Figures that made the legends line fail

The completely unnecessary HOF set that just added clog to the already overproduced lines of L1 & L2 did some damage. Kmart was FLOODED with them. The TRU 2-packs that had just about the most unappealing line-up you could imagine didn't help, either. They chose 3 pairs that should've been lower-packed across three different sets, not all at once. If they began with red LOD, Edge & Christian, and The Bushwackers, we may have got a 2nd set of 2-packs. WWE supposedly had some sort of silly clause where current talent couldn't be called Legends, though.

Legends began when people were still adjusting to Mattel's higher prices. $15-16 per figure was considered to be expensive. Now, we're used to it, but back then you had people who had huge Jakks CS collections who'd have to start over since Mattel's are noticeably smaller and less exaggerated. Bad timing combined with suspect attire choices and overproduction = failure. Thing is, everyone wanted Steamboat, but when his figure shipped, that thing warmed as much as anyone. They just made too many of them and they were deemed too expensive for most people. The obvious things like Snuka and Sarge have already been mentioned a bunch, but yeah, that had to do with it, too. Some were pretty successful. Randy Savage did well, Vader did well, Austin did well, Rock did well, Warrior did well, etc.

But when it came down to a lot of the mid-card 80s names, it seems like people weren't as willing to buy them as they were in CS. I think without some of the bigger iconic names they'd later sign, people waited. I also think that the further you move away from a decade, the less marketable that decade becomes. People are always going to want Austin, Hogan, etc., but eventually, releasing those older mid-level guys who no longer get a lot of press isn't going to work as well. Scott Hall might be a great seller now, but in 10 years? If he doesn't do anything in the company or get brought up as much? Probably not.

My long-winded point is that there are numerous factors that weigh-in here, some of which are apparent, some of which are more psychological. The Flashbacks have worked very well for them, and it seems like the Flashback set they did last year (E23) did pretty well, too. I'd be happy with one of those every year and a 1-2 FBs in every Elite set like they've been doing. And hey, if they can get Flair/Hogan/Sting on board, they might as well do a Legends BAF set with Mean Gene or something at TRU, because you can bank on those guys and maybe another Warrior or Savage or Bret selling extremely well.

Yeah! People definitely wanted all of those names. I don't think anyone anticipated what the line would look like 4 years later, with everything being so scaled back.

For those of you saying the Von Erichs

1) The cancellation of the Legends line was announced before series 6 hit stores

2) While Kevin Von Erich did warm shelves, Texas Tornado and Kerry Von Erich were among the better sellers of that series

This.

The attires, I feel, were picked just to be different from what Jakks had released previously. Plus the market for Legends was already heavily saturated by Jakks.

For me the biggest turn off from the legends line in the beginning was the proto pics. As a die hard Jakks classics fan, when I saw the proto pics for the legends I was so disappointed. The biggest issue for me with the proto pics was that the figures had visible screws in the joints. So I was left thinking that the visible screws would be in the actual finished product.

Those proto pics made me not want to buy Mattel Legends. And then I saw the non legends figures and thought they looked horrible.

So im just one guy, but I'm the type of guy that would buy two or three Jakk's classics figures. I went from buying multiples of the figures in the classics line to buying 0 Mattel figures just because I wasn't pleased by the appearance of the figures.


Thinking about it now I feel Mattel would have made me a customer right from the beginning had they offered me something Jakks hadnt. I dont mean different attires as Mattel thought. I mean give me guys Jakk's hadn't. Start off with The Von Erichs, Macho Man, Steamboat, Magnum, guys Jakks hadnt made a figure of.

The only attire I had any issue with was Snuka's. The Road Warriors were my favorite look of theirs. With Sarge if we weren't getting his 70's all black attire (no cammo tshirt) then I was happy with the attire we got.

It would have helped if the HOF had different attires than their regular releases. But to say the attire choices killed the line is a joke.

Kamala was a bad ass figure. It was the first from the line that I bought. It was that figure that made me realize how much better Mattel was than Jakks.

I could probably still go down to Big Lots right now and find a Legends Terry Funk sitting on the shelf.............

And the sad thing is, people cling to this like it's a fact.

How can Brian Pillman be a "fail" ?