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Originally Posted by flaccideagle

I was actually talking specifically about HTS, but the rest of your comment shows me where your head is at. Data from those surveys is used to make judgement calls, and if you think Walmart or Target doesn't use those surveys for anything, then you're not playing with a full deck.

I never, never said that retailers don't use those online surveys. Where did you get that? I implied that they are only a sample of the overall market. And granted, that trend towards online purchasing is growing, so I would imagine more focus will eventually be placed on those surveys. But when Target and Walmart are both expanding their BnR divisions, I have some doubts about how quickly the shift in focus is being made.

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Look, you or I may not take those surveys, but thousands of others do. It's a huge industry. If they weren't looked at, they wouldn't pay for them, full stop. The toy industry isn't unique in the way it does business, it's like everything else. It does epic amounts of market research. It does research about the research. To say otherwise, is to sell them pretty short. You or I may not value those surveys, but it is foolish to imply no one fills them out or pays attention to them.

Again. Never said they don't do research. Never implied they don't. Never implied they only do a little bit of research. And I never said that no one fills out those surveys. I wasn't even implying that "no one fills them out". I was, however, implying that some are not filled out and because of that those surveys may not be the most accurate in terms of market trends. Especially at the physical retail level, which is the only area I've been talking about. You brought online purchasing into the discussion, not me.

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Actually it is, because on their face, items that get clearanced are items that can not be sold for full price; it doesn't matter whether its old or new or blue or purple, the store ordered a case, and the entire case didn't sell at full price, that is bad.

Not always true. Sometimes retailers simply decide not to carry an item anymore and just want to clear out remaining stock. And sometimes "clearance" doesn't always mean the price went down - sometimes it just means the items will no longer be carried. Target uses a status called NCF ("Not Carried Forward"), while Walmart simply changes the color of the price tag (but not the price). I would hazard a guess that other retailers have similar methods.

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The other cases you mentioned are exceptions to the rule. I'm talking in broad strokes and it seems like you're talking about Walmart in specific.

Yes, you are speaking in very broad strokes. And no, I'm not talking about Walmart specifically, I'm speaking about physical retail in the US. I tend to use Walmart as an example, since it's easily relatable to most people.

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Actually they do. You can see evidence of this in how many companies offer specific versions of their products for Walmart, from DVDs to milk. They don't make "specific" figures for them, but you're lying to yourself if you think there isn't a huge amount of communication between Hasbro and retailers. It's how exclusives get defined and made. You don't think they negotiate those deals? You don't think there's some discussion, like "this wave didn't sell, this one did gangbusters"?

Retailer exclusives and the like are out of the scope of this discussion. I'm not talking about any of those - certainly not DVDs, milk or any other product that Hasbro doesn't make. I'm talking about good old-fashioned toys made for mass-market retail. The kind that goes to every retailer Hasbro can get to buy it.

Mass-market toys are not made for one retailer, but do attempt to please them all. Toy buyers for retail companies look at the line as a whole at industry events (like Toy Fair) and make the decision to carry or not carry a mass-retail line based on that.

As you said, exclusives are created through one-on-one negotiations between a retailer and a manufacturer. It does not mean that in the same conversation, they talk about how Target or TRU can't get enough of Darth Vader figures, but "that crappy Rancor Keeper has got to go". Especially if the exclusive they were just negotiating about was a Marvel Universe multi-pack (different divisions, marketing, legal, etc). But they might talk briefly about MU as a whole - again, no specific figures. At the corporate levels that those conversations occur at, I sincerely doubt either side has numbers in front of them that would single out a particular toy or character.

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If they don't pay attention to which figures sell more than others, or which are more popular with buyers than others, how do they decide what to make?

I would imagine they'd go by the case sales. If a case of figures sells well, they assume that the characters in that case are popular enough to carry over or make more of them. Also, the associated media will help decide as well. Vader and Luke for SW, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee for TF, Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow for Joes, Spider-Man/Wolverine/Iron Man for MU, and so on. The development cycle of a given toy line also plays a factor too (1-2 years on average, from design to pegs/shelves).

Bumblebee may be an extremely popular Transformers character, but it doesn't automatically mean he's a bestseller in the toy aisle. In fact, a major complaint during the DOTM line was the massive amounts of pegwarming Bumblebee toys (just about everyone on the forums was complaining about it at one point or another). Hasbro even made a statement about it, which is not something it normally does. Hasbro thought Bee's toys would do really well because of how popular he is, but apparently overestimated the demand for them at the time.

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Really? Because you've got someone in the store, and you're going to tell them "Hey, don't go down the action figure isle." If they didn't look at individual sales like you say, we'd have shelves of Bumblebees and Wolverines, and none of the exclusives, none of the obscure characters. What would be the point of doing mixed cases, why not go back to 1996 and do solid cases of just one character?

Are you kidding? Of course they're going to go down the various toy aisles and take a look around. But they're not going to go to each and every line and mark down how many of each individual toy is there and ask the retailer how many of each character's toy(s) were sold or haven't sold.

And as I mentioned earlier, we did have pegs/shelves full of Bumblebee. We have pegs full of Iron Man (both IM3 and Avengers). We had pegs full of Thor at one point (but hardly any of the supporting cast). Ultimately, it's a guessing game that Hasbro plays when it plans out the case ratios at the beginning of a line. The obscure characters that are included are Hasbro's way of throwing a bone to the collectors/fandom. But if Hasbro honestly thought that obscure toy would be the big seller of the case, it would have the highest ratio instead of the "popular" character(s).

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You yourself noted that individual names and SKUs are showing up. It's a fact they're showing up- retailers want this, have asked for it.

Yes, but in the exact same statement, I also mentioned that it doesn't seem to matter to some retailers. Target, Walmart and TRU all use blanket SKUs for the majority of the toys (at least at the assortment level). Even for the lines that have individual SKUs for each toy, the POS system used by those same retailers ignores that SKU since orders are done by the case, not the individual toy.

Don't get me wrong - I welcome the day when the Toy Department manager will have the ability to order 20 of the figure that constantly disappears from the pegs/shelves and does not order any of that pegwarmer who's been sitting there for three months. But I think we're obviously not there yet, or there would be far less complaints about distribution - regardless of the toy line.

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Look obviously you have your point of view, and others have theirs. The trend on action figures in general is skewing older, whether you like it or not.

Who says I don't like it? And I'm not saying it isn't skewing towards an older target demographic. Simply put, I'm just saying that adult collectors do not make up the bulk of Hasbro's customer base. And yes, this is speculation on my part, which is why I won't even attempt to pull numbers out of thin air and mention specific ratios.

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But then Transformers aren't the toys people are really constantly, constantly complaining about distro and selection, like they are Star Wars, GIJOE, or Marvel. They can't do a Q&A without it coming up, and rightly so. Distro has been the main news story for Hasbro Star Wars, pretty much since 2010. Since after the first movie, GIJOE has been impossible for casual fans to find. So if you're only really looking at TF you aren't going to see those things. We're around the same age, and I get where you're coming from, but times have changed. Hasbro - as well as most international players in the toy market- are moving towards electronics, apps, and movies- all things with bigger profit margins, for their child-focused products.

Why the sudden emphasis on Transformers? While it is true that I collect them more than any other toy line or brand, I also collect several other lines and pay attention to those as well as several others that I don't collect. My buying habits may be focused on a few lines, but that doesn't mean that I remain ignorant about everything else.

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Your experience is the exception, not the rule- you're collector and a mod on a toy site, so of course your children would play with physical toys. If you were a mod on a video game site, I doubt there'd be an Optimus Prime in the house, but you may think "everyone has an iPad" or "Everyone has a PS3 as well as an XBOX."

You know, you're making a lot of wildly inaccurate assumptions about me. Especially since I was a hardcore gamer for several years as well. It is a hobby I readily chose to give up when I got married and had kids. Money can only go so far and some of my hobbies fell by the wayside. But that doesn't mean I no longer keep tabs on the industry, either.

I do own a couple console systems and play video games with my older daughter from time to time as well. Some of the other mods on this site and our sister sites collect toys and play video games. They have kids who do both as well. One hobby does not automatically preclude the other.

Regardless, maybe we disagree on the particulars and are now locked in a circular conversation. Because I completely agree with what you have said below:

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The bottom line for me is, there is no clear answer on collectors vs. kids, it's a mixed bag. Some collectors think the world revolves around them and some think it revolves around the little ones. The truth is in between. If they can't see where a $5-6 5 POA Wolverine figure is marketed to, or a $150+ Transformer of a 30-year old character is marketed to, then... their bad.