its cancelation but I wouldn’t put it as the main reason.
I personally still maintain the overall theme and characters of the show were just as much to blame for it not appealing to a larger audience. The characters were just not likable and if your heroes aren’t likable there isn’t much chance of them selling merchandise.
But from a design and play perspective the 2011 toys were awful in comparison to other toys on the market at the time. But regardless of how poor the toys are, if the cartoon is good a lot of fans will still buy them. Take Transformers Animated as an example.
I can respect that Dan Norton fought for a Thundercats revival, but I can’t imagine why he would let them do this to the characters we all grew up with. I have said this in other posts, but the 2011 series just really didn’t feel like Thundercats to me. It seems like the scripts were written with different characters in mind but had Thundercats names pasted in.
The list is quite interesting but also omits other cartoon/toylines like Bravestarr, Defenders of the Earth, Dungeons & Dragons and Skeleton Warriors.
Skeleton Warriors was a really cool show and toyline but Playmates released all the bad guys first and didn’t release the good guys for months after but nobody cared as the villains were still clogging pegs. The cool skeletons suffered from being posed and having minimal articulation like early TMNT figures while the good guys had lots of articulation for the time. But Skeleton Warriors also suffered from being very 80’s with swords and sorcery and sci-fi which wasn’t really appealing to the kids at the time who were all hooked on the craze of…Power Rangers.
I was lucky enough to have the Galaxy Rangers toys mentioned on the list. I had Zach, Doc, Goose, Captain Kidd and Lazarus Slade. Didn’t get the queen of the crown. Seen her in the shop but never bothered getting her. They were really nice large figures all with individual sculpts but their biggest problem was the quick draw battle action Galoob included on all the figures, which ironically was the same fault their Defenders of the Earth toyline had.
Putting Gobots on the list is an odd choice as it wasn’t the toys that killed it. The Gobots toys were excellent The Hanna Babbera cartoon just wasn’t very good or interesting in comparison to Transformers, although I still like it LOL. The Gobots toys offered a more unique play scheme to Transformers as they were all a uniform height like G.I. Joes so they were all equal sized and had playsets and vehicles which Transformers did not have. Some of the larger 6" scale Super Gobots are some of the finest transforming toys ever made and have yet to be bettered to this day. The vast majority of Gobots all had Die-Cast metal parts and realistic alternate modes unlike Transformers which went drastically downhill after the movie when all the futuristic designs were introduced.
I remember collecting the MOTU 200X line when I was in college. It was so tough trying to track down the other characters over here in Northern Ireland. I didn’t complete the line until year later with the help of eBay. They were nice enough figures but the anime based sculpts were quite odd looking, as were the proportions. The shops her had nothing but He-Man and Skeletor variants. Flying Fist He-Man and Spin Blade Skeletor really stick out in my mind as clogging the pegs here for years. And Orko, he wasn’t very popular either. They were still on sale here in Pouindstretchers to 2008/2009.
Mattel’s history of goof ups goes back to Bravestarr though when they released all the toys in time for Christmas but the cartoon hadn’t aired so not many people bought them when they had no idea what it was.
Although as much as I love the Bravestarr toys one criticism of them would be that they were too large in 8" scale to interact with the other popular toylines of the time like He-Man and Thundercats etc which were in a 6" scale.
Another odd choice by Mattel was t not include any Bravestarr figures of the title character in the figures cases they were supplying to Northern Ireland. I found this out when my Mum and Dad contacted Mattel in their quest to find me a Bravestarr.
I think if another Thundercats revival comes along Mattel should definitely not get the licence. They also screwed up Green Lantern and Voltron Force. I don’t know how they thought Voltron would be a success with no toyline to support it. It’s a shame as the prototype Mattel showed looked really cool.
How in the world is Transformers Animated an example of people buying bad toys because the show was good? TFA had some of the best TF toys EVER. Most were really accurate in both robot and vehicle mode.
End mini-rant. lol
Transformers animated might not be the best example. The toys had some very clever transformation designs and they were pretty accurate to the animation models. However the vast majority of TF fans complained about how the designs and aesthetics of the toys were too preschool looking and would not interact well with their other TF toys like Classics, Cybertron, Energon, Armada and RID etc.
But the various members on the forum that made all these complaints still bought them regardless, as TF fans are much like Star wars fans and will pretty much buy anything to complete the lines.
I know a lot of people though that were not keen on the toys but liked the cartoon and characters so much they still bought the toys of their favourite characters. For example I really liked the character of Prime and still bought the voyager figure even though it was one of the weakest toys in the line.
I agree with Mark M on the premise of the show. The characters were not likeable, especially by children. Take a key note from the OS. Yes, lots of people call it the Lion-O show, but, he was the lead. His colors were blue and red…the first colors children notice. He was the drawn for the kids. We were lucky the writers and animators also tailored the OS so parents could watch with their kids and not be bored to tears. The 2011 show targeted an older audience, pre-teen to teenager with the anime spin and the stories. Not many pre-teens and teenagers are the paying for their own toys…yet. Mom and dad may not shell out the $$$ for an action figure when you have school clothes to buy when the economy is not the greatest. I watched the new show and while it was nicely drawn and the dialogue was fine, it did not spark my imagination like the OS did back in 1980. The writers tried to flesh out the other characters, but … there were too many to try to capture. One character they destroyed and killed it for me. That was Pumyra. The basis of her anger against Lion-O was very, very lame. They tried to change too much and missed the target of their main demographic…the parents and their kids. Put the OS on today and I think we would see the same success as in the 80’s. The 2011 Thundercats should have been called something else and put on Adult Swim and not tried to ride on the coat-tails of success of the OS. Then it may have had a chance. Just MHO. Thanks
Oddly enough I have been thinking about this for a couple days now and I must say one aspect I did like about the NS was the way they fleshed out the characters and showed their back stories…but sadly those back stories did them more harm than good as they were not overly interesting, exciting or helped make the characters anymore likable. In some cases it made me like some of characters even less like Claudus and Tygra etc. I really wish the OS had done more flashbacks to flesh out the characters and showed more of their life on Thundera etc.
I definitely agree with you that Pumyra’s character of all the Thundercats was ruined the most. Ironically though Pumyra and Grune were the only interesting villains in the series.
From a toy perspective though making a regular version of Panthro then a robotic arm variant to match the TV show wasn’t a good idea. I can understand putting out a version to match the animated appearance, but to put out a version that is pretty much exactly the same as the first version with the exception of a new face sculpt and different sculpted arms that have no play value and do not even attempt to replicate the feature of his arms robotic arms in the show is just a waste of time. For those that did but the first Panthro I can’t imagine many casual fans went out and thought oh this new one is so much better I must have it. Same with Lion-O and his huge claw arm.
But the 2011 toys were really bad. The main issues were the unpainted joints, screws and soft weapons. Lets not forget the pointless magnetic gimmick. There was a lot of better value, fun and accurate toys on the market people preferred spending their money on.
While I am ranting I may as well also add that the character designs from the cartoon were pretty terrible and neither evoked or amplified anything from the OS designs and just really didn’t translate very well to toy form. It is easy to see that the animation designs were done first and the toys based off them rather than the toys first and the animation based on them like a lot of 80’s cartoons. Having said that though a lot of companies are more than capable of making good toy sculpts based from animation, but sadly the team Bandai had working on Thundercats aren’t one of them.
Personally I think they should’ve focused on the 6" line and scratched the 4" line altogether. The 6" line was far superior IMO. Though I may be biased as I’ve never liked tiny action figures.
I actually personally liked the Thundercats Bandai line. I agree that the 6" (and 8" line even more so) we nicely done, but I actually also enjoy collecting the 4" as they are a bit cheaper and have tons of variants. If I had to pick a complaint, I would have to say that the magnet gimmick did not work out as well as I would have liked.
I agree with you balgus82 and adssse. They should have just stuck to the 6" line. Without spending money on the 4" line they might have been able to at least colour code the joints and that would have improved the look of the figures greatly.
Like you balgus82 I was never really a fan of small action figures like G.I. Joe and Star Wars (although M.A.S.K. was awesome), I always preferred the larger action figures like MOTU, Thundercats and Bravestarr.
Wow… not sure what to say… i mean, the toys were really cool.
Maybe, maybe the 4" ones weren´t really appealing for kids, i mean, that size is more of a star wars/Gi Joe fans and fans of those scales are young and adults and not kids.
Still, as i´m collecting now the batman multiverse figures, the 4" thundercats fit really great in my new collection… and i say new because i collect tmnt and btas toys and they are a little bigger toys )specially the tmnt ones)
All and all, it´s a shame about the end of this great toon.
I agree! I really enjoy the new toys. Unfortunately not enough others did too and the line was not managed very well in my opinion.
Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors was pretty screwed over, but not in the same vein.
Mattel created the toys long before the cartoon was made, and Jayce and Co. were added into the series to make the story more appealing.
But they completely failed to capitalize on any of the cartoon’s characters after the show became popular, and also wussed out of the movie after all the controversy the Transformers and GI Joe movies created. So the show itself was never ended.
But the fact the figures needed to be only 2-3 inches to fit in the vehicles probably made them un-appealing as well.
Mattel created “Wheeled Warriors,” actually.
You know, I bloody re-edited that post as I second guessed “was it Hasbro or not”? As I was thinking of the movies. :sneaky:
Also reading this thread. I absolutely despised the smaller figures, they only had slightly more articulation/quality than a happy meal toy. I did like the larger figures, if the whole series was based on them, it would have been a really nice line, possibly without the massive black pegs holding them together so they looked like they were shot at with a nail gun (would a blob of paint over them really have bankrupted mattel?)
Also what was with them not using the show’s voice actors to record the lines on the magnetic figures? Especially Lion-o :S
It was probably a legal thing or something.
Bandai. 
I am pretty sure it is more a about saving money and them not wanting to pay the actors a hefty fee for providing their actual voices for the toys.
My thoughts exactly!
I think with some films and shows like Star Wars and Toy Story for example there is a clause in the contracts allowing for likenesses and voices to be used for various merchandise.
Very true. I remember once watching a documentary about the making of “Star Wars” and Carrie Fisher (who played Princess Leia) said that all the actors had signed over their likenesses to Lucasfilms. She even jokingly said, “Every time I look in the mirror, I have to pay George (Lucas)!” 
Also a lot of movie-based video games these days use voices from the original actors. I remember that Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery had recorded their voices for some James Bond video games.