- December 29th, 2018, 11:18 am#4911592In an action figure line you traditionally need to balance each wave with top sellings characters and lower tier characters. For example, waves 1, 2, and 3 had the 4 main GBs, Slimer, Ray variant, Luis, Janine, and Dana. Louis and Dana in their possessed forms. If Janine, Dana, and Luis were all in wave one by themselves the line would have likely died or at least sold way less.
The 4 main GBs, Slimer, Stay Puft; these are all anchor charactets that sell the wave as a whole. You dont save your anchor characters for the end if you want longevity nor do you yhrow them all at the the start. Its a fine line. because you never know when a line will end due to poor sales. You also dont want too many variants.
The Temple series had the 4 main GBs in the first 2 waves, Slimer in the 3rd, and the main villians in the 4th. By that tine they already had some security so they made the final wave all ghosts, which were interesting figures in their own right.
In the Firehouse series the front of the line lacked greatly. We got Vigo, Janosz, and a lot of GB variants with no ghosts. Sales git week and they couldnt dip into the bag of ghosts to help it. So, for fear of ending the line, they released 2 full waves of anchor characters of RGB figures every fan has waited for. Had the GB2 series made it on its own merit (and had they been allowed to do ghosts it would have) these 6 figures would have been held back as anchors for the RGB series and split into 3 waves with 3 more lower tier characters.
Its not really a science, more of an art. Their are guidelines to how you construct a wave, but not rules. There are still figures to release though. Now, they can do Citizen Ghost variants as anchors (they are basically far more interesting versions if the grey suit variants). There are some big villians they can do from RGB like Peoplebusters, Boogeyman, Samhain, etc. Then they have RGB Janine which would sell better than movie Janine imo. RGB has way more material so doing these 6 RGB figures now isnt going to hurt future waves, it only serves to make them possible.
Edit: oh, and as for not releasing the terror dogs separately, that was a great move. For one, having Zuul and Vinz separately means losing one of the other figures in the line. It also would have meant people complaining that they had to buy the same figure twice if they wanted to complete the roof top set. Instead, it takes up one spot and you can but a second one for cheap if you got the TRU slim pack. Its win/win.
I think your issues with this line come from a MOCer perspective. As someone that opens all these up and displays them I think they have done a mostly decent job. The only accessories i feel should have been added are a desk and chair for Janine, an alternative head for Luis, lightning hands for Gozer, and food for Slimer.
Ghostbusters = Mario Sunshine+Luigi's Mansion?