Quoted By:
Have you ever felt pressured to abandon your ideals for money, DC gen? Did you have to make the choice to shatter them or be fractured yourself? Let me spin you a tale of how art always gives in to money in the end.
In the early era of the DC Multiverse toy line--in 2020 and 2021--the blissful years of ignorance, Todd seems to have been genuinely reinvigorated in his love of action figures: their detailed sculpts, their artistic vision and unique style. It must have been miserable for him to see the curses lobbed at this toy lines by people who refused to even try the line because they were articulated differently than Marvel Legends, that they had ball wrists and ankles rather than hinge joints like Hasbro offerings, that the designs were too detailed or the characters chosen too new and edgy. Yet even with all the obvious suffering it caused, he still held that new molds, artistic sculpts and cool designs were the philosophy of toy design to go with.
By the middle years of DC Multiverse, in 2022, this philosophy was already fracturing. Most established DC collectors were refusing to buy figures based on any new comic storylines. They had their favorite storylines fossilized from the 80s and 90s at the latest and all but a core contingent who supported Todd's taste in cool designs would refuse his figures. Many conspired to trash the line as peg-warmers as shipping container prices skyrocketed and it cost more and more to get figures out and maintain good distribution. Additionally, DC was putting out one failed DCEU movie after another, leaving him to make movie figures that wouldn't sell. And with that lay the ever-insidious threat that his own core fans were getting fed up of buying figures for $19.99 only to see them plummet to clearance prices a few months later. Many had begun holding off and waiting for these price drops so they would not feel they had been ripped off by later sales down the line.
