Bandai Stranger Things
 

Stranger Things - New 6-Inch Figures by Bandai

https://news.toyark.com/wp-content/u...gs-Bandai-.jpg

I see figuarts engineering in there, I don't know why they went all out on this line but not on their anime heroes line, unless it is also made by Tamashii Nations?

Probably because there are Figuarts versions of many of their DBZ selections already. Same with the Naruto figures.

That just leaves Saint Seiya (which I've never even seen in a store and seems to have one figure half a year going forward?) and One Piece (where wave one is wasting away in Targets).

My understanding from what I saw online Dragon Stars isn't doing well, hence it being mostly retools these days and the loss of the BAF and now those $24.99 Power Up Packs.

https://news.toyark.com/2021/03/19/s...-bandai-421124

So is this a totally different line than this other Hopper figure? Such a weird decision.

Tamashii Nations is like everything Bandai makes I think, these aren't labeled SH Figuarts even though I agree the elbow joints look like it. But Eleven's knees absolutely don't, that's like Marvel Legend style knees. Weird line.

So I guess McFarlane dropped the license due to the figures pegwarming too much?

I swear McFarlane doesn't follow through on a lot of things. They released 2 Star Trek figures, Kirk and Picard, and then cancelled it. They released 4 Game of Thrones figures, then cancelled. Same for Harry Potter. These are HUGE licenses. No idea what's wrong with them.

Those are horrible.

Hopper looks like Netflix Kingpin.

Yup, he's worse than DST when it comes to getting good film/TV show licenses then dropping them after just 1-2 waves when the sales aren't good enough for him. I was really annoyed with how quickly he abandoned Trek and Harry Potter. He seems to be picking licenses that are either way past their popularity too and aren't marketed/distributed well enough to attract lots of collectors (such as Game of Thrones). I bet a lot of casual buyers never even knew about the GOT, Potter, or Trek lines since they barely showed up in stores and were mostly sold online. It's no wonder McFarlane abandoned them so quickly.

I expect he'll do the same with Princess Bride. The first wave of 4 figures was just revealed, but there's a few more key characters he needs to do in a 2nd wave, and I expect he won't bother. It also annoys me that Wesley just has a Dread Pirate Roberts masked headsculpt and no unmasked head to go with it. Typical of McFarlane, he'll probably offer a 2nd nearly identical version of the figure as an exclusive with an unmasked head. Sigh...

Mmmmm... is this based on anything? Do you have any proof or numbers to back this up? I'm genuinely asking, as my impression is the line sells really well. The line seems to be doing really well in Europe as well, as my local retail stores sell out of them almost immediately, but unfortunately Bandai seems to follow the example of other big companies such as Hasbro and Mattel and their distribution over here sucks. When I look at online stores such as Amazon, EE or BBTS they seem to be selling quite well. So, I really wonder what this is based on?
I fully agree with you on Bandai being lazy on this line lately. But I doubt that has much to do with bad sales, but rather with trying to making easy cash by re-releasing figures in slightly different versions and heavily re-using parts. Cutting the BAF seems another easy way to make money.
I personally prefer this line over their more expensive S.H. Figuarts. It fits better with my other 6 inch figs (ML etc...) and the price setting is much more affordable. But maybe that's part of the reason why Bandai doesn't want to invest too much in it and expand it too much, because they are worried the cheaper line might undercut the more expensive one too much?

They usually just seem to do parts of a line, they flop, and then they stop doing them.

it's a shame, but it's why I generally don't get into McFarlane lines until I've seen several waves of support. Like just now I'm starting to collect their MHA stuff because they're 5 waves deep.

With The Princess Bride that would hurt even more since it's basically a two wave line. And yeah seeing what they're doing with other lines they'll definitely just do 2 releases with each specific head, crappy.

These things look gawdawful. Hopper looks like a what if Jason Voorhees had cosmetic surgery, and eleven looks like a dollar tree toy.

Well, it's just with other lines, usually when they drop the BAF it means it's not cost effective anymore to do BAFs.

I was thinking though that with the "budget" Figuarts coming out in places like Target and online (Goku Black, Kaioken Goku, SSB Goku, Frieza, a rumored Vegeta) that they may not being wanting $30 figures to be in competition with $20 figures in the same scale.

Personally, I think they dropped the BAFs in Dragon Stars to avoid the price increases that other companies are doing.

Engineering for the human figures aren't too bad, but the likenesses are way off.

I'm guessing there's just not nearly as much hype for the IP after S3 compared to during its heyday around S1~2? Definitely don't see nearly as much merch for the show floating around these days.

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