Did Mattel sell us previously returned figures?

[AdultCollector]

On Black Friday I bought 5 Skeletor figures and one He-Man figure. My package just arrived and I opened all 6 mailers. What I saw were five Skeletors with terrible paint jobs on the faces, and a He-Man with a hair piece glued on wrong so it looks like he has a huge forehead and a receeding hairline!

I'm wondering if this this simply a quality control issue, or if at least part of their inventory consisted of figures that had been previously shipped back to Mattel for a refund. What do you think?

I'd be interested to know if anyone else shares my suspicion and/or has found these or other issues with the Black Friday figures.

On a side note, I noticed the Skeletor figures had small clear bands around their neck, and you can't see them unless you pop off the heads. He-Man had no rubber band around his neck. Also, the foot joints on all of the bad Skeletor figures were just as loose as the Skeletor figure I originally purchased when the line was first released.

Scroll down for photos!

[andr0s81]

My first re-issue skeletor had the band around his neck peg. I've called them about a returned shipment before and they advised they destroy all returned items because they don't know what's happened once they've left the warehouse. But the SDCC skeletor I purchased has the open hand with the original burst on his packaging, and he has no red eyes, which i'm not sure if even the first open hand release had, so i suspect there is some kind of repackaging going on.

[Jedi_Master_Jeremy]

Sounds suspicious! I hope my order is OK as I got 2 He-man figures and 2 BC's for my boys. I'm not going to be very happy if they've screwed these up.

[ChromiumBlue37]

Hopefully the 2 Skeletors I managed to order will arrive flawless. If not, they go back. $20 is a lot to pay for an action figure!

[EldestSon]

i wonder if "destroyed" means "dissassembled, sent back to factory, reassembled"

[Alexx]

I highly doubt it. Then again, I only doubt it as much as you find it suspicious. I just don't think Mattel is low-down like that. They can't run a website very well, but they aren't going to sell product that has been returned.

[diosoth]

Selling a returned, even defecting product is nothing new. Walmart does this all the time, wrapping stuff in tape and trying to pawn it off as new merchandise.

Mattel could theoretically disassemble figures and use the good parts but likely they'd grind them up and turn them back into raw granules, after using a chemical to remove paints. It's really just faster.

On a side note, I noticed the Skeletor figures had small clear bands around their neck, and you can't see them unless you pop off the heads. He-Man had no rubber band around his neck. Also, the foot joints on all of the bad Skeletor figures were just as loose as the Skeletor figure I originally purchased when the line was first released.

I bought a 1st issue Skeletor to get the weapons. I noticed this too, a rubber band around the neck post that doesn't even go through the tray. Suspicion is that it's to keep the head from wobbling too much, but the TRU release doesn't have that.

[scott metzger]

I seriously doubt anything like this could be happening; returning the figures to wherever overseas they package them would likely be more expensive in the long run than simply extending or starting a new run. The "original" labels are on the insert inside the package, so they can't just slap them on returned items. It just wouldn't be worth the time and money to re-pack old items.

The problems cited are simply Mattel's miserable excuse for quality control and internal production policies at work. That's why today's King Grayskull has the same ankle problems as the original KG; fixing it would have required a "development slot," so it was simply produced with the same flaws as the first version. There's no conspiracy here, just the usual ineptitude...

[KalesDad]

i wonder if "destroyed" means "dissassembled, sent back to factory, reassembled"

Me too. In the other Cyber Monday threads, I posted that both the 3rd issue Skeletors I received, as well as the 2nd issue from back in January, were both re-taped on the bottom of the white mailer. Also, in both cases (which I forgot to point out in my previous posts), Skeletor wasn't pressed completely into his plastic tray. It's as if he'd been taken out, "fixed", then haphazardly placed back into his tray and re-packaged.

Both of the He-Man's I ordered this week also arrived with badly positioned hair pieces, one slightly better than the other one though, so he'll stay MOC.

Also, my Battle Cat isn't marked "The Original", and his helmet isn't fit onto his head properly, just like the first run. In the other thread, I theorized that Matty made both runs at the same time, so this BC is actually from the first run. Now I think that the factory might'a just screwed up and used the wrong insert file or something? I really wished they woulda fixed BC's helmet placement though.

[AdultCollector]

I seriously doubt anything like this could be happening; returning the figures to wherever overseas they package them would likely be more expensive in the long run than simply extending or starting a new run.

My suspicion is that they are taking the figures (still in box) that were returned and simply putting them on a pile with figures shipped to them new from China, then mailing all of them out to people who purchased them. Or rather than being repackaged they are the older run figures from China and China simply sent more first run figures from the factory that they had stored, and Matty then packaged them to ship out to people who purchased them.

[AnnnaMot]

you might be right

[mvegetajr]

Hi just wanted to say that I have received my Battle cat and it does have The Original logo on it. Just wanted to throw that out there would have posted a pic but my camera is currently out of order.

[red51931]

Hi just wanted to say that I have received my Battle cat and it does have The Original logo on it. Just wanted to throw that out there would have posted a pic but my camera is currently out of order.

Wow. Yours is the first I've heard of with the logo.

Dan

[mvegetajr]

Yeah I really wanted one of the first run, should have ordered 2 maybe would have gotten one of each original and first run.

[chuck20]

i got my order today, but since it was a birthday gift I don't get to open it till the 16th. REALLY worried about the paintjob on skeletor, and what i have heard so far has not been reassuring.

[AdultCollector]

A picture's worth a thousand words. I just noticed all six figures have "The Original" on the package.
The He-Man head on the left is the one I had previously purchased (2nd issue).
The He-Man head on the right, and all of the Skeletor heads, came in my Black Friday order.
Gotta say I'm pretty unsatisfied for the money I paid.

[Sabretooth]

AdultCollector, looking at your pictures I can say that my Prince Adam's angry head has hair glued like that too- with a high fore head

[Inhibitor]

Ugh, the paintjobs on those Skellys... What did they do, sell all the rejects from the first release? Horrible! Looks like you may have to reglue the hair on that He-Man too. Wow.

[kup]

Anyone else with this paint defect?

[danvin]

why did you open them?? can you send them back now?

[AdultCollector]

why did you open them?? can you send them back now?

I was too busy thinking about the research paper that was due in a few hours, and I wanted to get them opened up and torn apart for my custom projects. I'll be making a bunch of 200x variant customs. The He-Man head I'll somehow reglue, and I'll most likely be painting over the Skeletor heads. As for the looseness in the ankles, a little superglue will fix that right up.

I'm really glad that these weren't purchased to resell. To think five different people could have purchased them as their one and only MOTUC figure, with their hard earned money, only get to a botched head (or worse yet, a parent buying one for their child at Christmas). I'd like to see someone who gets a chance to ask Mattel some questions touch on the subject of this thread. If Mattel is simply selling off its D-list figures, after they have apparently told people that they destroy the defects, our voices should be heard and this practice should stop. If this is simply a quality control issue, Mattel should be made aware of it. 5 our of 6 heads botched in an order is unacceptable.

[Lay Ze-Man]

IMO, none of the Skeletors have had decent paint ops, in fact it's one of the glaring areas that Mattel has yet to fix.

I've had to repaint all of mine.

Huge shame too, because the 4H really packed in some awesome detail in there, which has yet to be truly showcased by the poor paint ops so far.

To the question of the thread: no.

Mattel said the Cyber Monday sale versions of He-Man and Skeletor (and Battle Cat) were all brand-new runs.

[demiscy]

does this Skeletor have a good paint job?

[AdultCollector]

demiscry, yes your skelly looks very nice. It appears to be gray in some spots, but I'm sure that's just because of the lighting in the picture. I've noticed some Skelly heads use green around the teeth and some are bare and yellow like yours. Not sure which version I like better, or which is intended to be the intended design (compare my second-from-the-left skelly head to the others and you'll see it shares that bare yellow teeth look).

Someone made the point that Mattel doing something underhanded like shipping reject figures to customers would take too many resources and time, and so it wouldn't be feasible or make sense for them to do it. I really don't think this would take any additional time or resources for the company, since they would most likely have a pile of figures that were returned just sitting in the storehouse used to ship the figures out. Since the factory in China is shipping figures to Mattel's storehouse for distribution anyway, if that factory had some rejects on hand it wouldn't take them any more time to add those reject figures in with the mix. This is all speculation though.

[chuck20]

I'm really hoping my Skeletor looks like yours, Demiscy. And AdultCollector, I'm sorry. You were right, those heads came out terrible. I only ordered one, and if it looks like that, I'll be upset. I'm hoping that since Skeletor didn't sell out, there'll be plenty of replacements. But still, its a huge hassle.