Diamond Select Toys Shutting Down!?!

On 5/23/2025 at 10:26 AM, Emnems80 said:

Out of curiosity, would this allow someone like McFarlane to pick up the Marvel license DST had? It could be one way to continue that line in a similar way. 7" inch scale and I don't think Todd would mind having to have limited articulation.

I think it would depend on what assets Marvel Select has/had to offer, They have a respectable tooling library by now, but they also did mostly standalone sculpts for their figures, with sparse re-use. ( I think they did some re-issues over time). And by assets, I mean the stuff that was in the pipeline, but as yet unproduced. Take that on and doing runs with it could be a good stopgap to offer a McFarlane Marvel line, until his people can take over.Is it desirable? I don't know and cannot say until I could see what THEY would produce for articulated figures.

On 5/23/2025 at 12:39 PM, Emnems80 said:

Who's campaigning? I did not say the marvel license that Hasbro had, I was referencing the limited one that I'm assuming DST had. I was just wondering if it could be an option to continue a 7" scale Marvel figure line. McFarlane was just the first company I thought of, mainly since he's doing the statues right now. The new owners also own NECA, so could NECA be an option too?

Its unknown at this time.

On 5/23/2025 at 9:33 AM, tarot said:

Would people please stop campaigning for that hypocrite to get the marvel liscence?

Who's campaigning? I did not say the marvel license that Hasbro had, I was referencing the limited one that I'm assuming DST had. I was just wondering if it could be an option to continue a 7" scale Marvel figure line. McFarlane was just the first company I thought of, mainly since he's doing the statues right now. The new owners also own NECA, so could NECA be an option too?

On 5/23/2025 at 5:26 PM, Emnems80 said:

Out of curiosity, would this allow someone like McFarlane to pick up the Marvel license DST had? It could be one way to continue that line in a similar way. 7" inch scale and I don't think Todd would mind having to have limited articulation.

Would people please stop campaigning for that hypocrite to get the marvel liscence?

Out of curiosity, would this allow someone like McFarlane to pick up the Marvel license DST had? It could be one way to continue that line in a similar way. 7" inch scale and I don't think Todd would mind having to have limited articulation.

On 5/20/2025 at 11:13 AM, TheArrow said:

I disagree to a point, AndyL, because money trumps creativity, and that's what this is all about.

You said it all in the first sentence my friend. And you are right. As long as the company or the people who run them see a way to earn or save an extra buck it will be the path they decide to follow. Sadly most of the time rather than innovate or improve to make a more desirable product they choose to cut corners and penny pinch and maintain a product in stasis as cheaply as possible. That's where AI will become their best friend. But I do believe eventually they will start to realize that once AI has reached it's zenith on what it can do they are going to need that human element and real creative juice to make it continue to improve and evolve. Not saying it's going to come sooner than later. Probably not even in our lifetime but eventually to quote Dr. Ian Malcolm and the late great Macho Man Randy Savage. Life Will Find a Way and The Cream Will Rise to the Top. It does suck that the generation we live in will be the one to suffer those lessons before they figure it out. AI is the shiny new thing and everyone is jumping on but in the end it's not going to be that SkyNet world dominating system everyone expects to wake up to and find out it took over the world because it gained consciousness and decided in order to save humanity it must destroy humanity. It's just a scary fairy tale they like to keep in their pocket so they can use it if they ever need it to scare everyone. If it ever does gain self awareness or at least achieves a point of synthetic imitated self awareness it will understand that it cannot exist without the human element. Again sorry to take off topic but this is something I've been studying quite extensively and taking courses on and it's one of those things I love to discuss and rarely find a chance to.

I disagree to a point, AndyL, because money trumps creativity, and that's what this is all about. With creative fields, one of the "complaints" that A.I proponents wield is that there's chronic and perennial "gatekeeping" fostered by those in the field. That professional artists and creators want to protect their livelihoods from newcomers who want a piece of the creative action, and want that playing field levelled. They demand that because they think A.I. compensates ( overtakes) the need for REAL talent. That A.I. means that a aspiring artist no longer needs years or decades to develop, that there's now this shortcut they can take and stand in the same crowd as the talented. And entrepreneurs are salivating at this thing because they no longer need a crew of specific talents ( and the expense of paying them) to produce what they think is equal product. Money.Never mind that those shysters ( wrongly) think that shiny/glossy is equal product.Never mind again that the consuming public don't know what A.I. really is--they often cannot distinguish it, and worse, when they play with it themselves, they think " LOOK MA!!! I'm an ARTIST!!" And you cannot legislate controls or exclusions for it because everyone LOVES money, and A.I. is SO EASY to exploit---even if it kills whole industries.Now, in toys, A.I. MIGHT be a benefit. Take a common buck- integrate visual design aspects into the mechanics, print/paint/ sell. A couple of people could do it in a garage or a modest workshop--yes, at a considerably large scale too.Take enough people doing this and a major industry can down-scale to become a cottage one. I cannot think of all the other ramifications of that, but they would be vast--a literal huge sea-change.And those parties can do it "cheaper" because they run a smaller operation, but they sure as heck aren't going to price it any cheaper, because it'll now be VERY niche.Someone, not too long ago, said to me " So what? It's not going to all go away. It's no big deal", and I countered:"Sure, it might not go away entirely, but look at it like painting. With A.I. you don't need to paint with wet media anymore. You type a few lines/prompts and you have your image painted. So if that satisfies, then less people will be actually using wet media. And if less people use it, stores will sell less of it. Paint makers will make less of it. Less paint cleaners, less brushes, less canvases. Those items will become harder to find AND the prices for them will greatly increase for whatever is made from then on, because there is less retail demand. And when it diminishes to far less, there comes a point where it STOPS.And then it's gone.If not forever, then for generations to come.Think about the things in our society that have become extinct practises or those that have receded so far into the background that they are essentially lost. Humans have built a civilization this is commercially symbiotic--remove chunks of industry and adjacent reciprocal industries suffer along with those that end.I apologize to everyone, I've spun this off onto a unintended distant-reaching tangent, and because it's a personal rant for me.

On 5/19/2025 at 10:21 PM, TheArrow said:

The very unfortunate thing about those creative industries is that when those talented people get laid off, most of them will leave their industry regardless of their talent. A.I. encroachment is fuelling that, because a lot of ne'er-do-wells think it is a panacea. And the talent that lose their jobs will migrate to very different occupations simply to keep an income. There will not be a reason to come back even if those industries restart--once they are settled into something different, the stability will keep them there.In my field--Animation/cartooning--- 75-85% of the talent are currently out of work. AT LEAST 50% of those people are now GONE from the biz entirely, and won't be coming back, ever.There's no tangent back-up field to fall back on.Many are very experienced older-hands who, literally, don't know how to do anything else, and won't get hired again because younger talent are cheaper to bring on board ( so they think, ha!) A lot of newcomer talent might have landed gigs up to a couple of years ago, but being laid off sours them so badly they just give up on the industry.And because it is (wrongly?) believed that A.I can replace those people, those fields.........whole segments of the industry are now gone.And it gets even worse, because all the ancillary supporting industries like film/art school, equipment suppliers and things like software for such crafts,.........they are all obsolete and will vanish along with the crafts themselves. Think about it with a similar situation.? How many land-line telephones or phone booths do you see nowadays? If there's no art school providing toy design programmes.......how do you learn how to do it???It's getting bleak.

Yes my friend it does seem bleak. And for the time being it does seem like AI is the easy path for these companies in the future. But rest assured there is a point where AI will peak. And there's more of a human element involved than they try to make it all seem. All AI is right now is an imitator. It's not this all knowing all creative world killing force they would have us believe. It only draws from an available data compilation that comes from a human element. When someone creates a new original piece of art they add to the database AI can use from that point on. But if all humans stop creating any new original art ever again the AI also fails to progress or evolve because they just keep pulling from the same old data pool and everything eventually just looks the same but there is no actual genuine new ideas. Once humanity starts to understand and grasp the concept they will learn how to use and work with and manipulate the technology to find a new place for the real creators and real artists to prosper. Again just as in other businesses everything is in a state of change and evolution. It's very involved and I'm in danger of taking this thread way off topic but once humanity catches up with the understanding of how it works and how it will never fully work without constant and continuing creative human elements things will even out again.

On 5/19/2025 at 12:13 PM, AndyL said:

And I get it. I know this is going to come off as insensitive and I'm sure I'll catch some flac for this. But understand I'm not saying anything about the talent or people working for the company. For those people my heart goes out to them and at a time of growing soulless AI art and lack of creativity we cannot afford the loss or any more real talent.

The very unfortunate thing about those creative industries is that when those talented people get laid off, most of them will leave their industry regardless of their talent. A.I. encroachment is fuelling that, because a lot of ne'er-do-wells think it is a panacea. And the talent that lose their jobs will migrate to very different occupations simply to keep an income. There will not be a reason to come back even if those industries restart--once they are settled into something different, the stability will keep them there.In my field--Animation/cartooning--- 75-85% of the talent are currently out of work. AT LEAST 50% of those people are now GONE from the biz entirely, and won't be coming back, ever.There's no tangent back-up field to fall back on.Many are very experienced older-hands who, literally, don't know how to do anything else, and won't get hired again because younger talent are cheaper to bring on board ( so they think, ha!) A lot of newcomer talent might have landed gigs up to a couple of years ago, but being laid off sours them so badly they just give up on the industry.And because it is (wrongly?) believed that A.I can replace those people, those fields.........whole segments of the industry are now gone.And it gets even worse, because all the ancillary supporting industries like film/art school, equipment suppliers and things like software for such crafts,.........they are all obsolete and will vanish along with the crafts themselves. Think about it with a similar situation.? How many land-line telephones or phone booths do you see nowadays? If there's no art school providing toy design programmes.......how do you learn how to do it???It's getting bleak.

From a personal standpoint it's sad to see company that was once a staple in the collector community go belly up. And I hope and do believe these guys who still have a massive amount of talent and imagination and experience to offer will land on their feet and find another place to be in the collector community which is still huge but changing vastly. These guys possess abilities and vision that AI will never be able to imitate because it lacks that human factor and creativity. And anyone who's lost a job unexpectedly in a field they love knows how hard this must be for them and I do wish the best for them. But otherwise it's really not that surprising. When you're in making action figures and nothing you do matches any scale in particular or has an established articulation standard and vary so vastly in quality of sculpt and detail from one figure to the next really they might as well be statues because they just won't fit anywhere. I mean what good is putting articulation on a figure which is the key factor of establishing an action figure and making it of a size that's not compatible with even other figures in it's own line? Put a pair of fists on the guy and then make it where he doesn't look cool punching anything but air because nothing else matches his scale. In a world where prices are constantly rising and people are having to be more discerning on what they spend their money on this just seemed to be one of those luxuries people could do without. I personally stopped collecting them years ago when I bought the Thing figure which looked so amazing and much better than anything ML had done at the time only to be disappointed that it fit with literally nothing else I had in any of my collections so if I wanted to display it I would have had to give it it's own little space for which I had very little to spare. I mean it was just too massive to even pose with other MS heavy hitters. Even the likes of Hulk and Juggernaut. And that's when I realized it might have well just been a statue and never even bothered with the articulation. That's a place I do agree with McFarlane. You can make a showcase piece or you can make a toy to be played with. Not both.

I remember one time a guy who used to be on this site and actually did some work for my ex and I and still does about 90 percent of my custom work went in and suggested MS might do good to concentrate on mostly the times ML failed to do a character correctly which they often do or a character is badly in need of an updated or larger model such as the case with characters like Sasquatch or Abomination or even characters that ML hasn't done like Crimson Dynamo or A-Bomb. It made sense to me since they don't follow any scale they could do any of those figures in pretty close scale to ML and not even claim a scale. But then someone who actually worked at MS came on and pretty much attacked him saying he had no idea what he was talking about and basically called all customizers phonies and art thieves and such and suggested it would be an insult and disservice to the industry and to the fan community if they did something like that and just basically mind his own business. Which sounded funny to be because personally I would have jumped on an Abomination that looked better with the ML Hulk than any current ML Abomination figures or a Crimson Dynamo sitting at 7". I know many people who share the same opinion and I can almost guarantee they would have attracted a lot more people to add it to their ML collection than a random spattering of figures with random and virtually no scale just to sit on a shelf on an island on it's own. Anyway it was pretty brutal and it was bad enough that I felt like chiming in myself but my ex who I shared the account with at the time told me to stay out of it because he knew how opinionated I am so I did. But they got into it a few rounds and I think it ultimately ended up in him getting banned. But according to him there were many factors involved. Anyway I said all that not to call anyone out or throw shade at anyone I'm just saying maybe it was that kind of general attitude and MS and DS sticking too hard to this same old operating process and not really claiming any corner in the market that did have an effect on their final demise. I remember years ago when I stopped collecting them wondering just exactly what demo they were aiming for. Even at that time I was thinking this can't go on much longer. Especially with the price point they were trying to compete in which was still amazing considering how much plastic some of those humongous figures like Thing and Juggernaut used. But that just accentuates the question. How do you try to stay competitive in a field marked by 6 and 7 inch figures and not fit in with either? Again who is your target audience?

And I get it. I know this is going to come off as insensitive and I'm sure I'll catch some flac for this. But understand I'm not saying anything about the talent or people working for the company. For those people my heart goes out to them and at a time of growing soulless AI art and lack of creativity we cannot afford the loss or any more real talent. But more so I fault the people running the company and just maintaining the same status quo. I know it is generally felt that someone doing business in a certain field should not be critical of the operating practices of a business operating in a completely different and unrelated field but I feel I can have an opinion on business in general because I have been a part of two businesses that had to change and grow with the needs of the time. And I was the same way. I was too set in my ways to see through the trees. My first venture started out strong but reached a peak and begin to wane. It wasn't until I took on a partner and my partner/stepdaughter/my only daughter showed me how things were changing in the field and how we could change in the field to be competitive that we started to rise again. There was a cost and some pain but the payoff was well worth it. Similarly in our second venture my partner showed me where we had to do something different yet tap into and modernize an already existing area of demand. In the end one place has less business but huge profit margins while the other has much more business but larger operating costs and smaller profit margins. They are business that are often closely associated but they are completely different and they are both independently successful from each other. I feel like somewhere in the everchanging world of collecting and rising prices MS went from a place of "This figure is cool and even though I have no place for it and it doesn't properly fit into any of my collections or displays I'm going to buy it anyway because it's just too darn cool" to "This figure looks really cool but I have no place for it in my collection and it will not fit in with any of my displays so I actually don't need it". And no one saw it and even if someone did they were probably the creative people and the people who really loved the industry that were doing their jobs and they probably lacked the authority to convince the penny pinchers at the top to administer any change.