Matty's newest joke...

Skirtgate... How can I describe Mattel's answer to it? 

MOTUC Fans,
If you were at Power-Con, saw the video from our Mattypalooza panel, or read theNews story here, then you know we revealed some ridiculously awesome new figures, including Scorpia, Blade, and Glimmer.
When we got to Glimmer, some of you asked about her skirt and we promised to look into it. We did and here’s the deal…


First, the issue is that some of our newer female figures (Shakoti, Octavia, Glimmer) have wider and/or longer skirts compared with 2012’s Marlena or the paint master from the Four Horsemen for our 2014 Scorpia figure.

THEY ARE NOT SKIRTS... THEY ARE WEIRD FLAPS!!

Castaspella is the only one with a SKIRT on this pic.

Marlena
We spoke with design manager Ruben Martinez and toy designer Mario Aguirre and they explained Marlena was able to feature a bodysuit-style tunic because she doesn’t articulate at the waist. As Mario tells us, “Marlena has a full bodysuit and because this suit covers her entire torso, it has more rigidity, which helps the suit curve more closely to her body. To do this, it meant articulation of her abdomen and waist were sacrificed in the process.”

"To do this, it meant articulation of her abdomen and waist were sacrificed in the process."
Why can I twist her waist again?

Scorpia

Now in the case of Scorpia, what you’ve seen to date is the paint master provided to our design team by the Four Horsemen. A paint master is a hand-painted, hand-sculpted prototype figure that has zero articulation. From the paint master, the design team creates a figure that’s ready for production. Once the paint master is converted to an articulated plastic figure, features like how the tunic or skirt hangs naturally get modified, especially when articulation is added. We think you’d agree our design team does an amazing job staying true to the design of the paint masters, but it’s nearly impossible to machine-produce articulated figures with the same level of detail as an unarticulated prototype and stay at our current price point. So please keep in mind when you see a paint master that it’s a pre-production sculpt that will almost never look like a production piece.

 Again this is BULL... I'd say the BS levels are Lower than a Politician, but a bit higher than a Tumblr pop culture critic. Then again, they say a picture is worth more than a thousand words.

Yup! It's impossible to do... Not even the male figures can do it...

Glimmer
So what about Glimmer? Fan feedback told us that articulation was one of the most important features you wanted in our figures, so the choice was made to give her an articulated waist and forgo the tighter fitting bodysuit-style tunic. At this point, she’s ready to go into production so what we showed at Power-Con is how she’ll be manufactured.

I can understand that she has gone to production and nothing can be done, but the BS spouted here is incredible!! As shown in the picture above

Going Forward
Ruben and Mario have completed a thorough investigation and every alternative meant we’d have to sacrifice articulation to stay at our current pricing, which is just not an option. So, for the foreseeable future, female figures will continue to have more of a skirt than a fitted bodysuit.
The good news is that 2014 is going to be our best year to date for releases. Be right here the afternoon of Thursday October 11 and the morning of Friday October 11 for more reveals straight from New York Comic-Con!
–Matty

These guys had NO IDEA about this... and they completed a "Thorough" investigation... (I'm betting it was REALLY Thorough all the 15 minutes to write down that "news article". ) The fact that they simply claim it's impossible when, they HAVE ACTUALLY DONE IT ALREADY!!

OK, so I'll humor them and believe their story. If so, then why not say to the four horsemen:

Hey guys! this Glimmer is beautiful, but since it's impossible to us to make the actual body suit, can you make this front flap look a bit more skirt-like or tunic-like. How about making the flap look more like the flap on the Street Fighter Chick, Chun-Li!!

That would totally help the design team translate the design into better toys.

                                                     -The imaginary TG in this theoretical scenario


Sadly, neither the real Toyguru nor the People in Design have done this. I'm sure the fourhorsemen would have helped into making these toys as awesome as they can possibly be. Then again, Mattel simply does not care enough about their products... Unless they are Barbie or Hot Wheels/





I'm going to bring back something from 2010:

What can I say. These things happen. I could mention the hundreds of things we do catch and correct before going to production, or all the time we spent making small tweaks based on fan comments such as Skeletor's purple feet or trying to see if both Roboto's arms could be detached (which we didn't have time for but we really tried on!), but none of that changes that in the end a mistake was made.

If things like these is what they don't catch... I mean Skirtgate has been around ever since ADORA was released. It's not like it happened the other day... Seriously, Mattel makes me go

Especially since they are giving Codpieces to Women...

Any Similarity to MOTUC Females is purely coincidental.

The worst part is that there is a part of the customers that is asking us to NOT Complain out of fear that Mattel will not make Female Figures because of it. To me that is wrong. Simply because it would reward incompetence and give Mattel a free pass and perpetuate the erroneous notion that they are "doing us a huge favor by making these toys".