My Figures sets - a bit of a fail

[CrimsonCleaver]

Been a long time since last posted but thought I’d share this opinion/observation (I know this isn’t new or anything).

I’ve been buying my son (who’s now 6) Pirates related sets for the last 3 years.

Now I know Playmobil is struggling somewhat and I think the My Figures set offered something that was actually really interesting for my son. BUT the execution is all wrong.

I mean we’ve only bought the 2 My Figures sets as theres only been the 2 pirate related ones:
1 - 70979 - 6 klicks included
2 - 71533 - 4 klicks included

The elephant in the room with these sets is that by having such varied klicks that basically all have different skin tones, the actual character creation from them is quite odd.

70979
1 male pirate - light skin
1 male pirate - slightly tanned
1 male soldier - black
1 female solider - light skin
1 female pirate - slightly tanned
1 female pirate - black

Not a single gender has more than 1 of the same skin tone, effectively meaning characters have to have either mix of female and male parts which don't work that well, or mix of skin tones, again end up looking odd.

71533
1 male pirate black - possibly swappable with other set but pirate v soldier
1 male pirate darker tone - no matches with other set
1 male pirate tanned - possibly swappable with other set
1 female pirate tanned - swappable with other set

So within the sets not very easy to swap, across, some possibles.

I think what Playmobil should do is either increase the klicks per set or try and confine skin tones more. Now I know that means they won’t  be as diverse, or if want to keep that least always have 2 that can mix and match easier. This then gives a buy in for customers, have more sets in same themes and then it works well. I do remmebr they sent a survey once about having all klicks be swappable and tbh think that is a good option. My son loves the My Figures (he actually just calls  them klicks). So we have a few individual bag figures and I bought spare parts etc so he can do more of this but thats quite niche.

The issue is children notice this and my son said he’d like to have a character that looks like a full one, eg same skin tone parts. What it becomes is that the swapping becomes limited and then the intention of the set dissipates. We resolve this with individual figures purchases and spare parts orders but the average customer wont do that.

Also Playmobil should throw in more accessories, eg beards, hats etc. that would make these sets more interesting.

Anyway, heres hoping Playmobil do more with My figures but unfortunately I think by next year my sob will have grown out of Playmobil.

[Klickteryx]

Basically they're throwing parts into a box and getting the consumer to put them together. They're trying to do what the original playmobil did which was swap a hat and be something specific. Playmobil is too detailed and specific to do this so it's a dumb idea.
The way it would work is to have one gender and one skin tone per set and a variety of parts but again what's the point if you're only reusing the head? The base figure would need to be a generic overalls/jumpsuit type which could be made into a firefighter, mountain rescue, parachutist, pilot etc and then you just have the hats, tanks to show which they're being. If the basic figure has "gloves" then they could be any colour with a head swap. Another would be a generic suit and they could be a police officer, businessman, scientist etc.
They dig themselves into a hole with diversity though, it doesn't work with the product, the fi?ures should've proved that where many of the characters are physically incompabtible as well as having weird colours like the aliens.

[tahra]

That was an obvious issue as soon as the first set appeared... It could be made better with torsos showing no skin color.. and still the arms would be a mess, since gloves don't really work for every klicky...

It would still require some care in choosing parts.. but with those changes it would actually serve the purpose.


The figures have the same problem - if  you don't have a poptub handy.. what are you gonna do with them, even if you have the full series at your disposal (I seriously doubt most people do)? Freaks, like the ones depicted in the leaflets?  What's the point?  I complain about this all the time on my reviews... (working on s26... don't hold your breath)

And that's not even looking at body types...

[Oliver]

Also Playmobil should throw in more accessories, eg beards, hats etc. that would make these sets more interesting.

I agree that they'd be better off releasing accessory/hair packs that could be used to create figures, because fundamentally the various Figures ranges don't work in my opinion, though I had wondered if children would care about them having mismatched skin-tones.

[doug]

I just got the Novelmore My Figure 71487 set.  The hands in that set were silver, blue, red, black, and dark brown.  All male torsos, with mostly high collars.  The dark brown hands could be paired with the dark brown head, but it could also plausibly serve as gloved hands with any other head.

Good selection of accessories too.

I would like to be believe Playmobil learned from the awful My Figures pirates, but  more likely the Novelmore set was just coincidentally better.

Next time 71487 is on good sale, I will buy more and easily beef up my kingdom with unique soldiers

[Rhalius]

I bought one of the My Figures pirate sets this year, main reason was it includes three women and female pirates are a bit rare. Now I finally have enough to at least properly crew a pirate ship if I'd want that. I don't think there's been another black female pirate at all even.

I agree the potential is limited, it's mainly the legs you have more freedom to move around some. I do like that it lets me give a woman a peg leg since again, something that I don't think that is anywhere else. I've never been able to take regular clickies apart.

The lackluster building is a bigger complaint from me though, the sides could have been longer and it could have had a full roof so you could even put a regular sized cannon on it.

What I would suggest for them to do, is release several smaller My Figures sets of the same theme, where all clickies in each pack have the same skintone and gender.
Buying more of them would still allow some more mixing and matching, mainly in accesoires.
This could serve as the 'pirate crew' set we usually see, but now there'd be like 3 of them. Could be two with three men of matching skin tones, and one with three women.
All with their own accesoires and a little more.

Like maybe one could have a table with a bench and some cards for them to sit around, another crew could have a larger rowboat or even a small pirate ship, and the third could have a campfire with meat on a spit.

Or maybe they could just ditch everything that's not clicky accesoires and instead double down on that instead, having extra belts, hats, weapons, armour, capes, etc.

I did find the figures set I got pretty sparse in accesoires.
5 weapons for 6 figures.
2x dynamite, why the heck is that even there in a pirate set? Replacing that with 2 pistols would already been a better use of the same amount of plastic.
Zero belts of any kind for them to wear.
Zero cuffs, bracelets or other stuff to put on their wrists.
One thing to put around their neck, just one white collar. Could also have added like a necklace, cape, scarf or whatever.
Why even put a crab, monkey and rat in a pack with few accesoires? Especially that little monkey is in almost every set already, there's better options.

Still, I am happy with the clickies, I did modify them some and used some spare accesoires for them too. I made the redcoat woman a pirate, gave those white legs with boots to the soldier and gave her a peg leg instead. It's more like she stole that red coat or something. Gave her a belt around her waist too with a sword in it, and a gold necklace and bracelets.

[CrimsonCleaver]

Forgot to get back to this thread. We today played with the latest my Figures pirate set and my son ended up using spare parts and had alot more fun. The favourite was the grey haired dandy pirate, I think those work best for swapping around.
Playmobil just need to be more generous with parts.
Good point on skin toneless bodies and arms, that would work, gloves etc.
The legs really are the most swappable element.
I do think they should make all Klickies figures type in sets and it might encourage this to work a bit better.
It is good to see more female pirates, those are getting more interest and my daughter gravitates to them (we dont push it, just something she naturally goes for).
Tahra’s right, they keep showing freaks as what you can do which is a bit nonsensical and rarely what my son does with these, he tends to want to create characters that look intensional, not something the bully kid from Toy story would do

[Macruran]

I do think they should make all Klickies figures type in sets

This is a good idea. I'm not a swapper-outer myself but more modularity would probably increase appeal for children somewhat. It's the key to L*go's success.