This was not terribly surprising and much of the speculation I saw on Twitter turned out to pretty much nail the announcement. The basic run down is Mattel did not receive the number of subscriptions they wanted to reach for the DC Universe Club Infinite Earths action figure subscription. When subscription ordering closed, Mattel stated they needed a couple weeks to figure out where to go from there.

Mattel announced the result of those internal discussions on Facebook today. The subscription will move forward. If you decide to purchase any figures on the day of the sale, those figures will be more expensive than you would have paid with the subscription. In addition, the subscription will open back up temporarily for people to order. More details on that are forthcoming. Finally, the fan choice subscription figure was also announced. That figure will be Metron in his Mobius Chair.

Check out the full announcement after the break.
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One of the surprise announcements out of SDCC 2011 for Mattel was the discontinuation of DC Universe’s distribution to retail in the form of connect n’ collect/build-a-figure waves. No more build-a-figures would be offered at retail and instead the line would shift to more popular character selections shipped on a unique schedule. That left a hole for MattyCollector.com to fill by selling the figures of characters the line had not yet gotten to along with the more obscure character selections that tend not to do well with retail, but are popular among collectors.

  

In theory, this wasn’t a bad idea. Mattel set up a 9 month subscription that would feature nine monthly figures starting in April of 2012. There would also be three quarterly oversized figures and one club exclusive oversized figure as well. The latter, of which, would be decided by online fan poll based on a selection of revealed characters including, but not limited to, Black Lantern Swamp Thing and Shaggy Man.

The linch pin of this subscription, though, was that a specific number of subscriptions would need to be sold to make it viable. Mattel setup a thermometer to keep track of the relative number of subscriptions on MattyCollector.com to give people an informed view of how close they were to the goal.

Read more about the state of the subscription after the jump.
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