Hopeful about future film-based action figures...

I recently went and saw the new Watchmen movie with some friends. A couple days later I was in a comicshop and noticed that they were selling a new line of action figures for the Watchmen movie that looked really nice. These figures might have been direct market only or something like that which in effect means that they were only being supplied at this time to comicshops or any other independent retailer who chose to order them from the Diamond catalogue. (Diamond is the name of the company that supplies merchandise - mostly comics and comic-related - to independent retailers across North America)

The reason that I bring this up here is that if I am right about the distribution of this line of figures, then maybe we could be seeing a precedent here; maybe we night start seeing a trend of better quality figures being offered tying in with new feature film releases that are only available through the comicshop and collectables retailer market. Sure these could be offered in addition to the standard lower quality mass market offerings that you see hanging on the shelves of your local Toys R Us, but that would at least be something. Face it, you are never going to replace the mass market retailer in that area. And the higher quality - higher price tag figure won't fly with parents looking to just buy a toy, but there is room for both versions of an item in the marketplace. With the future release of so many Marvel comics based feature films, like the Captain America movie and the Avengers movie, I can only hope that by then the option of buying better quality figures will have caught on. If not, then I guess we will have to rely on Hasbro or whoever has the rights to Marvel figures by then to supply us with something desirable based on the Marvel movies.