>>10048847Uhhh, I mean there's a general correctness to what you stated, but also stuff that isn't really right, at all. Mostly the bit about Playmates discovering they had the master license...no they knew full well they had the master license. That's how they were able to keep everyone else at bay for all those years. NECA kind of did a loophole with their Mirage figures, and it was during one of Playmates' lulls in doing anything (I believe this was right after the CG movie).
They DID get mad about the figures and to counter them, they prototyped their own Mirage figures, which is what shut down NECA's wave 2. These were spite creations and never even saw the light of day. But it was enough of a "we're still using the license" that they could throw their weight around.
And Playmates still had the license, so it didn't really run out on them. It's just that as NECA was wedging open the door to get to do more stuff (at first by playing nice with Playmates and being allowed to do the SDCC sets for a few years). I remember one of the old Pixel Dan and Randy videos where they even had to ask Playmates' permission to do the TMNT Sliders. The popularity of those SDCC sets, I believe, was noticed by Nick, who started to wrangle things from Playmates a bit. It had to have happened really fast, cause after that toon SDCC set came out, I think things behind the scenes went into overdrive when it turned into retail options and the movie stuff, etc.
It was a lot of back and forth and corporate BS ultimately. But Playmates was the eye of that bitter storm.
