[Steevy Maximus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by VicTurd

Yeah I don't really have hope for Hasbro in anything in 3.75 scale. Even their Star Wars stuff feels smaller in scope compared to a few years ago. They clearly don't care for this scale and after the Tron set failed I don't think this Hasbro375 is going very far.

I think a sad truth is that much of the justifications for 3.75/4” lines have been whittled away over the past 15 years.

This scale worked in the past due to several key elements:
1. Smaller, “cheaper” figures that didn’t take up much retail space.
2. Be small enough that vehicles/playsets were a practical component of the brand experience.
3. Because the figures were smaller, a company could, theoretically, add more figures with more variety in the same case volume as larger scale figures.

These days?
-Toy sections have shrunk, and general product design has shrunk with it. A carded figure is not DRASTICALLY smaller than 6” figure in a boxed format.
-Kids aren’t buying as many toys and the collector market is splintered off into other scales/products. Much of the big sales of the mid-late 2000s was the result of the entire “buying market” for lines like Marvel, Star Wars, and GI Joe all funneled into a single product expression.
-Because the kid market has shrunk, companies have reduced variety in favor of proven sellers.
-Costs have increased (with the reduced buying market) that makes vehicles less viable for many lines.
-Those last two issues are further exasperated by an increasing and vocal collector representation which demands greater detail, greater articulation, greater accuracy…all of which push UP the price of the final product…and potentially drive away more casual consumers unwilling to spend the money on those products.

A superb example is last year’s Star Wars Epic X-Wing w/ Luke Skywalker and the Vintage Collection version:
The Epic Version had a built in R2, a firing missile, sculpted on “laser blasts”, a 9 POA Luke Skywalker with one accessory, pretty basic deco with many details left blank, and is undersized relative to “proper scale”. But it cost $30

Vintage Collection? Proper scale, extreme deco and fine details looking like it came off the screen. Extensive deco in the cockpit, and droid socket for any astromech droid you want. It costs $100..and that’s before getting an X-Wing pilot (let’s say $16.99) and an Astromech (also $16.99). That’s assuming either of those figures are actually available at the same time as the vehicle (the fact Epic never got an R2 figure is baffling), which is NEVER a given in that product range.

Despite scale change, my initial impression of ActionVerse is that we’ll see about the same number of figures over the same given period as Epic World of Action. Vehicles might not be as impressive…but it’s not like this market segment is seeing that many vehicles to begin with. The fact Hasbro can so easily overhaul the scale without impacting release volume I think says a LOT about the market and “scale’s place” within it.