[GizmoTron]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hasbroherofan

The Target argument also seems odd to me, because if the problem was that they were pissed off about sitting on a bunch of unsold Eternals and Age of Apocalypse figures... then the more likely scenario to me would be they just pass on future proposed Eternals and Age of Apocalypse figures. One was an extremely obscure and untested property nobody outside of the most hardcore Marvel fans had ever heard of (and even among hardcore Marvel fans, the Eternals were never particularly popular), and the other was a niche alternate universe storyline.

We saw this happen before. Notice after the wave for the first Ant-Man movie bombed, there wasn't a follow-up for the sequel, and instead figures for that movie got folded into Infinity War's waves and eventually promotional stuff like The First Ten Years.

I just have a hard time seriously believing that they'd suddenly, and without warning, drop ML altogether over that. Especially when there are other toylines that have had similar dud waves that they continue to order and display in the aisles. The only way I could seriously see this happening is if they downsized their toy section altogether, which I don't see happening.

See, that makes sense to us, but you're thinking like a fan, not a Target Exec who sees only the numbers and where any version of Iron Man is just Iron Man and Marvel Legend = Marvel Legend. So Eternals doing badly doesn't just hurt future Eternals toys, it really can, sometimes unfairly, have a negative impact on the brand as a whole.

And we've had duds before, but Hasbro's response to not do an Antman 2 wave and to mix figures into other SKUs/DCPIs worked because there were other waves still out there on the shelf to move those figures into. Right now at Target, however, there aren't any waves currently at all, so while no one knows yet what's going on with Target this is not business as usual.

I also just picked up Defender Strange at Target on Clearance now ($22, a much easier to swallow price), which is not only a Target exclusive and goes with the movie that just came out and is doing very well. So yeah, very strange indeed.