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Quote:

Originally Posted by Torn Prince

What point is there in having 2 Batman toylines running at once? You have The Dark Knight Rises, and then there's the straight up more animated looking Batman line. It almost seems like it would be over saturating the market.

Not at all. For one, those two lines have completely different aesthetics. For two, Mattel isn't the only one to run concurrent lines with a similar theme and/or IP.

For example, Hasbro has 2 Marvel lines being sold at retail right now (MU and Avengers). In some areas they still have figures from Cap, Thor and Iron Man hanging with the first two. So that's technically five concurrent Marvel lines on the shelves.

Transformers Prime, Generations/FoC and Bot Shots are all on the same shelves right now.

Star Wars: Clone Wars, TVC, SWTF and SW Fighter Pods are currently all on the shelves at the same time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crazy Jetty

actually... there is a potentially important nugget in that last answer I've never seen any of us consider before. Fitting them into the pricepoints retailers are demanding.

This is a very important aspect too. I'm in no way defending mattel at all, when hasbro has been able to manage it themselves, but this is definately making me look at this from a new angle.
We can only assume that Mattel's production runs are quite a bit lower than Hasbro's. We all know that means smaller profit margin per unit sold, and higher production costs per unit, because they don't have as much product to spred the costs out across.
So, it looks like it boils down to this: Hasbro has more product sold in more places to be able to meet the price point the retailers are demanding, with a figure that has as many moving parts as fans are demanding. Mattel does not.

That does put an interesting spin on Mattel's business strategy, assuming they do indeed have smaller production runs than Hasbro.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ludovicotek

^ I'm not sure that I believe Hasbro sells more product overall than Mattel (which is the #1 toy company in the world)

I don't think that's what Crazy was saying. I think Mattel still sells more product overall (or at least has the widest profit margin) and that's why they're still the #1 toy company. But I think most of their profit comes from Hot Wheels, Barbie, Cars and a few other lines.

I sincerely doubt that Mattel's DC products are anywhere near as profitable as Hasbro's Marvel products have been. Which would back up the idea that Hasbro does much larger production runs than Mattel (at least as far as the comic licenses are concerned).