Is a Pepe Plush a dream or reality?

[Drtooth]

As for Disney Stores, it seems more a supply and demand issue, maybe marketing too. The stores are in premium locations, the foot traffic is mostly young kids, so with the cost of the space they really can't take a chance and need to sell masses of current stuff like HSM, Hannah, Pirates etc. When Disney first bought the Mupps, the UK stores were full of plushes, stationery, clothes (no Pepe though) but the kids just walked past. How is a 6 year old supposed to know the Muppets? Disney of course made no attempts to promote the Muppets to them, or put any of the shows on their channels. Yet, it would have been judged from that time that they just flopped due to lack of popularity - crazy! Ideal solution would have been to have Kermit visit some stores, put some Muppet clips on the video walls - instead they use it to try sell tickets to the parks and nobody is going to spend thousands of bucks on whim so thats stupid.

Well, as far as the classic gang goes, you can only get Mickey, Donald, Goofy, ETC as part of Mickey's Clubhouse products. Personally, I'm offended that hot Topic has all this cool Disney afternoon merchandise (They even had a Monterey Jack Keychain, and I'm told a Darkwing Duck T-Shirt) and the Disney Store hasn't really bothered trying. Though I give them credit for the 2 Scrooge McDuck plushes they had in the last 3 years. So you basically see the movie of the year, sometimes a movie "Released from the Disney Vault", and mostly Princess/HSM/Hanna for girls, Power Rangers, and Pirates. And Cars, but I don't know how much longer that's gonna last.

Well, it all seems rather depressing to me. But even from an objective point of view the muppets have a mega potential. All of the characters you seem to recognize in real people in real life.............that's what makes it so strong.
Anyway, I blame the Japanes and the Chinese with their ugly manga cartoons like chin chan and dragonball Z. Maybe we should combine the ingredients.....Take that Kermit-san, You will never get me Pepe Z! Mmm lame...........

Uh... I don't want to dignify that with a response, but I'm going to have to. You see, those kinds of things aren't popular for kids anymore. Mostly late teens and adults. Kids would rather watch real garbage like Hannah Montana. I couldn't blame the Asian market for the failure of Disney to mass Market the Muppets at all. I'm sure kids would still pick that kind of stuff up, and I'm shocked they haven't made an attempt to make preteen, mid-teen Miss Piggy merchandise. Seems they could if they wanted. Besides, Disney clearly wants no hand in anime at all. Their mishandling of the Myazaki theatrically released films is proof of it.

 

[Luke]

So you basically see the movie of the year, sometimes a movie "Released from the Disney Vault", and mostly Princess/HSM/Hanna for girls, Power Rangers, and Pirates. And Cars, but I don't know how much longer that's gonna last.

Yeah i have to say i'm so suprised to see them still concentrating on Cars in stores after all this time, and the emphasis on Pirates and Power Rangers too is surprising, i'd expect something but they have major displays for them. There have even been Disney movies since then that haven't had the store space. It must be Disneys policy to just choose a few major brands and stick to them, even if the on screen stuff isn't as high profile after that. They seem to want to be your one stop source for example Pirates stuff, while not worrying too much about exposing you to sny "Disney" brand.

I remember back in the day they were much more focused on the Classic Disney brand itself. Everything had Disney written across it, they had the music playing, you'd walk in and the staff would be holding Mickey plushes. There's none of that here now.

 

[Beauregard]

I know that I have seen more Muppet products in stores this year than I ever have before...I'm pretty sure they are slowly working their way up towards something that will sell well.

Pepe is a very complicated shape character for a plush, with arms and antlers and mouth all over the place.

 

[Drtooth]

Yeah i have to say i'm so suprised to see them still concentrating on Cars in stores after all this time, and the emphasis on Pirates and Power Rangers too is surprising, i'd expect something but they have major displays for them. There have even been Disney movies since then that haven't had the store space. It must be Disneys policy to just choose a few major brands and stick to them, even if the on screen stuff isn't as high profile after that. They seem to want to be your one stop source for example Pirates stuff, while not worrying too much about exposing you to sny "Disney" brand.

Cars was a real success. Why, when the movie first premired, you couldn't find a single Die Cast car left on shelf pegs. While clearly not my favorite Pixar film, I agree that it was a huge Marketing bonanza. I wonder if it's even bigger than Toy Story was. Probably not, and if so, not by much.

But then again, I remember seeing them release a Humphry the Bear bean bag. No Disney character is more obscure than Humphry the bear.

I just wish they'd pull a lot of the focus on HSM and stuff like that and get into more classic works. Seeing Huey, Dewey, and Louie plush kinda felt like they're trying to get back to that. But very slowly. Still, I'm disappointed they didn't have a Darkwing Duck or Talespin Baloo Bean bag or T-shirt yet.

Oddly, enough, the only times I've seen Muppet stuff at the Disney Store, it was at one location, and it was always clearance items. I got a couple t-Shirts a few years back. But other than a couple shirts a while back and that Kermit and Piggy pillow, I haven't seen anything there.

It makes me wonder... How distant does Disney want to keep the muppets from every other project? Halmark, who makes the Disney Orniments dropped the licence and Carlton picked it up. But before the TMS DVD's there are all these adds for Disney products. It's all pretty confusing and inconsistant. I see a lot of Merchandise like T-shirts and Orniments in other stores, but Disney seems to be the one place that doesn't.

 

[Bear Man]

But then again, I remember seeing them release a Humphry the Bear bean bag. No Disney character is more obscure than Humphry the bear.

You don't mean Humphrey B. Bear, do you? If so, there are generations of Australians to whom he is anything but obscure! If that's the guy, I had no idea Disney had picked him up as a property...

 

[Drtooth]

You don't mean Humphrey B. Bear, do you? If so, there are generations of Australians to whom he is anything but obscure! If that's the guy, I had no idea Disney had picked him up as a property...

He's not the animated Bear that runs amok around a camp ground (similar but a lot less smart than Yogi), and sometimes harasses Donald, is he?

Still, I'm disappointed by the lack of Ludwig VonDrake merchandise.

 

[Bear Man]

He's not the animated Bear that runs amok around a camp ground (similar but a lot less smart than Yogi), and sometimes harasses Donald, is he?

Still, I'm disappointed by the lack of Ludwig VonDrake merchandise.

No, the Australian Humphrey B. Bear was/is a guy in a suit, who used to host a preschooler TV show (as well as any bear who can't talk can host a show)... www.humphreybear.com

 

[Drtooth]

Well, the animated one was the one I was referring to. The character did pop up in an episode of Rescue Rangers, "Bearing up Baby." I believe. I guess this was before the big Beany Bag crash, because they were trying to make as many obscure characters as possible for collectors. Still, I wish they tried Ludwig Von Drake or Gyro Gearloose instead.

It's a shame we haven't seen a single Muppet (except for Bear) at the Disney Store so far. I was hoping to at least see Bean bags similar to the Disney world ones. Out of curiosity, when does Sababa's licence end?

 

[frogboy4]

It's a shame we haven't seen a single Muppet (except for Bear) at the Disney Store so far. I was hoping to at least see Bean bags similar to the Disney world ones. Out of curiosity, when does Sababa's licence end?

I'll be passing by the store in an hour on my way to a meeting. I rarely go in anymore. It's a shame that most store managers and employees don't know that Disney owns the Muppets! Also, when Oz was on ABC they didn't even stick a poster in their window as is done for so many other such ABC Disney projects. I did get a Kermit & Piggy mug a while back. That's something!

It would be nice if they'd carry beans. I could see a bunch of Kermit beans in a bin. That is if they didn't want to stock a Kermit plush. They carry so many Disney character plushes they really should throw a Kermit in the mix!

 

[Zack the Dog]

Hottopic has had a lot of Disney Afternoon stuff with in the past year, i have Darkwing Duck, (on whom i was for Halloween 2007) ChipN'dale, and DuckTale's t-shirts! They also have a Montaray Jack key chain believe it or not and another charm thing for your phone with Chip, Dale, and Gadget on it. plus some Pins of ChipN'dale and a Ducktales one too.