Here's where it all began, kids. Ask part of their pitch
to win the DC License, Kenner wanted to reassure DC Comics
that they had a long term vision for the line. Part of
that vision was to show what characters they planned on
making. Ironically, they only showed the first three years
of the line, which is all that ended up being made anyway.
In the inset I've enlarged the corner notations, showing
what year each assortment was planned for.
Interestingly, what they showed deviated a fair amount
from what actually got produced. To start with, Kenner
ended up making 12 figures in the first assortment, 11
in the second, and 10 in the third. So right off the bat
a good portion of the first and second wave suggestions
were combined. For the second year they left off two characters,
planning for the current "hot" heroes to fill
those gaps. By the third year they were ready to switch
the line over to being very Teen Titans centered, since
that was DC's best selling title at the time. You also
have to remember Kenner's overall strategy of the time,
which is very different than today: every character made
throughout the life of the line would continue to ship
until the line died. So Batman, Superman, Robin, etc would
still be shipping alongside the Titans. It's also curious
to note that "Batwoman (hyuk!)", Riddler, Catwoman,
Changeling, Wonder Girl and Lois Lane never made it into
the actual collection, even though they ended up making
twice as many characters as pitched. Supergirl and Kid
Flash were at least planned for 1987 before the line was
cancelled. We'll see that they had big plans for Lois,
though.
