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If so, would you get the subscription then? Perhaps he will be the 13th figure or in a future subscription plan if the first one goes well. Maybe he was a teaser for a Club Subscription figure all along.

Do you have any reason to believe that Hasbro went as far with him at to cut tooling?

The popular reasoning for him being cancled is that he'd be too expensive as a single carded figure.

He'd be too expensive because he has a LOT of accessories, that means it'd take a lot of tooling to make him.

Tooling is supposed to be the "expensive step" in producing an action figure.

If Hasbro IS canceling Data Viper because he is too Expensive, why would they go through the most expensive process of making the figure (Cutting the tools) before canceling him.


If Hasbro didn't cut tools for Data Viper, there is NO WAY the Collectors Club could afford to produce Data Viper for their subscription service.

I still think that the Club could fit it in there as they are producing these figs and selling them at a higher cost if they wanted too and it would not be much more. Personally, I do not see the accessories being an issue. If it were, I could see Hasbro doing a Deluxe Class wave of individual figures and sell them at a higher costs very much like they do with most of their Marvel products. Those costs are in the $10-15 range for a figure. Also, I bet that just one Marvel figure costs Hasbro more than all of the individual Joe figures and their many accessories due to licencing costs. With G.I. Joe, they do not have to pay them as with Marvel or Lucas.

Fit it...yes. Afford it...NO.

The Club has never had more than a Head and Torso Tooled up for any of their exclusive figures.

If Hasbro hasn't produced the Tooling, the Club can't re-use it or Repaint it.

Making an educated Guess, the Club pays $8 a piece for any exclusive figures they have made. If you had to add the cost of tooling up a full figure and his accessories and spread it over a run of less than 1000 figures it'd spike the price up to insanity right quick.

I don't know specific contract details, but generally a license is a one time fee. Hasbro pays $X for the exclusive rights to produce Y toyline for Z years. Once you spread that cost over the full spectrum of Licensed product Hasbro produces for any given license I doubt it's that significant a difference in cost per unit for GI Joe, Marvel, or Star Wars.

Not for 2011 is my guess.

Even if the Club could swing it cost-wise, it is way too late in the game now for them to get it in for 2011. Hasbro showed this figure off at JoeCon like 2 months ago. Presumably they wouldn't have showed him off if they had planned to cancel him, so that decision only came along within the past month or two. Considering production takes 12 - 16 months (and assuming Hasbro hadn't even tooled the thing up yet) there isn't enough time left in the year for the Club to fit it in.

I think there is a bit of a misconception regarding the costs associated with tooling that was cleared up at one of the con panels.

Sometimes when we hear about the cost of new tooling, they are simply talking about the amount of money involved in cutting steel into usable molds. Other times (as with the canceled PoC stuff that then got produced), it is more involved. The cost of those tools was also including the payment to the original sculptor, the schematic artist (or whatever you call the technical drawing turnaround)...all costs incurred not only by cutting steel into usable molds, but also all the costs that it took to get the parts up to that point. These are all investments that need some kind of return.

From a business dollars standpoint, they can't just constantly let figures get to the stage we saw in the Joecon case then scrap them. There were already a lot of costs incurred getting them to that point.

Also, they have alluded to steel molds now being made in China. In the vintage line, that wasn't the case. I can only imagine the effort it took to ship them back then and how much that must have cost. There are plenty of signs that molds have gotten cheaper. Ever see a re-sized head? I'm not talking just 25th to RoC Wild Bill. Look back at the comic pack Cluch prototype. Or Short Fuze's legs...VvV wv5 Snake Eyes's arms...25th Major Bludd's head. There are dozens of examples of times when a part clearly had a new mold made. It was beyond altering. Yet the changes made did not incur new costs of the earlier part of the process. There is just too much evidence that says that molds don't cost nearly as much as we make them out to be.

Yes, tooling costs a lot and adds some expense to small runs like the ones the club puts out. But no, steel molds are not the deal breaker everyone always uses as a trump card in "will they make it" discussions. Too much evidence demonstrates otherwise.

I do think that Data-Viper included so much new tooling that if most of it wasn't made by Hasbro, it would be a bad investment for Fun Publications. But I don't think that all those parts are off of Hasbro's radar. I also have to wonder how many parts of Data-Viper could be swapped for similar parts that already exist. He is mostly about his head and equipment.

Besides, Hasbro didn't say Data-Viper was cancelled. They said he didn't make the cut. Data-Viper is on hiatus.

You know...Pat composes a well thought and well written post and I still can't tell if he ended this with a joke or not, but I chuckled.

I had the same thought.