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Originally Posted by flaccideagle

But they do get others that the US doesn't sometimes. Mattel for example, offers Max Steel, which is huge in South America, just huge. That's just a popular example that you can see for yourself; it's just not sold in the US, at least in any numbers. Neither of us work for Hasbro, and they don't give out information on how exactly they plan toys, so we can't say what they plan for or not.

I'm going by interviews and Q&A's that were straight from Hasbro over the years. It's true some things have changed (Hasbro did state that it wants to become a multimedia company, not just a toy company).

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My point is, they aim for both- or else they would have just gone with the 5 POA figures, like the Dollar General ones, across the board. I get what's being said, and I agree: it's not all focused towards collectors, and often we get too fanciful of our actual buying power. But there's been a clear courting of both with Hasbro for many years now, it's only really been the last two years where there's been a split- two lines, one for kids, one for collectors, whereas before they tried to do one product for both audiences.

I don't believe I was arguing against any of that. Or at least I wasn't trying to do so.

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You're absolutely right. It's an annoying statement, but for many people, it's a fair one to make.

And with their experiences specifically, it's understandable. My issue is when they use those experiences to make blanket statements about US retail (or even the world market).

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I would use "buying toys" in the cases you mentioned. We've all seen it before: a young collector gets online and makes claims such as "I've been collecting for fifteen years" And they're fifteen years old! Or someone rediscovers their childhood toys in their twenties, and then makes claims that they're "a lifelong collector." There's no definition, to be fair, its just a pet peeve of mine, because it obscures truth, in order to give someone "cred" that they don't necessarily deserve. It destroys honesty and fidelity; it's ok to be a young collector, who isn't sure, or asks questions. It's not ok to try to puff yourself to make yourself bigger. There's plenty of time to grow. I learned this the hard way in my teens as a young collector.

Ok, I understand your point. And as an aside, I'll be 38 later this month. I have been buying and collecting toys since I was 8. Action figures and the like were bought for me since I was 5. I took a break from collecting from 18 until around 24 (but kept most of the toys I owned up to that point). I haven't stopped since. Make of that what you will, but I say I've been collecting for almost 30 years.

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I'm not sure you follow me with why it's called "Black Series"- using the term "Black Series" is taking off of a trend in many luxury goods and services. Many of these services are called "Black"; The Black line Credit Card, the Black section (VIP), etc. Neither of these lines are aimed at kids. If they were, why offer all the other low-articulated product and reissues of other figures? If parents have been complaining about how much the figures cost as to why they're not buying them, why do a line where they're $20 or more a pop?

While I don't doubt the name of the line was chosen (in part) for that very reason, I don't believe the 3.75" Black Series figures are going to cost that much, unless I missed a news article. I believe the $20 price point is for the 6" figures, which is not that much more than what ROML or DCUC figures are going for now (both considered "collector-oriented" lines).

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Well they do have HTS

It doesn't do nearly the volume of business that brick-n-mortar does. Also, even HTS still doesn't keep track of why a given person bought a given toy. How do they know if he/she is a collector, a friend of a collector, a collector friend, or a parent? How would Hasbro know why that person bought the toy(s)?

They may be able to say, "This toy sold well" or "This toy was a flop". But they can't say "90% of the people who bought this toy were adult collectors buying it for themselves". The reverse is equally true, which is again why I say it's speculation at best to guess the ratio of adult collectors to other purchasing groups.

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and you can see what sells more pretty easily on your toy hunts.

And as we discussed, personal experiences can vary greatly and are not the most reliable source pool when it comes to extrapolating national or international sales trends. Yes, you can have a consensus on chat forums and message boards like ours, but that doesn't account for everyone who doesn't post on sites like this (or is even part of the fandom).

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And they do have reps that check in on larger retailers.

But they don't check on specific figures - at least that has been my understanding. IIRC, they're checking for full pegs and shelves and that the area is nicely-kept.

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There's also a clear move to individualize the SKUs on figures.

What clear move? I agree it should be done (if only to help better track sales and fix the issues with POS systems), but I'm not seeing any moves towards that - at least nothing obvious. Though I have noticed some toy lines at Walmart have SKUs that identify specific toys. Too bad it's meaningless to the cashier or customer service clerk.

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Again, if you think Hasbro hasn't thought of all this, or doesn't do ground-level research...

Oh, I believe they do all kinds of research at various levels. But I don't think they visit every retailer to see how specific items are doing. I also know they can't review certain sales statistics because the data simply isn't gathered at the point of sale. They can't look at non-existent data.

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Originally Posted by Iceman

The randomness and different delievery method isn't the point I was making. Just that Japanese kids DO buy toys.

My apologies, then. But I also wasn't saying that there aren't any Japanese kids buying toys. I just said that there were far less of them than adult collectors when compared to the US market.

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And as I said before the population of the US is much more spread out with many more retail locations that are spread out to supply with toys than Japan does (proportionally to population). Distribution would likely be a lost easier if you took the population of the US and pushed them to one half of the country. I have no solution to the distribution issues and clearly it isn't easy for the pros or else we wouldn't get annoyed by it.

I'm not going to debate distribution issues here (I've done enough of it on this site). I will say I think you make some valid points, especially about geography being a factor.

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Originally Posted by Iceman

10 years ago it was the Marvel Legends that were only $7.99.

That was also during a wonderful period where it seemed like just about everything else went up with inflation, but toys stayed at roughly the same price points for several years. At least as far as Transformers were concerned. Back then I didn't pay as much attention to rest of the toy aisles like I do these days.