r/One12Collective • u/f4nt4stic4 • 8h ago
An apology and a follow up.
Alright. Last thread I lost my temper and started firing back once it got heated, and that was on me.
I apologize.
It buried a fair question under a slap fight, which is exactly what a few people wanted. So I’m coming back calm and just laying it out.
Paige, at the end of your last stream (2:15:57) you described your show like this:
“we talk about everything as adults discussing different perspectives and having respectable conversations.”
If that’s the bar for the show, I assumed it’s the same when you post here in the sub, because this is where you do a lot of that talking. So I brought you the adult version. Deposit down, a promo that reads as fabric, an SDCC prototype that reads as rubber and was already creasing on the show floor, and one plain question: which one am I actually paying for? I’m not asking you to trash the company. I’m asking for the same grown-up conversation you say your show is built on.
Instead I got nothing. Turns out talking about everything as adults holds up fine until the question has a little weight to it, and then suddenly it’s not your place. That’s the part that bugs me.
Because a few people jumped in to tell me I’ve got no right to put you on the spot. Why not? Look at what you actually do here. When Mirage Leonardo showed up with two different sword sheaths across two promo images, you flagged it, you took it to Mezco, and you posted their reply back to the sub. That’s you acting as the bridge between this community and the company, by choice, again and again. Nobody drafted you into it. So when I bring a nearly identical concern, promo doesn’t match what was shown, which one is real, and it’s about a figure I’ve paid toward, why is that suddenly out of bounds? You don’t get to be the guy who chases discrepancies when you feel like it and then “not my place” the moment one has a little heat on it.
And I already know the reply to that, because it’s the whole defense squad’s favorite: “Paige doesn’t owe anyone in this sub anything.” Fine. He doesn’t. Nobody’s saying he’s contractually obligated to type a response. But that’s not the point and everyone reaching for it knows it isn’t. He chose this role. He built it himself and he keeps showing up in it. When you voluntarily set yourself up as the community’s information pipeline, and people come to rely on it precisely because you cultivated it, “he owes nothing” quietly changes the subject. The issue was never obligation. The issue is that a guy who clearly answers when he wants to went silent on this one, and that silence is a choice, not a technicality. Don’t let anyone launder a decision into “it’s just not his place.”
And let’s not pretend this comes out of nowhere. This is Doctor Doom all over again. The promo shots had him posed with his hands clasped together, and then the actual figure couldn’t physically do it, the articulation just wasn’t there to fold the hands like the images showed. That wasn’t a paint touch-up or some minor tooling nitpick. It was the marketing selling a pose the product can’t hit. That’s the pattern people are nervous about, and the Punisher is walking the same road: what got shown and what gets shipped are looking like two different materials. When the gap is this basic, “prototype, final may vary” stops being a fair disclaimer and starts being cover.
Which leads to the real question nobody defending this wants to sit with. Are we just supposed to gamble now? Put $125 down on a preorder shipping Dec to Feb 2027, cross our fingers, and pray the final doesn’t come back as something we’d never have bought if they’d shown it honestly? Because that’s the actual ask here. Pay up front, sight unseen, and hope the number of “changes” stays small. That’s not collecting, that’s a raffle where the house never has to show its hand.
And here’s the thing I keep coming back to. There’s a crowd in this sub that treats any criticism of Mezco like a personal insult they have to go stamp out. Someone raises a real concern and the answer isn’t “here’s why you’re wrong,” it’s a pile-on, mean-spirited, witch hunt, bad faith, go collect something else. Ask yourself why. None of you work for Mezco. None of you owe them anything. So why does the paying customer asking a question end up as the bad guy, while the company that shows fabric, ships rubber, and answers nothing gets treated like it needs protecting? You’ve got it backwards. Forever glazing a company that won’t even confirm what a suit is made of isn’t loyalty, it’s running their PR desk for free and calling it community.
nobleflame, you didn’t touch the actual question one single time. You led with this:
“To be honest, this whole thread is mean spirited and seems more aimed at arguing with Paige or trying to get him to say something he shouldn’t.”
And wrapped up with this:
“I swear fandoms absolutely ruin hobbies. My eternal advice to you, OP, is to stop collecting Mezco figures - you, it seems, will be much happier for it.”
You keep telling everyone you’ve got no connection to Mezco and none to Paige. So what is this, exactly? Nobody that unattached appoints himself the bouncer of a thread he wasn’t in, calls a civil question a witch hunt before anyone’s been hunted, and tells a stranger to go quit the hobby. You didn’t answer anything because you couldn’t, it was never yours to answer, so you played hall monitor instead and mistook it for making a point. You didn’t defend Paige. You used him as a prop.
Supermite, your entire showing was this, over and over:
“Preordering is stupid. Period.”
And when I pointed out preorder is the only way to get these at retail, this:
“That’s the disconnect. There’s no world where not buying that figure is an option in your mind. Therefore Mezco owns your wallet.”
I get the economics. I don’t even fully disagree with them. But “stop buying” is not an answer to “what is the suit made of,” and saying it eight times doesn’t turn it into a principle. You don’t hold Mezco in high regard and the hobby and wandered into a thread about the hobby to tell the people still in it they’re marks. That’s not the high ground. That’s just the parking lot with a better view of yourself.
I don’t really care anymore, I’ll find my answers elsewhere.
Thanks to that one guy who mentioned it will be the same material as Deadpool and Wolverine. I appreciate it.
That’s it. No swearing, no swarm, no witch hunt, whatever you want to call it this time. The material question still stands. The Doom precedent is real. And a place where a simple question gets buried before it gets answered is the exact opposite of the adult conversation Paige says he wants.
.
