Don't worry, my camera isn't broke. In fact, Santa brought me some cool new goodies for it this year. But this last week or so has had an interesting development in the world of action figures that I thought was worth discussing.

Action Figure Insider broke the story about a special Christmas gift given to some Mattel employees and other key individuals. The created a special figure, a Justice League Unlimited Hal Jordan, put it on a special card, had Bruce Timm sign it, and gave out about 100 of them.

Now, this isn't a particularly unique situation. Companies like Palisades, Sideshow, Art Asylum, and Gentle Giant have all done special, very limited figures as thank yous in the past, especially around Christmas time. This year, Gentle Giant even released a mini-bust of Salcious Crumb in this fashion.

So what's the big deal? Oh, it's been a very big deal, and show's once again that some folks just never learn. So let's discuss it a little from my point of view, and try to weed out the extreme positions.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, you can always reach me at mwc@mwctoys.com. If you enjoy this review, take a minute to check out my other site at Michael's Review of the Week, and let me know what you think. Now on to the review!

"They Never Learn"

To understand some of the uproar over this figure, you need to understand a few things. First, there is a group of collectors out there - in all branches of collecting, not just action figures - that are 'completists'. They want everything released in a line. Obviously, those folks will be a tad peeved over the release of Hal Jordan in such limited numbers. To them, this means only 100 people in the enter world can ever have complete collections, and the extremist will go so far as to drop the line completely. The idea is simple - if you can't have them all, why bother with any?

Now, some people will dismiss this complaint a little too readily. They'll say that this position is silly, they shouldn't feel that way, and they should just get over it. Unfortunately for Mattel, and other companies that do this sort of thing, it appears that's the attitude they're taking. There are many therapists and counselors across America making big bucks telling people that it's not productive to tell your SO what to feel and why that they are wrong for what they feel, but instead to understand WHY they feel that way. Companies like Mattel need to understand this is the same with their customers. One displeased collector tells ten more, those ten tell more, and while perhaps only a few collectors completely drop the line, others become disillusioned in general with the company. No one needs bad PR, and going out of your way to create it isn't smart.

For a company, it isn't so much the worry that completists will completely drop a line, but that they'll stop being completists WITH THAT LINE. See, having some completists, right or wrong, means that they'll move even peg warmers to somebody. There will be people that buy even the goofiest figure they release, the cheesiest repaint. But if the completists decide there's no point, and only begin buying the ones they really like, suddenly the viability of the line in general drops. A bad figure turns into a REALLY bad figure, that warms the shelves for months and hurts the line in the eyes of the retailers.

Now, I'm a completist on some lines. And on many, I'm not. Even on lines that I'm a completist, I don't mind if there's a 'holy grail' or two, figures that may take me years, if ever, to obtain. And so I don't hold the extreme position that if one or two are released that are tougher to get, that I will drop the entire line. But I am smart enough to realize that this is the position of some collectors, and smart enough to know that giving a Christmas gift to a few dozen folks isn't worth the bad PR created across the collecting community. Companies shouldn't be in the business of telling their customers that they are wrong in what they want to buy and how they want to buy it - they should be exploiting what their customers want to make money.

Of course, delivering bad news is half the battle to reception of bad news. Companies generally don't do these things in a 'secret' fashion when they do foolishly do them, and that's a smart move. Own up to it, be straight forward, and you can at least calm the moderate collector's and help a little with the extremists.

Mattel didn't do that though. In the article on AFI, they unwisely used lots of language that was just BEGGING for this to be a big deal. Sentences like "Now Mattel comes along with a figure so secret and most likely so unobtainable that it will drive many fans to drink a little more egg nog this season... and well into the new year.", "impossibly low numbers and unobtainable to most collectors", and "This is most likely the only Hal Jordan figure Mattel will make, and the tool for the head has already been destroyed." are actually written in such a way as to incite more trouble. I find most interesting the idea that this will be the only Hal Jordan figure, something that makes the collector's truly crazy. If Mattel made this special for the company, but were going to release a regular version eventually (much like the Star Wars mini-bust collectors will know will happen with Crumb), there would be far less complaining. But by saying this is the only one - well, you're just asking for trouble, and it does nothing to really add to the story. The fact that the 'molds' were destroyed is also very misleading, since the molds used for such a small run are most likely made from cheaper materials destroyed in the process anyway, and aren't steel molds that were destroyed expressly with the intent of making this figure 'ultra-rare'.

Every time a company has done this, they've taken heat. The PR is never good. And the people that receive the gift? Now this is just me guessing, but most couldn't care less. Here's a hint to any executive out there who thinks their employees would prefer a reminder of their work as a special gift - go with money next time. And those big wigs at WB? They'll think it's cute for about 3 minutes before it goes in a drawer, or if you're really lucky, on the wall with tons of other licensed product.

So why do they do it? Because sometimes they simply never learn. And as long as they don't, they'll continue to repeat the same foolish moves that alienate them from their customers.