Long Wait for Certain Roster Members

Brian Cage debuted last May and wasn’t a big enough star pre-AEW to get a figure fast tracked. FTR didn’t sign long term deals until July. I think it’s too soon to say any of those three are being omitted. As for the rest, Unmatched is supposed to utilize the depth of the roster more, so I think we have to be patient until the Fall for some of the mid card talent.

You can’t have a Batman line without Batman in every series and it’s the same with any toy line. For wrestling figures Batman is the Main Eventer’s.

The mistake is considering Mattel the 'standard'. Mattel are above and beyond; a ridiculous amount of product covering a huge range of talent, from the popular to the obscure, current to the past. Jazwares shouldn't be lambasted for not living up to that. Not when they're still working on the more important things like quality control and distribution.

The AEW roster isn't that big. They'll get to everyone who matters. Although our opinion on who 'matters' may differ wildly.

Seris 6 is a bit disappointing when it comes to new characters. 3 repaints I expected. 4 is jarring. 

This right here, some people want ridiculousness.

Anybody who is expecting there not to be a bunch of versions of top talent in this line is simply going in with unrealistic expectations. Jeremy has been pretty clear that there are going to be a lot of repaints of top guys and why that has to happen. But I think both Jazwares and AEW are aware of the need to expand the list of who qualifies in that category, both through building new main event caliber names and through signing folks who have name value (Paul Wight, Sting, Sunday's mystery signing).

It can't be compared with Mattel - Mattel has 11 pegs at my Walmart and three shelves of space for their product. They're a multi-billion dollar company with decades of history and name recognition. The fact that within a year Unrivaled will have a presence in Walmart, Target, Amazon, and is going to be launching a second line (and peg) in those stores is already totally outpacing expectations.

Jeremy has said he's committed to (in his words) celebrating the entire roster, refs, announcers, legends, etc. But it has to be in a way that makes business sense, and you need to check certain boxes to get mass retail on board. Will there be folks who don't get figures? Absolutely. That's been the case in WWE for years too. But if you have a new wave dropping monthly with 6 figures per, even if only 2-4 are new characters, you're still talking about ~30-40 new characters each year. The AEW roster really isn't that big, particularly when you start thinking about who can realistically sell $20 action figures at mass retail. And the same realities that apply for Mattel are going to apply for Jazwares - it's going to take 9-12 months to turn around a brand new debut, they're going to make figures of people featured prominently on tv, female figures don't sell as well as male, etc.

Mattel didn't suddenly produce the entire active roster over night. There are plenty of people who are on Raw or Smackdown who haven't had a figure in 2 or 3 years. Unrivaled isn't even a year old from when it hit retail and they've made 27 different characters. That number will probably be around 40 by the time they hit the one year mark, and should account for most of the upper card and midcard. Also keep in mind I'd almost guarantee Brodie was scheduled for series 5 or 6 and they would have replaced that figure on fairly short notice for obvious reasons.

The rest of the roster will come. But people need to be realistic about what is or isn't possible, and there's nothing wrong with passing on figures you already have and buying who you don't.

You are talking about the first four years of Mattel. Jazwares are starting it in what is basically year one (2020 doesn’t count in my mind nobody could find them)

I’m fine with people cycling back through the line and aware that the Elite, Jericho, Moxley, & MJF are probably the extent of retail’s desired characters but this is an apples and oranges situation for various reasons

Pretty soon there will be 2 different waves coming out. I think this concern will likely be a thing of the past this time next year.

JP's whole gimmick is make people want your product and then deliver. We'll be getting more figures and people will complain about how much they're spending. lol

I imagine when these figures were being pitched to retailers, they had to push angles like “It’s Chris Jericho huge legend” “Moxley is fresh off a huge run in WWE” “Look at the merchandise numbers of Omega and the Bucks and Cody and Hangman!” “Look how popular Lucha Underground” and retailers said ok but give us mostly these guys as we get established.

That’s fine, but the key point from my posts that AEW doesn’t have as many established names as the WWE had in 2010 that retail would be comfortable putting on shelves. The WWE was also a proven brand that sold and wasn’t a new start-up. But even with the disparity you mentioned, it’s clear even Mattel goes back to the same top-names fairly often. It makes sense business-wise as those are the names that sell.