Motto:
""Excessive force is not necessary.""
Oh you just HAD to get me started on Mattel, didn't you!
While I enjoyed the 2000 line immensely, the incompetent handling of the line by Mattel was a disaster of epic fail. He Man and Skeletor in all their unecessary incarnations and repaints CLOGGED the pegs, while other characters like Mekanek, Merman, Evilynn etc could only be found after hair-tearingly frustrating and time consuming hunts that many times ended up with one going on line and paying insane prices for them. Important characters from the show such as Clawful, Hordak, Webstor, Stinkor, etc were not released at all, except later in the form of those expensive, brittle little statues ( I think they called them "staction figures" ).
Vehicles that were at best craptastic, and could not seat many of the figures because of the dramatic positioning of their legs. Then the show cancelled before the current story was even finished.
I was stoked when I heard that there was a classics line coming out that gave us greater detail while sticking more to the old school body form. But lo and behold, for all the reasons cited by SentinelA, this became an impossible dream. My local comic shops won't even stock those things, and with the availability issues I can see why. I think the economy has broken me of the habit of spending $20-$30 + on a $10.00 figure. And that's what Mattel's inability to gauge supply and demand has forced people to do. It's 2001 all over again!
I love MOTU, but I HATE Mattel.