Question for MDT - Plastic costs?

[The Everlasting Spirit ©]

Just a curiosity - likely only the MDT can answer but others may have an idea.

I was looking at the Elite 19 Shawn - which im about to order anyway. However i felt suprised that they would go for a rather plain attire of his. After all we had some iconic designs and colours. And truth being the decals on them arent any different - just the colours.

So i was wondering, is there any real difference in the cost of buying say red plastic instead of black? Presuming here black/white likely to be the cheaper option?

Not a complaint by the way, its just a (rather boring) curiosity.

If you do read this im going to use my chance to ask you to make a purple gloved undertaker and blue zebra HBK flashback at some point

Thanks
Ben

[Chewdeezy]

I think they did black and silver to match E16 Diesel.

[onleeone643]

I'm with you on that purple gloved Taker, and they can include Paul Bearer as an accessory. Lol

[MonsoonMan]

I work in a medical molding facility-we mold rubber parts for the surgical industry. I have worked with stuff that ends up being rubbery like an eraser and stuff that ends up hard as plastic. Generally speaking, black is the cheapest color to produce with. Can't say it's the exact same as Mattel, but any type of material featuring color has to be hand mixed and milled in house makin it cost more.

[punksnotdead]

Jan 21, 2013 15:10:41 GMT -5 MonsoonMan said:

I work in a medical molding facility-we mold rubber parts for the surgical industry. I have worked with stuff that ends up being rubbery like an eraser and stuff that ends up hard as plastic. Generally speaking, black is the cheapest color to produce with. Can't say it's the exact same as Mattel, but any type of material featuring color has to be hand mixed and milled in house makin it cost more.

Ditto to this in the ink business. I used to manage and map logistics for an apparel business and black is the cheapest standard ink and then colors are marginally more expensive, and then pricing increases the more colors you add with plates/screens or whatever. Silver and gold are more expensive than even base colors like red and blue as well.

So in regards to the paint apps on the figure, I'm guessing it would have been cheaper for Mattel had they done black and white, or even red and white as opposed to the black and two shades of silver they decided to go with for the Badd Blood attire. Just my guess.

In retrospect, and maybe Mattel disagrees, but I think the entrance top was a poor choice. I think they would have been better off spending more on adding the chest hair and knee pads to the figure than attempting the plastic entrance gear. It's only half the entrance attire, and HBK's entrance gear is more suited to be done in the fashion of soft goods like on his Entrance Greats figure. Mattel clearly couldn't spend the money to do it that way so I personally would have liked to see them just scrap the the entrance gear altogether. Obviously, that's after the fact and the figure is still amazing imo, but if it could be done over again.

[MonsoonMan]

^as far as the entrance top goes, i was thinking along the lines of WHY THE F did they mold it in silver? it should have been done like the legends Demolition gear where it was molded in BLACK and then they painted the tips in silver-if not anything just mold it in black. i cant imagine silver was a cheaper option than black, but i guess they needed something flashy to spiff up the figure.



edit-well i guess looking at the picture, those silver studs are pretty big, but still would've gone with black personally

[Matt Hardy Collector]

So basically Mattel is being really cheap producing figures with black attires more than colored attires and probably making a hefty profit. They use a black plastic that is cheaper than using colors and then complain about rising costs, just look at the MOTUC line they are up to $27 a figure and they suck.

When I say the MOTUC figures suck I mean they are just like the Jakks WWE figures, with reused and recycled limbs for EVERY SINGLE FIGURE. There are only a select few that have new molds. Shocking that the standard WWE figure isn't $27 yet. Mattel is just greedy plain and simple.

[Next Man’s Knowing Rock]

Think they chose it based on Hell in a Cell, which a lot of people were asking for.

[WalterF]

The hiac match between HBK and taker was a huge match in 97 so I'm sure that's why they chose that attire.

[BCizzle]

I don't think MDT ever answers any questions directly to him - probably because he doesn't want tons of people asking questions!

[slappy]

Jan 21, 2013 14:46:08 GMT -5 Chewdeezy said:

I think they did black and silver to match E16 Diesel.

That doesn't make sense because the HBK figure is from 1997 and Diesel wasn't even in the company then.

[punksnotdead]

Jan 21, 2013 18:03:06 GMT -5 Matt Hardy Collector said:

So basically Mattel is being really cheap producing figures with black attires more than colored attires and probably making a hefty profit. They use a black plastic that is cheaper than using colors and then complain about rising costs, just look at the MOTUC line they are up to $27 a figure and they suck.

When I say the MOTUC figures suck I mean they are just like the Jakks WWE figures, with reused and recycled limbs for EVERY SINGLE FIGURE. There are only a select few that have new molds. Shocking that the standard WWE figure isn't $27 yet. Mattel is just greedy plain and simple.

Well to be fair, the cost in colors like black vs red is probably marginal. It's when they get into a ton of colors is where it becomes expensive. AJ getting Elite treatment is a prefect example of how multiple colors work against Mattel for mapping out the cost of a set.

I don't really follow the MOTU figures close enough to know what's going on there, but I do know the cost of everything in China is going up. That's no joke, and we will likely see that financial burden passed onto us, the consumer, with more-and-more products as time goes on. Our country runs through China now, just the sad story of life. I know the fluctuation in the cost of cotton and soft goods is ridiculous right now. Where in the past it was far more steady, predictable, and quite frankly reliable.

[● kaneisdaman ●]

Jan 22, 2013 0:41:40 GMT -5 punksnotdead said:

Well to be fair, the cost in colors like black vs red is probably marginal. It's when they get into a ton of colors is where it becomes expensive.

You may think this but the truth is, and it goes for a lot of aspects of production, even $0.01 additional cost for a figure is a big deal because when it is multiplied by the unit number say even at minimum 10,000 units, then that's another $10,000 in production costs. So suddenly that 1 cent increase becomes of note. And there's many cases where you would be looking at more than 10,000 units which is a relatively small run.

And yes colour changes do have different costs. Plastics can often be created by mixing different coloured plastic pellets which are then heated to created the figure parts so any deviation from black adds more cost. But this wouldn't be the reason Mattel necessarily chose the attire, in fact they've stated they tell wwe to use more colorful attires because black becomes monotonous quite easily, looks boring, doesn't sell as well and surely wouldn't be as fun to design with.

[PJ]

To be fair MOTU are up to $27 a figure because they are a Matty Collectors line. Which means it costs more to make, because they are a very limited production run. The smaller the number being produced translates the higher the cost to produce.