First thing I want to say is despite the criticism below, I love this series and I hope it goes on for a long, long time. It’s a breath of fresh air, and should lead to us getting proper figures of a lot of talent we never expected to see!
The release of AEW’s Unrivaled series was probably one of the most anticipated things of the year in the wrestling figure community, but to say things haven’t been great is probably an understatement. Even the most positive of people toward the line (which is a category I generally would fall into) have had at least a few criticisms.
The scan! The detail on the tights! The pop of the colour! If you were a fan of wrestling action figures, it was hard not to be jazzed about the upcoming line after seeing these first few images floating around.
Highlights in hair? Gone. Pop of the colours in the attire? Gone. Skin tone? Seemingly adjusted, and now insanely pale. There were also many people saying that the upper part of the torso was a different tone than the rest of the body on all figures.
I have no problem with them hyping the release date for the launch of a new product. I do, however, have a problem with them hyping the release date when they didn’t have the proper distribution plan/channels to make that launch date a success. People went WEEKS before seeing them in stores *if* they were lucky. And if you didn’t pre order them on Ringside? Good luck getting in on that late, it didn’t take long before the only two left on the site were Brandi Rhodes and Kenny Omega. These figures were (and still are) pretty much impossible to track down at a reasonable price.
Let’s look at exhibit A!
When these things were announced, the figure community was on fire with excitement. I mean, for example, look at this Kenny Omega we saw!
The scan! The detail on the tights! The pop of the colour! If you were a fan of wrestling action figures, it was hard not to be jazzed about the upcoming line after seeing these first few images floating around.
Then the figures were mass produced.
What we got, in comparison, although very good still was a let down.
Highlights in hair? Gone. Pop of the colours in the attire? Gone. Skin tone? Seemingly adjusted, and now insanely pale. There were also many people saying that the upper part of the torso was a different tone than the rest of the body on all figures.
Although they owned the fact that they didn’t turn out as planned/initially shown, and would have a running change where they would correct things like the skin tone and highlights in Kenny’s hair - it was still disappointing to see this once they finally shipped/surfaced in stores...
Speaking of shipping / in store availability that seems to be a great time to transition to exhibit B!
I have no problem with them hyping the release date for the launch of a new product. I do, however, have a problem with them hyping the release date when they didn’t have the proper distribution plan/channels to make that launch date a success. People went WEEKS before seeing them in stores *if* they were lucky. And if you didn’t pre order them on Ringside? Good luck getting in on that late, it didn’t take long before the only two left on the site were Brandi Rhodes and Kenny Omega. These figures were (and still are) pretty much impossible to track down at a reasonable price.
They took to Twitter to address this, and although their reasoning makes sense to me it’s a tough sell for people who missed out on the figures. I can’t find the tweet but they basically said they couldn’t risk over producing on the first few waves or they risked setting the wrong tone with retailers. If they had a ton of product rotting on shelves (especially as a new release to the market), the stores may not want to allocate as much product on future shipments. That being said, they GROSSLY under estimated demand, and left a bad taste in the mouths of collectors, I think.
But there’s bound to be bumps in the road - new product from a relatively new company, right? That’s what I thought, but I’m not 100% sure they took down any notes of what worked/didn’t work. Series two was set to ship in October (at least that’s what was communicated between Jazwares and Ringside, per the dates listed for pre-orders. It’s November 2nd, have they shipped yet? NOPE! In fact, it seems any delays aren’t even being communicated to Ringside from Jazwares, as Ringside just stated they’ve reached out in hopes of getting an update.
But at least with series 2, even if distribution is an issue they’ll get the supply and demand aspect right? WRONG! Exhibit C!
These fools making the AEW figures couldn’t even allocate enough product to their ONLY online retailer (Ringside Collectables) to meet PREORDERS. For well over a month, you haven’t been able to pre-order a single figure from series 2 on Ringside. To add to that, there’s some talk that series 2 is all but canceled (with series 3 in the air) in the UK as well, at least according to this tweet.
All around the launch of this series has been a train wreck, and that SUCKS. It sucks because I genuinely love the figures and the wrestlers they’re capturing. Hopefully the bumpy road ends after series 2 or 3, but if things aren’t smoothed out soon, I’m not sure how long AEW Unrivaled ends up lasting.
Great read and as we both know the aew figures that actually hit Canada were all on the west coast. I'm looking for these figures every day at Walmart in Sydney and there's nothing to be seen. But again that the same with the WWE figures as well.
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