Michael,

You sir are a wellspring of info, and it is most appreciated.  I hope to be able to pick up Adora.  I wonder if demand for these figures is high, the production run is small, or a combination of both?  Either way, it is upsetting that I can't pick up the toys easily, as my kids love the few that I have been able to score

Both interesting and bad news coming out of Wonder Festival Winter 2011 and Bandai's Tamashii Features 2011 show...

First the bad news:  Apparently Kaiyodo's Sci-Fi Revoltech action figure line will not be doing any of the "big players" in the Toho Studio's line-up, a planned Jet Jaguar SFR figure has been cancelled, and a Larva form of Mothra is also in limbo.  Sounds awfully like Kaiyodo got their license pulled.

On the upside, Max Factory will be putting out more stuff from THE BIG-O.  Additional BIG-O Figma character figures are apparently planned to join R. Dorothy, and the die-cast Big-O will have same scale vinyl figures of Big-Duo and Big-Fau to be released this May and June respectively in Japan. 

[ItsAllTrue.Net Link]

My guesses for the new Figma figures will be Roger Smith, Angel, Schwartzwald, and maybe Alan Gabriel or Norman Burg.

As for who got the action figure license for the big guys in Toho's kaiju pantheon:  [Teatime with Godzilla Blog]

They did a good job with the Big-G's head and skin textures, but as Thom Price mentions above, the articulation points kill it for me too.  Super-Mecha-Godzilla '93 and Moguera '94 look great though.

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It's a bit of both. The line was originally just going to be a few figures for the collector's market to celebrate the MotU 25th anniversary. But the line really took off, so Mattel decided to continue it. However, without any associated media like a cartoon or a movie, there isn't enough retailer or mass market demand for Mattel to produce these figures as a retail line.

So Mattel is selling these direct to customer, but the budget for the line is reportedly not very big, and since the burden for overproduction would be on them rather than on the retailers, they are trying to keep things zero-inventory. The low production led to some of the earlier figures selling out really quickly, the hype of the quick sellouts led to more interest and awareness of the line from both collectors and speculators, which led to quicker sellouts, and so on. Mattel started a subscription for the figures to give them a baseline production number to work with, but that led to less figures being available on the on-sale dates, which led to even quicker sellouts, and the cycle continued. I think Mattel has finally figured out the right number of figures to produce, and given that you can find some of the later figures on eBay below cost if you are patient, the market has hit saturation.

On top of that, the website/fulfillment company that Mattel is using to handle the sale of these figures kind of sucks, adding to the difficulty of buying figures.

Anyway, it looks like She-Ra is going to be released at Toys R Us in a 2-pack with the 90's Supergirl, and possibly online at the same time as Swift Wind. They have the line up through August 2011 set, so it looks Swift Wind is coming out in the 4th quarter of 2011.

That's what kills my interest in most action figures -- they always tend to look like cyborgs to my eyes, due to the joints at the articulation points

If that's a 3.75" figure I think it hides the joints pretty well especially compared to the 6" Marvel figures who had horribly obvious joints.

That said, I don't have a major problem with the new Hulk figure's articulation.

Re: The older Hulk figure posted above - Egads! Did a car race through a puddle of mud in front of the Hulk before snapping that picture?

Very nice, Ryan. My son would love that.