Some exciting news this week! The DC Comics toy license has found its way back to Mattel. There are multiple articles out there at this point that cover all of the background on this unexpected development, so I'm going to use our blog space here to share some initial off-the-cuff thoughts of ours. One of the things I enjoy about my personal collection is consistency. Personally, I only collect 1:18 (3.75-inch) scale these days, so my first standard across the board is size. So I'm hoping that Mattel will give us plenty of figures in this classic, traditional, and well-loved scale. I'm also hoping that they will circle back to and tie in with their DC Comics Multiverse line that was really finding it's way just before it was cancelled. I'm thinking of the Michael Keaton Batman 89 (masked and unmasked) figures, the Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman and Danny DeVito Penguin, and the Christopher Reeve Superman and Terence Stamp Zod figures that came out around 2014. The Arkham Asylum figures were excellent as well, especially with their crossover figures like the 66 Batman, Batman Beyond, and others, and I would love to see more figures with similar construction and look-and-feel, again, for consistency with my existing collection. I would also love to see more screen-accurate vehicles and playsets with the features that we see in the movies and TV shows. I get a little tired sometimes of seeing random, made-up versions of Batmobiles and other gimmicky vehicles on store shelves. I'm all for "making toys fun again," which seems to be a current movement in the industry, but I would really like to see at least some portion of the line dedicated to those of us who still want to immortalize what we see on film as plastic idols on our toy room shelves. And I'm focusing a little bit on Batman here (a theme I've been revisiting in recent weeks), but I would also like to see Mattel embrace a range of classic and traditional characters, such as a full Justice League, Justice Society of America, the Snyderverse, etc., in addition to the inevitable new onslaught of James Gunn-era designs. And I have nothing against this new upcoming era... I just have a whole lot of gaps in my existing collection from past eras that I really hope Mattel will help us out with as part of this new DC renaissance.