Questions About The Toy Industry

[beaker]

Besides Drtooth on here, im guessing there's others on here who are baffled or irked by the state of the toy industry...and have some questions.

1. Prince points. Why is it that action figures have finally gone back to a 3 3/4" scale away from the 1997-2007 Mcfarlane size standard
(except, way more dinkier and more frail) YET RETAIN the $10-$12 price point? Seriously, $12 for those small 3 3/4" Tron Legacy and Avatar figures? Those should be $4.99 at most. I see those tiny little Super Mario pvcs sold for $6. Such a travesty.

2. Why do companies only release the main charatcer(and a zillion iterations/alternate suits thereof) of big tentpole comic book movies? The Iron Man line only has Iron Man in a ton of different suits, they finally came out with a War Machine, but NO Whiplash or Black Widow. What gives? With the Dark Knight returns line, we just got Batman in a ton of outfits and the Joker. No Two Face til a year later.

3. Do they think we're stupid? $11 for re-releases of 1989 circa TMNT figures? I mentioned how the "Mcfarlane scale/detail" of things was the single biggest change to action figures from the late 90's all through the 2000's including up til now(tho only collector's market figures still employ the Mcflarlane style)
But now that figures have gone to an 80's styled 3 3/4", they are very very skinny/small. It's like they've gone to the extreme end, from big(Mcfarlane/NECA) to easily breakable and small.
Case in point, all of the Marvel figures coming out. As well the Avatar line. It's pathetic, because paying $10 for figures on a scale smaller than normal is just not right. Some of the figures(like the Sonic the hedgehog line) look like theyre already broken in their packaging.

Anyone LONG for the days of EARLY-MID 90's scale? Figures like
Marvel/Xmen brands, The Tick, and even action movie figures?(Last Action Hero, Demolition Man, Super Mario Bros, etc) Laugh, but those were pretty good scales. Why do we now expect a figure to have every pore and crease defined?

4. Where's the diversity? Go to Target, Walmart, etc and the ONLY brands they carry are Star Wars(which usually takes up a whole row), WWE wrestling, Marvel, Gi Joe, Bakugan, and whatever the latest Pixar or DWA line is. Pretty much, the same franchises I remember from the mid 1980's(give or take) Toys R Us offers a little bit better selection, but I remember the late 80's when Toys R Us and Kay Bee had an infinite number of lines from a zillion companies.

5. The Death of the toy store. Kay Bee is gone, Suncoast is gone, Sam Goody/FYE is on their way out. There's what, one FAO Schwarz left? The only place to find figures that arent Star Wars, Wrasslin' and Bakugan is Toys R Us and the local comic book store. And even then they usually only carry a small portion of what's out there.

6. This one is for fellow video game toy collectors: Why is it they keep re-releasing the same Mario and Sonic toy sculpts and merchandise thats been out since 2006 and before? The same mario figures and such have been out for ages, but stores introduce em like theyre new. I love video game toys, but sadly the majority of the good stuff came out in the late 90's(which all fetch $60-$200 dollars on ebay)

7. Why do good movies get little in the way of merch, but bad movies produce an endless tsunami of merchandise?
For instance, Up. Where was the Up toys and merch? Usually Pixar overloads the market with merch...for Up, to me arguably one of their best works, nada. With Monsters Vs Inc the availability of what little merch came out was nil

Remember the great Terminator Salvation toy fiasco of 2009, where every place that sells toys got flooded with those ugly things, and they literally couldnt give em away. Yet, an amazing film like Up got no toys.

8. Pvcs, figurines, etc. What happened to those? You couldnt go ANYWHERE in the 80's and even 90's without happening upon figurines of virtually everything in existence. Now, you rarely see those

9. Shrinking of the collector's market. Remember when NECA, Kubrick, Mezco, Palisades, etc were making figures of franchises and movies you NEVER thought you'd ever see made? While some of these companies are no longer with us, we sadly have seen a shrinking of the "collector's market". Toys R Us finally released in some stores the indie comic figure line, albeit a good two years after they came online to buy. TRU does carry all the Ghostbusters, Gremlins and other 80's collector toys now tho.

They finally came out with Kick-$ Mcdonaldland, Labyrinth and Dark Crystal figures...but I wish we could have gotten Fraggle figures, Seinfeld figures, Fifth Element figures, The Office figures, Scott Pilgrim figures, etc

10. Finally, ebay. I notice some stuff comes out(usually Toys R Us) and its like some sort of conspiracy by ebay hounds to buy up everything of a brand and hawk it on ebay. This happened with Monsters Vs Aliens, which came out to some TRU stores.
But even that secondary market has shriveled up. Ive seen people try and sell their entire old school GI Joe collection or MOC carded 1995-1999 Star Wars figures, and not even get more than a few dollars.

So where is the state of the toy industry? Of the collector's market? I'd have to say it's about as sad as I've ever seen it in almost three decades of collecting.

 

[Drtooth]

1. Prince points. Why is it that action figures have finally gone back to a 3 3/4" scale away from the 1997-2007 Mcfarlane size standard
(except, way more dinkier and more frail) YET RETAIN the $10-$12 price point? Seriously, $12 for those small 3 3/4" Tron Legacy and Avatar figures? Those should be $4.99 at most. I see those tiny little Super Mario pvcs sold for $6. Such a travesty.

That one really ticks me off. The worst part is that those are one of those things they kept jacking up prices, it hurts the industry, leading them to jack them up even higher prices to make up for what they lost raising the prices the first time. I remember when the TMNT movie line was out, the price rose solidly month after month... now, they could blame it on the oil prices going up and with it shipping... but they were the SAME exact ones that were stuck on the pegs for MONTHS before the increase. Something tells me they had more boxes in the store room that sat their for months too. In fact, everything has been like that lately. They sell stuff for a nice moderate range then they feel they need to raise the price for no reason... then there's a totally phoney oil crisis and they have to raise prices, then they lose money from raising the prices and then raise the prices again to make up for their losses, losing more, causing them to routinely raise prices until they give up and sell their stock to bargain basement companies. And they wonder why they're losing money.

4. Where's the diversity? Go to Target, Walmart, etc and the ONLY brands they carry are Star Wars(which usually takes up a whole row), WWE wrestling, Marvel, Gi Joe, Bakugan, and whatever the latest Pixar or DWA line is. Pretty much, the same franchises I remember from the mid 1980's(give or take) Toys R Us offers a little bit better selection, but I remember the late 80's when Toys R Us and Kay Bee had an infinite number of lines from a zillion companies.

5. The Death of the toy store. Kay Bee is gone, Suncoast is gone, Sam Goody/FYE is on their way out. There's what, one FAO Schwarz left? The only place to find figures that arent Star Wars, Wrasslin' and Bakugan is Toys R Us and the local comic book store. And even then they usually only carry a small portion of what's out there.

Tell me about it. so, Wal*Mart and Target have a choke hold on the toy market? How is that even possible? They keep routinly shrinking their toy sections... and the girls STILL get 2 more walls than boys. I swear, there's so much variety in dolls, but when it comes to boy's figures there's only movies based off of comics based off toy lines based off comics. or cartoons based on them. Yeah, and the lousiest Japanese cartoon toy commercials ever. Sigh, I wish Ultimate Muscle hit it big over here... wouldn't have to buy all that stuff from a Canadian board member on another board. Got it cheap though...and STILL didn't get the whole set. The only interesting toys out there are Buddy pack figures, everything else is just so... so bland.

7. Why do good movies get little in the way of merch, but bad movies produce an endless tsunami of merchandise?
For instance, Up. Where was the Up toys and merch? Usually Pixar overloads the market with merch...for Up, to me arguably one of their best works, nada. With Monsters Vs Inc the availability of what little merch came out was nil

Remember the great Terminator Salvation toy fiasco of 2009, where every place that sells toys got flooded with those ugly things, and they literally couldnt give em away. Yet, an amazing film like Up got no toys.

I couldn't even FIND Monsters Vs. Aliens stuff... and when I did it was only at Kohls and they charged a fortune for them. Then TRU cleared whatever they had out, and kept Area 51 Planet or whatever that crap was stuff on the shelves forever! And NO Up stuff... no Megamind stuff... and everyone STILL can't get rid of GI Joe movie or Terminator garbage. Did anyone even see either movie?

9. Shrinking of the collector's market. Remember when NECA, Kubrick, Mezco, Palisades, etc were making figures of franchises and movies you NEVER thought you'd ever see made? While some of these companies are no longer with us, we sadly have seen a shrinking of the "collector's market". Toys R Us finally released in some stores the indie comic figure line, albeit a good two years after they came online to buy. TRU does carry all the Ghostbusters, Gremlins and other 80's collector toys now tho.

They finally came out with Kick-$ Mcdonaldland, Labyrinth and Dark Crystal figures...but I wish we could have gotten Fraggle figures, Seinfeld figures, Fifth Element figures, The Office figures, Scott Pilgrim figures, etc

I swear it's those stoopit vynals. Everyone just gravitates to them because they're the it thing, and so few of them are actually all that good. I miss action figures that had high quality sculpts that we'd whine about not being high quality enough. Now everythings some lame stylized paint job on a lightweight plastic uniform piece. Other than that, there were too many small action figure companies and half of them wound up crashing. There was such a boom with every single random thing being an action figure, it actually flooded the market with junk (Mostly MacFarline stuff). And then everyone jumped on the Lego figure fad... now it's all about ginzu blind box junk that costs more than the actual Japanese counterparts... EVEN after import fees.

Surprised they didn't make Scott Pilgrim figures, though... they have Japanese style plush toys that I rather liked.

But really, nothing excites me oddly enough except preschool toys. I got the entire Mr. Men figurine set, and I WAS collecting the collect-a-pal line until everyone cleared them out (Still need Ernie and Cookie). I rather like the Scooby Doo buddy packs that are like 4 bucks each at TRU... the smaller sonic 3-4" line isn't terrible... 6 bucks is as reasonable a price as you're gonna get, 13 for 2 and a comic (though I'm dumbfragged as to why it's impossible to find Tails, yet they have every single flash in the pan other colored Hedgehog there is). But other than that, it's a depressingly empty market.

 

[frogboy4]

How I see it...

Here's the skinny. As far as the economy goes, the sky's been falling for quite a while and this means belt-tightening for everybody from manufacturers to consumers.

1. Few people want to put out a toy that costs more than $9.99 these days. My managing a toy store has given me a lot of insight that I didn’t have as a designer. Price points are very sticky with people. 50 cents can make all the difference! I know how much things cost, how we’re supposed to price them and what commitment it takes to stock a particular brand in the store at all.

Lead paint and poor quality control from factories in China have created a bureaucracy of expensive tests so many toy makers go with a simpler construction that’s easier to pass inspection. We very recently arrived at creative point in the last few years that makes it easy to scan anything in life so a computer spits out a perfect 3D model of it. However, these terrible restraints have set everything back years.

Why the lead paint in the first place? Well, Chinese factories competitively underbid one another in order to land contracts from US toy companies. They can’t afford to follow through with their commitments without cutting corners from other long-term contracts that they’ve already acquired. They “rob Peter to pay Paul” and that leads to poor quality control. It’s the greed from major toy companies that are fueling it. China’s not innocent, but they’re doing all they can.


2, 4 & 5. Toymakers only want the licenses for popular brands and only want to make the characters that would be sure-fire sellers. That alone has killed diversity. But we're not likely to see Palisades' sorts of chances taken again by anyone, at least not for a long while. Almost nobody’s taking chances. It’s boring! I know for a fact that the Muppet figures don’t sell well unless Kermit is pegged in the group. The same holds true for Sesame and Elmo and DC Comics and Batman. We love the obscure guys, but they need to keep spitting out redux versions of character headliners or else the line will die on the vine. Now they’re not even taking the chance on smaller characters. It’s all headliners.

Target and Wal-Mart are killing off smaller stores and also creating less diversity in toys. They won’t keep ordering items for their store at an agreed-upon fair price. They keep trying to drive that price down! They don’t see your favorite character as a beloved icon. They see it as a widget to be exploited to create larger profit margins each quarter or it gets nixed. Legal or not, it’s had a dire creative impact that’s unlikely to go away. I think it creates an opportunity to build a brand around quality (like Palisades) but there aren’t that many brave investors.

3 & 6. Many collectors like re-releases of classic designs, but it’s still going to cost you…and sometimes more. That’s how it goes. When a company purchases a license they need to make money off of it. The Avatar figures are terrible and reflect the complete cynicism of the industry. Mark my words that James Cameron probably can’t look at them without cringing, but he needed to sell that license to the highest bidder in order to fund the film in the first place! I long for a balance between scale and quality, between articulation and form. Cut the articulation of Palisades’ figures by half and make them the size of the classic Star Wars line and that’s what I’m talking about. Just with much better sculpts than Star Wars, of course.

7. Film merchandising is its own game. Research and interest must be predicted before the project is even near completion so it’s like Russian roulette. I guess the crummier, costly bombs kind of get a stink to them early on so their PR team works overtime to correct that in generating faux excitement. Maybe that equals more toys? Either way “UP!” toys weren’t going to sell well enough. Do you know how many Wall-Es got stuck in stores? The cute little robot is beloved by moviegoers, but despised by store owners everywhere! Customers loved to push the button to make him talk, but they wouldn’t buy the darn thing! If you see a toy you like…buy it and tell your friends about it.

8. I love PVCs but now it’s basically Star Wars Galactic Heroes kinds of toys that fill the role. Let’s hope that if next year’s Smurfs film has one positive it’s inspiring fans to seek out the figures and showing the toy industry that we’d love to see more of that type of figure in other brands too.

9. The collectors’ market is shrinking! Look at all of the people here who are selling off their Palisades collections for one reason or another. It will come back to haunt some of them later on. I think that market will bounce back as the economy does. It will happen when the twenty-somethings again have healthily disposable incomes (and no family commitments) like in the dot com era.

10. Ebay gougers are a fact of life. I don’t know how toy companies can get around that without creating collectors’ clubs of some sort. Even so, toy lines depend heavily upon retail chain exclusives. It’s up to them to safeguard their product sales, but we’re back in the widget talk again. There are always going to be those figures that cost more, but shouldn’t.

I think a toy company willing to take the chance could make a killing in filling this current gap in affordable quality. I’m talking about a NECA-type brand for limited or non-articulated PVCs at an SRP between $2.99 and 11.99. Somebody that’s not Hasbro or Mattel. Someone that takes a chance on cooler licenses with better sculpts but on an affordable scale.

 

[beaker]

I loved both your guy's responses. In a way, Im kind of surprised we even have a New York Toy Fair given how fewer and fewer toys come out. Its hard to imagine how Target and Walmart takes away from smaller toy sellers, given they simply only carry hasbro(gi joe, transformers, etc) and mattel(WWE, etc) and then the comic book guys.

I liked what Frogboy said about cynicism. In the years Ive been collecting figures, Ive never once seen figures like the Avatar figures that had the plastic ratio of a gumball machine toy, yet sold for $11-$12. For years I complained how we didnt need giant detailed figures, but a return to the 80's scale...boy, am I biting my words now.

I hear Frogboy on the new industry paint and material standards(tho its funny, go to any dollar store and youll see "toys" with cheaper hazardous standards than 1980's dollar store toys) I remember Ken Lilly opined about all the factory stuff.
To think just how close we were to those Sesame figures...I almost assumed they began pressing them! I still sometimes imagine what woulda happened if Palisades kept going just one more year. In a way Palisades was like a dream too good to be true, that thankfully lasted 4 years.

I still cant get over the Terminator Salvation toy debacle. Frogboy is right, I never saw much product moved with the Wall E stuff. Heck Ive always loved robots but never bought any Wall E stuff. Had UP stuff came out, I woulda bought everything.
Sadly, we didnt even get UP happy meal toys

Oh! That's what I wanted to bring up. Fast Food toys
Why is it, for only a buck(you can usually buy em seperately)
you get pretty handsome sized toys with accessories. Yet
you go to TRU or elsewhere and you get smaller versions for 10 times as much? I dont know what happened, but sometime in the 90's or maybe it was early 2000's, fast food toys(especially Mcdonalds) became seriously cool. Like the Monsters Inc figures. Those things were a buck each, but I guarantee they'd cost $7.99 or more MSRP in stores. The great Jack in the Box muppet figures, heck even the Avatar figures...much much larger than the tiny Avatar figures at toy stores, and 1/11th the price!

@Drtooth: Vinyl figures are seriously cool, albeit way overpriced. You're simply thinking of the dunny/munny/use one sculpt and paint a zillion alternates in a blind box types, or the big clunky ones of the same kind(thats used for transformers/gi joe/star wars) Im sure youve been on KidRobot.com or any other vinyl seller. Even the retread of the 60's Kaiju toys are pretty cool

Im sorry given youre a big Muscle fan, that the Ultimate Muscle line didnt make too big of a splash. But see, thats the way it is for any Japanese line. While DBZ lasted for years in American toy stores, there's plenty of one hit wonders that always had a nurtured marketplace in Japan. The secondary market is just the way it is. Goodness knows, as an avid video game toy collector, how many loose and MOC figures Ive spent $50-$100+ on over ebay and amazon to complete collections. And we are talking figures I could have easily picked up for a few bucks at Kaybee or TRU back in the day had I found em'. (the secondary market for 90's and early 2000's video game toys is huge, way higher in price than Star Wars or any mainstream lines by far. Just google Crash Bandicoot figures, Sonic Adventure figures, etc)

 

[frogboy4]

There's some good stuff out there. A quick internet search brought up a few examples. It's just that this is sometimes the *only* thing out there for collectors above 12. A lot of it can be found cheaply if you get it at the time of release.

I did see some Scott Pilgrim stuff out there, but stores don't stock it because it's so niche.

 

[beaker]

There's some good stuff out there. A quick internet search brought up a few examples. It's just that this is sometimes the *only* thing out there for collectors above 12. A lot of it can be found cheaply if you get it at the time of release.

I did see some Scott Pilgrim stuff out there, but stores don't stock it because it's so niche.

Yeah Disney has just been amazing this past decade with their collector and super niche collector merchandise/toys. Ive seen Disney work with super underground Japanese toy companies(basically, a guy in a tiny shop) release ultra limited almost DIY home made figures. If anyone has followed the Japanese collector market or Disney vinyl stuff, its been rather astonishing. Im not at all into Disneyana, but its neat to look at.
Yeah they came out with Scott Pilgrim plushes that were cool. A lot of times figures get made of movies(300, Watchmen, Kick ---, etc) but they end up just sitting on shelves til they're marked down to a few bucks.

 

[Drtooth]

Sadly, we didnt even get UP happy meal toys

Oh! That's what I wanted to bring up. Fast Food toys
Why is it, for only a buck(you can usually buy em seperately)
you get pretty handsome sized toys with accessories. Yet
you go to TRU or elsewhere and you get smaller versions for 10 times as much? I dont know what happened, but sometime in the 90's or maybe it was early 2000's, fast food toys(especially Mcdonalds) became seriously cool. Like the Monsters Inc figures. Those things were a buck each, but I guarantee they'd cost $7.99 or more MSRP in stores. The great Jack in the Box muppet figures, heck even the Avatar figures...much much larger than the tiny Avatar figures at toy stores, and 1/11th the price!

Here's the problem. Yuppie parental groups that whine and whine and either force Happy Meal toys to be banned or to liken ANY characters they market as said toys to Joe Camel. And a lot of these companies refuse the bad press. So Pixar refuses to do ANY of their movies now... not even Toy Story 3, and half the other licenses Suh-diddley-uck. I mean, McDonalds gave out CD's of Kid's Bop last year. KID'S BOP CD's. BK hasn't had a good one all year, and Wendy's fell into the lame educational activity market. I remember getting a miniature Mario action figure, carded and all at Wendy's...now, I just see books on CD, crappy versions of games. Heck, they even had an America's Got Talent toy at one point. No Chowder... Luckily McD's finally got Batman TBATB in there.

I don't see why more people aren't knowledgeable that you can always buy the toy separately. The compromise is that they should disclose that.

Anyway, yeah... that's the problem. The big stores have been pushing the indies out of the way, the bigger stores wind up pushing the big stores out of the way. I still think it'll be a miracle if we don't have JUST Wal*Mart in a year. And they don't give a crap about a toy section. And when they do, they claim "exclusive" and charge whatever they want. I miss K. B. If nothing else, someone should have bought it up and used it as a discount toy clearance center. That's the only thing it was good for the last 10 years. Now I have to go to marshalls... MARSHALLS of all places for decent discounted toys, and half the time the discounts are barely a buck. Second hand crap, and it STILL costs more than Target did in some cases.

 

[frogboy4]

Yeah Disney has just been amazing this past decade with their collector and super niche collector merchandise/toys. Ive seen Disney work with super underground Japanese toy companies(basically, a guy in a tiny shop) release ultra limited almost DIY home made figures. If anyone has followed the Japanese collector market or Disney vinyl stuff, its been rather astonishing. Im not at all into Disneyana, but its neat to look at.
Yeah they came out with Scott Pilgrim plushes that were cool. A lot of times figures get made of movies(300, Watchmen, Kick ---, etc) but they end up just sitting on shelves til they're marked down to a few bucks.

You are so right! It's funny that I get to order toys to sell in a store these days. I understand the weirdness with retailers. There still is so much Watchmen stuff out there and it was well made and nicely packaged. Neca is even feeling the heat and I loove them! People don't seem to want to spend more than 10 bucks on any one thing these days.

 

[Drtooth]

Neca bugs me... they only do ONE series of action figures a year. Had they not pulled that crap, we would have gotten more than the four Ninja Turtles. They were SUPPOSED to do April, Shredder (with an Utom confusing non comic fans that it's Krang), and several foot soldiers... we never got them. And I REALLY wanted a comics accurate Casey Jones.

 

[frogboy4]

Neca bugs me... they only do ONE series of action figures a year. Had they not pulled that crap, we would have gotten more than the four Ninja Turtles. They were SUPPOSED to do April, Shredder (with an Utom confusing non comic fans that it's Krang), and several foot soldiers... we never got them. And I REALLY wanted a comics accurate Casey Jones.

I love Neca. Great quality. But their figure releases are based on sales, so if the TMNT took a while to comeout or some characters were nixed it's not something they wanted. They just don't want to go the way of Palisades and not exist anymore.