[Snowflakian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tarquinius

At some point I have to think though that having compact and organized lines will help compensate for production costs by having a consistent, well informed product that people can come to expect and love

That's definitely a benefit.
I end up being who most of my family turns to when it comes to toy questions, and the main reason for that is because of how often the lines keep changing. Extrapolating that to the general public and outside of those that follow this stuff, the average consumer is getting lost on what's what until a massive movie like avengers hits that's hard to miss.

The other lines though not so much. They see avengers and get the connection, they see the others and sometimes wonder "is this what my kid was asking about?" So mainstays would definitely solve that. It'd make it easier on the average consumer to know what they are looking for and understand what to expect.

Like the toy biz older days and playmates older days before the bust. They had mainstay lines with repacks. They were doing fantastic. The problem with the bust though came with the oversaturation of figures and lowered articulation which led to ML being the only main Marvel line for period of time.

With the Joe Scale, we don't have to worry about oversaturation, and overall, the articulation is still better than the toy biz era pre-ML. This is making collectors and kids buy figures, and even rebuy figures they already have. The other nice aspect to this is if hasbro only has the license until 2018 or so, that gives them between 2013 and then to do the mainstay line way. Flood the market, cause the oversaturation effect with everyone covered by 2018. Then bow out or revamp the entire approach.

At that point, only new movies will push product. The older movies have been covered, and the majority(hopefully) of 616 will be covered.

So pretty much Hasbro needs to throw all the cards on the table. Maximize profit you can get from marvel, and just feed that fan/kid frenzy until flooded with new figures and options. 6 years of that should be strong profits and sales, with the final year starting to reflect the similar toy biz figure flooded bust. Which could then justify not renewing the license. If they do renew the license though, they can recoup costs through other avenues like toy biz did with the merged marvel figure line repacks that helped keep them afloat after some mixed articulation decisions that didn't move.