Weekly Box Office and Film Discussion Thread

[Drtooth]

I understand completely what you mean. Also the fact that market manipulation of oil causes prices to increase at the drop of a hat, yet never actually retreat. Even when the toys have already shipped and are in the store room prior to the oil increase.

Under no circumstances should <3" of plastic, unless it's an extremely rare collectors edition of something, cost 12 bucks. I know no sane company would jack the prices up on purpose. Clearly they aren't. This isn't some start up company struggling to make ends meet, this isn't a collector to collector market. It's a mainstream company selling at mainstream stores. Unless it's a huge mistake on someone's end or TRU going mad with power, I fail to see how those toys should cost that much with any excuse or rationalization possible. Maybe if they sell these at Target, we'll get a more competitive price. But no one in their right mind is going to spend 12 bucks on something that their kid is going to lose in their house, only to sell back for 25 cents at a Yard Sale a year later. They could have came up with a more reasonable price, and they didn't. They screwed themselves up mightily. If they go bankrupt, it's their own darn faulty. Unless of course they're going Enron, and trying to go bankrupt to get whatever sweet money they don't deserve.

Seriously, I didn't think I'd hate a toy company more than Mattel, but they come off reasonable compared to this.

 

[Scooterforever]

Worse than Mattel? I dunno if that's possible. Their Ghostbusters figures are cheaply made and grossly overpriced, as is EVERY product they release. If only Neca or any other company had gotten the Ghostbusters rights, we would have gotten figures that ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE the characters and had some small amount of detail, but thanks to Mattel we get a Venkman figure that barely resembles Bill Murray, and it still costs $22. How does the quality of the product stay the same as it was in the 80's but the price still soars? And I've heard Mattel pulls a lot of terrible shenanigans with Mattycollector.com's subscription fees. I don't think anyone could be worse than Mattel right now.

 

[Drtooth]

But those are limited edition collectors whatevers. They're meant to carry a high price as they produce little of them and don't go for a mass retail audience. Even then, 15+ dollars for an action figure, for all the reasons James said (oil shenanigans raising the price of plastic and shipping being a huge factor too), is the new normal and I relent to that.

Then again, I can't stress this enough, 2-3" PVC's going for 12 bucks on the mass produced kiddy toy market is inexcusable no matter how its rationalized. Not the testing, not the materials, not the price of the license, not the retail markup... none of that figures into such a shockingly high price for something so little. And yes, I hate Mattel for various reasons... they're misogynistic tendencies towards boy's toy lines (April O'Neil would like to have a word with you), they're the reason we have expensive extra quality testing because they screwed the heck up and hired the cheapest, corner cuttingest, lead paintiest sweatshop in all of China. Not to mention the dreadful distribution of Shonen Jump based toy lines that weren't Yu-Gi-Oh or Naruto. Among others.... but at least there stuff seems reasonably priced by those standards.

I agree with Jamie on the grounds of a toy company isn't going to overprice a toy line on purpose, as that's going to result in shockingly low sales, and lost profits. There's a sad reason why the 5 dollar action figure is dead, and the 10 dollar one is on life support with greedy relatives trying to pull the plug. But what Thinkway is selling is a line of small figures that could go for 5, maybe 6 dollars and both be a reasonable price and profitable for an UNreasonable and UNprofitable 12 bucks each. I doubt something that small and limited in articulation should cost so much to make per unit that it warrants that high a price tag. If you can't produce small figures in a cost effective way enough to have a reasonable price, you have NO business being in business. I'm sure every other toy company in the world would have made and manufactured the same things for a lot less.

 

[jvcarroll]

This is a box office discussion thread. Come on now. I'm not saying you guys can't complain away, but isn't there already a thread for expensive toys?

 

[Drtooth]

Consider that a film's profits are partially in merchandising. If the merchandise doesn't sell, on some level that becomes a failing, and somehow that gets taken into account for the movie's performance.

Green Lantern, being a failure, couldn't sell toys. As a horrible side effect the TV cartoon series got canceled because the movie toys didn't sell, and retailers didn't want a TV series toy line.

I cannot fathom why they needed to have such high prices for this line of toys from this company. Not every line out of every company, mind you. It's an isolated problem on Thinkway's end. Their Wreck-it Ralph products were not the most reasonably priced things out there, but far less ridiculous. And those aren't really selling that well. At least the 4" line (8 bucks). If these things don't sell, and they won't, that's going to hurt the film's overall performance, even if it does well at the B.O. Hopefully, if that's the case, when Universal brings out the Minions spinoff film, they'll look for someone else to get the license. wish McD's would get the license for a tie in, but they're clearly going to go for the IHOP promo again... which, if it's because of PR and fast food making them look bad, sugar coated sugar pancakes aren't exactly the lesser of two evils.

But that's the end of that.

 

[Drtooth]

Because everyone's whining about me going off topic, here's something on topic...

Fox has officially lost the rights to Daredevil movies.

Not for the lack of trying... they were trying to get something together before the license ended, but were stumbling over so many roadblocks and rewrites that they couldn't get anything else in time. The question is if Disney can do better than Fox did (so much meddling and editing ruined the film that people actually claim that the director's cut is actually a good movie), but also if we're going to see a DD cameo in any of the Disney owned MCU. Meanwhile, Fox is determined to have their own MCU with Fantastic Four and X-Men. They are really trying for a reboot of the FF, but if they don't get one out there, it could have the same fate befall them.

But you gotta admit... it's going to be tough getting an FF movie that doesn't get laughed out of the room. It hasn't had too much success in not comic book form. Not even the animated versions (except I hear the last one was very good).

 

[Scooterforever]

Because everyone's whining about me going off topic, here's something on topic...

Fox has officially lost the rights to Daredevil movies.

Not for the lack of trying... they were trying to get something together before the license ended, but were stumbling over so many roadblocks and rewrites that they couldn't get anything else in time. The question is if Disney can do better than Fox did (so much meddling and editing ruined the film that people actually claim that the director's cut is actually a good movie), but also if we're going to see a DD cameo in any of the Disney owned MCU. Meanwhile, Fox is determined to have their own MCU with Fantastic Four and X-Men. They are really trying for a reboot of the FF, but if they don't get one out there, it could have the same fate befall them.

But you gotta admit... it's going to be tough getting an FF movie that doesn't get laughed out of the room. It hasn't had too much success in not comic book form. Not even the animated versions (except I hear the last one was very good).

As one of the few Daredevil fans out there, I'm quite happy with this news. I didn't think the Fox film was as terrible as people say (Jennifer Garner made a terrible Elektra, but that's my only complaint), but I'd like to see DD brought into Disney's MCU. He's not quite an A-lister, so I wouldn't think Disney's too excited at the prospects of a Daredevil film, but then again they greenlit a Guardians of the Galaxy film, and not even I know who they are. I love the FF, but I just can't see a movie reboot doing well, unless they make some radical design changes, like making The Thing look like a frightening man/ rock hybrid as opposed something from a kid's tv show, as was the case with Fox's first FF. I swear, Roger Corman's Thing looked better than that crappy rubber suit Michael Chiklis wore.

 

[Drtooth]

Hey, I give them credit for not making The Thing a pasted on CGI. Look how many movies it took to get the Hulk to look right.

Guardians of the Galaxy I barely know about. All I know is it has an anthropomorphic raccoon, named after a certain Beatles song of course. And said raccoon ticked off a group of people when the last Marvel Vs Capcom came out (by which, I mean Mega Man fans who were ticked they only put Zero in the game). It seems like they're really starting to push those characters since, well... only the diest of hards know about that one. I saw a huge figure set released by Hasbro. It's only obvious they want the characters to break out of the mainstream so people will actually see the movie (connecting it to continuity of the next Avengers, essentially blackmailing people to see it, won't hurt).

But that Raccoon... how much of a willing suspension of disbelief is the audience allowed? We don't want this to come off as Howard the Duck.

Eh... they got not too popular Iron Man to be a series of hit movies, and now people outside of the comic fandom (and AC/DC fans) have heard of him.

 

[Scooterforever]

Hey, I give them credit for not making The Thing a pasted on CGI. Look how many movies it took to get the Hulk to look right.

Guardians of the Galaxy I barely know about. All I know is it has an anthropomorphic raccoon, named after a certain Beatles song of course. And said raccoon ticked off a group of people when the last Marvel Vs Capcom came out (by which, I mean Mega Man fans who were ticked they only put Zero in the game). It seems like they're really starting to push those characters since, well... only the diest of hards know about that one. I saw a huge figure set released by Hasbro. It's only obvious they want the characters to break out of the mainstream so people will actually see the movie (connecting it to continuity of the next Avengers, essentially blackmailing people to see it, won't hurt).

But that Raccoon... how much of a willing suspension of disbelief is the audience allowed? We don't want this to come off as Howard the Duck.

Eh... they got not too popular Iron Man to be a series of hit movies, and now people outside of the comic fandom (and AC/DC fans) have heard of him.

Yes, perhaps Daredevil will become popular overnight thanks to a breakout film, like Iron Man. I can't say the same for Rocket Racoon.

 

[Drtooth]

Something tells me they're going to need to shove the characters into an Ultimate Spider-Man, the new Avenger series, or the Hulk series somewhere to get kid's interest.

I'd hate for a cartoonish raccoon to derail the MCU.