[Snowflakian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by UFOTECH

The big 3 will feel this hard.
Lego will get it the worst losing a massive retail footprint, especially because they have stuff sold in store in tRU that doesnt show up anywhere.
Mattel is already on the edge, Barbie is all they have and they will lose their primary retail outlet. All the barbie stuff sold in tru i never saw anywhere else.
Hasbro probably deals with it best because they sell the same stuff everywhere they lose a retailer essentially.
Neca doesnt exist in retail outside TRU lol
Funko has to take a decent hit from this.
Bandai USA loses power rangers so they are basically done. Cant think of anything else they had.
Playmates new turtles look like garbage so who knows

Lego will be fine thanks to lego catalogues and lego stores. They have their own dedicated store now.

Mattel has always stayed afloat thanks to Barbie and Hot Wheels/Matchbox. They aren't going anywhere. And now with Pokemon Mega Construx they also have a decent foot hold into the building block market. But it does mean less experimentation with other game lines outside of Halo. COD will likely stay, but the odds of them trying anything truly random that's an unknown to retail chains like a Warframe line or any other video game that's not nintendo is unlikely now.

Bandai still has Ben 10 and Titans Go! So they'll be okay for the time being, but they do need to find some other licenses or brands to sustain themselves on. Mech X4 was pretty much a TRU only thing. So that's likely gone now. Which is a shame, I'd been planning on picking some of those up later, and was hoping shapeways would get around to a MEGAS XLR upgrade kit for it.

Hasbro will be fine, and is likely to continue toy shelf domination with their expanding brands. But it will likely mean more difficulty in trying out new untested things. It took a lot of convincing to get Kre-O and Construct bots on shelves as it was. But we might see a resurgence in those concepts with how they've sustained at Walgreens still with Kre-O. The other issue is the Hascon exclusives that they were trying to get to major retailers to let the at home fan feel the experience from a distance too.

It's not likely Target will dedicate a "collectors corner" though that'd definitely help. But so much of those were niche items that they don't move the volumes to sustain it. Still would be nice for things like Dragon Ball Shodo(bandai of japan) or similar though. As it is, it's hard enough to get those bigger retailers to stock anything building block that's not Lego. Hasbro exclusives move normally though, so those may find outlets still. Target and other stores have had amazing sales growth thanks to those mostly. Like the increased walgreens foot traffic from those, as well as the Purple Shockwave from animated for target as well as the other movie 1 scout toys and movie 1 G1 paint scheme figures, and Walmart's always done decently with Hasbro exclusives. So we may get lucky in those regards with Target and Hasbro, as well as Walmart and Hasbro.

Neca is going to be hit the hardest. Same to Jada and SpinMaster and possibly Jazwares too.

Playmates I'm not too worried about between TMNT and Voltron, they are set decently so long as they continue to innovate within those lines to branch out. While new TMNT isn't collector appealing at all, it does seem like it'll do great with their target kid audience and demographic.
And Voltron I'm sure can still do plenty to bring playmates back up if they reconfigure some ideas from their past to it. But this also means no more of the fun randomness playmates was known for like their Exo-squad vs Robotech line from the past. And something like that could have been interesting through TRU to cause an exo-squad revival. Which now could prove slightly more difficult, but still do-able.

This also means less likelihood for other toons to get toylines though unless they have a decent backer for that line. So stuff like the Jada Robocop line won't happen. And it'll definitely hit the makers of Thomas the train types of lines too as TRU was the widest selection for those.

Overall, this is going to hinder a lot of developments and nostalgia based lines too. Transformers Cyberverse for example would have done amazing with TRU, but now with that gone, the next waves are likely going to have to go back to the drawing board to find new ways to entice customers. Same as how we saw random specialty things like the Kre-O G1 grimlock build set during AOE.

I do hope that something can come out of it though. There is a certain kind of joy of actually going to a toy dedicated store that's not the same as going to Target or Walmart. There are other things that'll come out of this like who makes the Kong toys likely to get more licenses since they have a guaranteed walmart deal.