Round 6 Availability
This is an important area in the sense that unless you can get your hands on the figures it doesn’t matter how good a roster or how good the designs are. It’s less important if you’re reading this article two years after they’ve been released as your only hope will be on eBay or collector’s events anyway.
It’s important to note that both the Heels and Faces and Wrestling MegaStars are indie toy lines so put simply, both their availabilities are tricky at best and instantly much harder and more expensive to acquire than official WWE figures.
Wrestling MegaStars were available for fans to get their hands on much earlier than the Heels and Faces toys, but that’s because although they’ve both been a thing for a couple of years now, they’re two separate products and have different release dates. The WM have been a drip feed of releases where as the H&F dropped the first series of five figs all at once.
Certainly there was a long wait between initial pre-orders of the Heels and Faces figs and then finally getting into collectors hands which I believe was around a year. Maybe just under or just over, but certainly in that range. ZST was good at keeping fans up to date with their progress through social media and promises that after this initial batch that future releases will come about quicker.
This said, it’s still the case that many figures announced as being for 2022 have yet to emerge beyond initial announcements, but this period of perhaps over optimism in 2021 is hopefully learned from and they’ll now know how long the process takes to get more accurate estimates of how long things will take.
Being in the UK it was first said that the Heels and Faces weren’t planned to ship out here, but after a little while ZST found a way to make it so. The Wrestling MegaStars are from Chella Toys (or at least initially were) who are based in the UK, and they had arranged options for US collectors to get the figures straight away which gave them a slight edge for a little while.
I don’t know the details behind the situation but at some point in mid 2022 Chella Toys may have hit some personal related concerns or something else that affected the business and fans started noticing that orders were reaching being months late. Wrestling Trader who has worked with Chella along the way has now taken over things from Chella Toys and fingers crossed the distribution issues will now be resolved (at the time of writing this hasn’t quite happened yet, but may do shortly).
I’ll be honest I’m not a fan of the way either company do their figure releases. When the Nick Aldis figure first came onto my radar I went on the Chella website and ordered it and a few days later it turned up. Since then as new figures get announced, and this is the same with both ZST and WM, they announce a figure and at some point put it on pre-order. You’ll then have to make a decision if you want the figure and pre-order it and they won’t send it out for months. This is because they’re judging how many to make based on demand and whilst this makes sense for them it’s not good for fans if there are long delays.
Call me old fashioned, but I don’t like this way of them making things to order. I’ve often pre-ordered video games, but if you do that and then it gets cancelled or delayed you can usually get a refund if you’re sensible and order from a big retailer. Or alternatively I can choose not to pre-order a video game and just buy it when it releases on its release date. With indie products like these they’ve made it so that the only way you have a chance of getting them is to get them when they are available to pre-order. By the time a product actually releases its far too late to decide you want one.
This has always struck me as a bit dumb as when you see other people hyping about a new figure being released you can’t then decide ‘ooh I want that’ as you’ll need to have ordered it six months or a year earlier. They need to at least have some that are available to purchase upon the figures release for people that didn’t pre-order. And I get that they may worry that they may produce more figures than are wanted, or that people may just not pre-order, but that’s where they should offer a pre-order bonus or early bird price to incentivise pre-orders.
But I get it. I understand it’s how a lot of indie companies put out indie products, but it can leave fans having paid for months or years with nothing in their hands to show for their money. This will make some potential collectors sit on the fence and completionists may decide to jump off collecting the figures if they feel they’re risking too much money in pre-orders or may miss getting a figure that has a limited release.
I’m gonna call this one a draw on the basis that they’ve both seen delays to things initially said, but to date Zombie Sailor Toys have had better communication so although I’ve waited a year for figures I didn’t feel I wasn’t going to get them. With Chella Toys, for whatever the reason may be, they have failed to communicate for long periods and not replied to emails which damages trust. I understand that there may be a good reason for this that I’m not fully aware of, and for the people involved I hope things resolve or are as good as can be if there are personal reasons involved. This said, as a customer I don’t mind a delay here or there, but would expect communication, so would say the WM loses here, but will still call it a draw for two reasons. Initially Chella did deliver things in an OK time and had some figures quite quickly. And also because Wrestling Trader is now taking over the Wrestling MegaStars figures and have been very open with their communication, and I won’t hold Chella’s issues against them. Soon we’ll see if they start to make good on the items ordered through Chella, so will update this article once I have the fuller picture.
Winner: Draw
Overall Result
So, after all the analysis, the question is which indie retro Hasbro style wrestling figure maker is the best? In many ways it’s super close, and the truth is both lines are great for collectors and in that sense they both win and more importantly the fans win. But you’re not reading this article for a tie are you?
Both figure lines have assembled an excellent roster to date and the future looks bright for both as long as delays or other issues don’t prevent us getting what they’ve both promised. This isn’t like WWE vs AEW or WWF vs WCW form back in the day and I think collectors could easily get their favourite wrestlers from both lines without having to pick one.
But as I said previously for me the design of the figures is what I think is most important here. Whilst you wouldn’t care to have an excellently designed figure of wrestlers you don’t care for, as both have great rosters this is a question of which figures are better designed. As it is and with Andre the Giant being a wrestler being made by both companies that we’ve been able to see the designs for I feel it’s clear that Zombie Sailor Toys have the more polished and accomplished designs. This is also apparent from all the figures currently released. Whilst the Wrestling Megastars have improved since the initial Nick Aldis figure, there is a level of inconsistency in the final designs of the figures and a feeling of things being slightly off which isn’t the case with the Heels and Faces in the same way.
I’m confident that the WM will continue to get better with each series and this will be something fun to revisit in the future in a year or two to see where all the currently announced figures have ended up at production wise, but for now I give this battle to Zombie Sailor because the actual figures hit the mark better.
Overall Winner: Zombie Sailor Toys Heels and Faces
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