Like the Playmobil line of a few years ago the 4" Hasbro figure lines for 2021 and 2024 didn’t include the villains. What’s up with that? Is it just a likeness/licensing thing?
We didn’t get a Garraka or Gozer in the kids line, just like there was no Vigo or Gozer in Playmobil.
Also really would’ve liked to see some villain figures, especially a Gozer in that Fright Features line. Plastic Geek made quite a nice custom one.
Yeah, I mean, why Hasbro didn’t read the room and just so a continuation of RGB is a whole other question! That’s why people were snapping up those Fantazm Toys figures.
This is a question; I have asked myself a few times. I would think that if you’re doing a stylized take on a movie character (like Playmobil or Hasbro’s GB Fright Features line) it would not be that hard to produce. I recall seeing a drawing that a fellow Ghost Head did around the time Playmobil’s The Real Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II assortment was coming out of a Playmobil style Vigo and it looked terrific.
As for no Gozer in the Fright Features Afterlife line or Garraka in the Fright Features Frozen Empire line, I am guessing that it was either an oversight on Hasbro’s part or just poor planning in general. I have heard online through a number of news outlets that Hasbro has been having issues internally, especially with owning so many major brands under one roof. Also, with the new managers they got in the wake of the sudden death of CEO Brian Goldner in October 2021, likely did not help the company either since Goldner had different plans than what the current leaders want to do.
Whatever it may be, it’s extremely bizarre to have such incomplete toy lines.
I also wondered why the switch to the stretchy ghosts for the Frozen Empire toy line? The easiest guess is that it was cheaper of course. Love the companion ghosts in all GB lines.
I do wonder if it’s a rights issue.
When Diamond Select were making Ghostbusters figures, there were notable absences of familiar ghosts from their Ghostbusters II wave, with Vigo being the exception (probably because Wilhelm von Homburg had died in 2004)… Unlike the MattyCollector line, we didn’t get the Subway Ghost, or the Scoleris.
I dimly remember there being an issue with ILM, who owned the design rights to the ghosts (which might’ve been the reason why Vigo’s demonic head was sculpted by Mattel, but ultimately never made it into the public release of the figure).
I don’t know why Diamond were able to secure more of the designs for the Minimates line, but maybe there was more flexibility with them because they were stylised humans?
Yeah, Minimates is a funny one. I haven’t looked super closely at them (because I don’t want to risk getting sucked in) but they covered a lot of ground! I’m a big fan of minimates in general and if I hadn’t already gone all in on GB Playmobil I might have gone with MInimates instead.