It's reckless for fans with no real knowledge on the situation to post uninformed musings as fact on the matter, people.
I swear, the amount of pessimism and thoughtlessness in nearly every area of MC these days has me about gone from this place. Geez!
I had the distinct privilege of working closely with Ken on the Palisades line and have continued legit product design work on other action figure lines and branded products since. Here is my
informed opinion on the
likelihood of what's happening and what's going to happen next.
Both Series' Three and Four are due to be released. They both have active preorders and my work in the legit industry of action figures informs me that a DST-quality company would not have Series Four up if Series Three wasn't active. Postponements are annoying, but they happen. Heck, the whole Palisades line was bumped a year later than planned and there were huge gaps between series sometimes.
Here are some possible reasons for such delays:
- Factory defects requiring correction.
- The slow boat from China.
- Adding some extra awesomeness.
- Packaging issues.
- Political issues at the factory.
The fate of Series Five, however, is the real mystery. While they've said there are ideas rolling around, DST has publicly stated that t
he determination will be made based on Series three and Four sales. That means this fall. It takes at least nine months to create, refine and release an action figure. Seeing that Series Four is due out in third-quarter 2017, they'd need to pull the trigger around that time in order to release a Series Five by second quarter 2018. That's not a far-fetched possibility, but right now -
not even DST likely knows the answer to that - and preaching doom to fans is not only libelous, but counter-productive if any of you want to see Pepe or Walter sometime down the line.
While Series One had a few manufacturing defects (i.e. Kermit's eyes), I really like the DST line and what they've been trying to do. This stuff is not easy to do.
It's a huge undertaking and the Muppets are still considered relatively niche in the toy market. Excitement about toys doesn't always translate into actual sales.
As for the Minimates, they already produced all of the important characters. Sure, Sweetums, Lew and Veterinarian's Hospital mates would be awesome, but would not likely reap an awesome enough profit. That's what eventually happens to almost every toy line after a few waves. Popularity and interest wanes. I think that sucks, but that's how it is. This doesn't mean the mates weren't successful. It merely means that everything has an ending point.
I think Hot Toys Muppets would be kick-butt too! But you know why that's not likely to happen? Because of all the fan whining and doomsday speculation of a niche product for an already niche license. Buzz does have an impact on decision-making. Previous sales do too!
I miss the DST PR rep coming around here too. The truth is that there tends to be a huge gap between the manufacturing of these units in China and when they reach warehouses in America. That's not rare at all, people!
So the reason that he hasn't been here is probably because he has no new info to report yet - and who would willingly even want to enter this pessimistic thread anymore unless they absolutely had to? TRUTH!
My advice here: Cool your jets, people. Nobody's landed. The only thing jeopardizing this line is the reckless talk about it. Even so, Series Three and Four seem like a done deal. Could things be going better? Probably! But there's so much love for these - and
if you ever want a Pepe, I'd try to keep spirits high.