Even at 50% off, with postage and tax a figure to the UK is still roughly 50 quid, the one figure I would have got I’m not that desperate for. None have sold out yet though, I’m not sure if that’s telling or not.
The way I see the BBTS liquidation is that it sort of says the emperor has no clothes on. A lot of branding & marketing is illusionary... designer goods are marked up as such not always because of quality, but because of prestige, the cool factor, exclusivity, FOMO, and so on. You see this in the sneaker industry, the vinyl toy market, etc.
Action figures are a little different, but marketers definitely use these tactics to put a glamour around a toy to inflate price. Hype events are created to generate a dimension of excitement that increases perceived value. Seeing something in a prestigious way makes you think it's worth more. The same thing sold next to a pair of children's socks at ROSS is a startling reminder that it's a hunk of mass produced plastic, worth only 20% of what they originally wanted. Once you see that, it's hard to unsee it. People partially resent HasLabs because the exclusivity of the process stops the product from losing its value as the shine wears off. Think of the BS Snowspeeder - it had a lengthy sale period across multiple retailers, sometimes at more than 50% off. If you can stand to live without it, then you stand to save some money if you don't jump at every new thing.
NECA used hype and exclusivity to keep their TMNT line hot—many figures should have gone on sale, but didn't, and they prevented Target from including them in their toy sales. They shuffled their peg-warmers from store to store, and now many are sitting in a warehouse on costumes.com, still at full price. I imagine its worth it to NECA to maintain brand prestige over freeing up warehouse space shared with a costume website. Meanwhile, third party scalpers who thought they could resell at a profit are selling under retail, on eBay and Amazon. Their glamour is wearing off a little bit, especially in the post COVID economy. I've seen this with Mythic Legions, too.
Super7, however, took things to the next level. People are interested because they used the shine method moreso than any other company I can think of—using more hype, more glamour, and an extremely skewed ratio of cost to quality. But now retail is starting to burst the glamour bubble and show that if you're patient long enough, just like with a lot of Hasbro product, the new shiny thing will eventually be sitting next to a pair of socks in Ollie's or Five Below. Will that be the case with later waves of product? Hard to tell. Will probably depend on reviews, execution, and how endeared a person is to one of their characters. But the FOMO might be gone or significantly reduced.
I still have major doubts this is all BBTS overstock and that they just decided to dump it all at once. Why wait for this massive dump when they could have easily clearanced out some of these waves/figures years ago, in separate sales? Makes no sense to wait if they massively over-ordered almost everything...
I just checked and I could still put 24 Robot Scratchy, or Alice, or TMNT figures into my cart, and I assume it is the same for just about every other figure (I did a quick spot check) - when BBTS has limited stock on an item, the counter limits what you can add to your cart, 24 is the max. Assuming they have actually sold some of these Ultimates at these prices, and yet they don't seem to be running out of stock yet, makes it seem like they have a lot of product to sell.
My tinfoil hat theory is that Super7 has dumped their excess to BBTS on pennies on the dollar, as they don't want to sell at a discount on their own site, or admit they overproduced the "made to order" quantities. I'm just not buying that BBTS has had 3,000 or 5,000 or however many Ultimates collecting dust for months only to now decide to sell at likely below wholesale... This is likely hundreds of thousands of dollars of product they are liquidating.
This is the equivalent of a manufacturer dumping stuff via a discounter and it showing up at TJ Maxx or Ollies or whatever, only Super7 offered it to BBTS.
Maybe one way Super7 counters any problems is not to get rid of the shotgun approach to licenses for Ultimates, but instead keep that approach going. Maybe there's only so deep any line can go when every figure has premium pricing.
I agree with your thinking on this. I wish there were kind of a mid-tier option available. Like, your Ultimates! line could be all your Lion-Os and Leonardos, with their multiple hand, face and weapon options, while your Adequates! line could be your Genghis Frogs and Ralph Wiggums with just the one head and pair of hands.
Now, that's with me not knowing really anything about the toy making business. Maybe the cost of adding an ice cream cone head option or a laptop computer (he clearly can't hold) don't add much to the manufacturing cost so there wouldn't be any real savings by cutting those. Alternately, I've heard that tooling is the most expensive part, and would think that any character that's going to be half as popular as the main ones shouldn't be getting an equal amount of tooling.
All hypotheticals, really. I don't think this BBTS sale is a doom siren for Super7. I suspect, if anything, as they get more niche into their properties and characters, the prices of the figures will go up to compensate for the fewer number of buyers. It's how comic books have stayed in business over my lifetime, and I really feel that Flynn wants to sell figures to people, even if it's at a diminished scale to his peak franchises.
@fac I think another possibility is a prior agreement not to discount to protect the price. Supposedly Mezco had a requirement not to go below MSRP, which Amazon always broke. It got to the point where I stopped preordering to wait for a $20 (or $30!) Amazon discount. I noticed BBTS has had a few recent Mezco sales. There must be a point where they have to say enough it enough and move some of those figures that have been sitting around for years.
Slightly off topic, but does anyone else think BBTS carries a ridiculous amount of product outside the general action figure category?
@mrboshek Also possible - EE had a decent sale on Ultimates months ago, that's when I got the 2001 figures, but maybe a retailer does need to talk to Super7 first and work out the details, as often once one place discounts the rest follow. Granted, the retailer has the power here, they can always say they won't order anymore if they are stuck with stuff. It just seems like a lot of product at one time.
But an agreement to not go below retail is similar to how Lego almost never goes on sale.
No matter where this stuff came from — I agree with fac's overstock theory — I think it's amazing that nothing has sold out yet (as near as I can tell) despite how good the prices are.
BBTS has got to be sitting on a lot of stock.
@mrboshek Also possible - EE had a decent sale on Ultimates months ago, that's when I got the 2001 figures, but maybe a retailer does need to talk to Super7 first and work out the details, as often once one place discounts the rest follow. Granted, the retailer has the power here, they can always say they won't order anymore if they are stuck with stuff. It just seems like a lot of product at one time.
But an agreement to not go below retail is similar to how Lego almost never goes on sale.
Slight correction just to be pedantic; LEGO goes on sale all the time. It almost never goes to -clearance- (I think that's what you meant, though). LEGO is ultra protective of their perceived value and customer confidence. But just regular sales are a normal part of retail and consumers expect that to happen semi-regularly.
I agree with your thinking on this. I wish there were kind of a mid-tier option available. Like, your Ultimates! line could be all your Lion-Os and Leonardos, with their multiple hand, face and weapon options, while your Adequates! line could be your Genghis Frogs and Ralph Wiggums with just the one head and pair of hands.
Now, that's with me not knowing really anything about the toy making business. Maybe the cost of adding an ice cream cone head option or a laptop computer (he clearly can't hold) don't add much to the manufacturing cost so there wouldn't be any real savings by cutting those. Alternately, I've heard that tooling is the most expensive part, and would think that any character that's going to be half as popular as the main ones shouldn't be getting an equal amount of tooling.
All hypotheticals, really. I don't think this BBTS sale is a doom siren for Super7. I suspect, if anything, as they get more niche into their properties and characters, the prices of the figures will go up to compensate for the fewer number of buyers. It's how comic books have stayed in business over my lifetime, and I really feel that Flynn wants to sell figures to people, even if it's at a diminished scale to his peak franchises.
Couple of points here, but bear in mind this is just for the sake of conversation and isn't meant as 'you're wrong and dumb.'
As hilarious and wonderful as it would be to actually get a line called 'Adequates!' -- the issue with that is sort've the complaint you see sometimes with certain Marvel Legends figures: Every character is SOMEONE'S favorite character. When you make the big players the good figures and cheap out on everyone else, you're potentially (in fact, certainly) short-changing someone's favorite character. Do that often enough, which you would be in a format like this, and it still hurts goodwill with customers.
As for tooling; you're right that tooling is pretty much the largest single expense. But cutting tools is just super expensive no matter what - whether there's three accessories in a setting or four or five. The accessory count gets more important really when it means having to cut a whole 'nother mold. As long as it all fits into one mold... it means very little.
In fact, it's kind of a not-secret-at-all part of the process that throwing in extra accessories is basically the cheapest possible way to make a figure feel like it has more value and is more worth a higher price. Hasbro gets called out on this a lot for their 'Deluxe' stuff, particularly in Star Wars, where you get a 20 dollar figure with about 2 dollars of extra accessories, and they charge 45 dollars for it, and then blame all the extra accessories.
So, realistically, you could cut back on Ultimates accessories and not -drastically- affect the price at all. If you really wanted to affect the price, you'd need to cut accessories, paint, AND articulation (articulation is a huge expense from both tooling and assembly perspectives). But then, let's be realistic.... Ultimates almost certainly don't NEED to cost what they cost as it is. You don't need to cut anything except CEO bonuses to make the line profitable at a lower price.
The comic industry, also, is probably the worst comparison because the comic industry is half-dead and mostly propped up by movies and TV shows at this point, as half of the industry is considered an advertising write-off. Comics were on a steady decline, bumped up again for a bit thanks to the MCU and Covid boredom, and are now declining again. Certainly, the 'just make the remaining customers pay more' model is not a long term strategy that can work for a currently 55-dollar product versus a 5-dollar product. How many of those die-hard Ultimates collectors will still buy figures when a normal-size figure is 80 dollars to make up for all the customers Super7 has lost? There's no viable business model there. It might work for a time in comics because the increase from 3.99 to 5.99 still means comics are reasonably inexpensive things to buy. These products just aren't cheap enough currently to support the idea of just raising prices to compensate for lost sales. In my opinion.
@fac BBTS can basically do what they want with their own stock once they have it. If they were to massively reduce a wave right off the bat, they would risk angering Super7 and perhaps shut themselves out from future product, but that's not likely. These retailers are incentivized to sell these for as much as possible because that's how they make the most money. BBTS in particular is usually less aggressive with its sale prices because their Pile of Loot feature and cheap shipping is so attractive. It's definitely not out of the realm of possibility though that some stock was dumped on them by Super7 since we've seen them do it before with the previously exclusive Super7 store items like the Glow-in-the-dark turtles. They still have a bunch of in-stock Ultimates on their own website so if they dumped some stock onto BBTS they clearly didn't dump it all.
Looks like the pre-order page was updated today as well. MMPR Wave 3 is now shipping as are the lizard guys from Thundercats. The very curious Disney updates from their last email have results in Simpsons Wave 2 still scheduled for February while Waves 3 and 4 plus the Nightmare Before Christmas wave all arriving in April. I'm not sure if all of those were actually updated or not as the TMNT shipping schedule still hasn't been updated to match the email, but at least for now, Simpsons is still a "go" as is NBX.
Slight correction just to be pedantic; LEGO goes on sale all the time. It almost never goes to -clearance- (I think that's what you meant, though). LEGO is ultra protective of their perceived value and customer confidence. But just regular sales are a normal part of retail and consumers expect that to happen semi-regularly.
Pedantic but accurate - that is what I meant, you'd almost never see a Lego sale at 50% off everything. Some of that is Lego does a lot of business with smaller, local, more "educational" toy shops and they protect that market by keeping Walmart and Target from undercutting the retail price on a regular basis. Seeing as how Target has a whole aisle, both sides, for Lego, it seems to be working.
@misfit I know back when I was working retail (men's clothing) at a smaller store, there were some higher-end items where it was essentially part of the agreement not to go below MSRP on - it was part of the mystique supposedly for line only sold in smaller stores, and unless the manufacturer discontinued the product we weren't supposed to include it on sale. However, you could work around that a bit by say bundling a free shirt and tie with a suit for instance, or offer a gift card towards a future purchase. But advertising X Brand suits are 35% off was a no-no.
Now obviously we weren't going to sit there and go broke because we couldn't take 35% one brand, so that "rule" could be broken if needed and honestly the sales rep would never know. But no matter if it is partly their product or overstock or not, I am sure a clearance like this was discussed with Super7 by BBTS before having it be the lead on their front page for a week. I agree Super7 couldn't have stopped it, but the fact Flynn obliquely referenced the overbuying on the Fwoosh interview makes me feel for sure he knew it was coming.
NECA used hype and exclusivity to keep their TMNT line hot—many figures should have gone on sale, but didn't, and they prevented Target from including them in their toy sales. They shuffled their peg-warmers from store to store, and now many are sitting in a warehouse on costumes.com, still at full price. I imagine its worth it to NECA to maintain brand prestige over freeing up warehouse space shared with a costume website. Meanwhile, third party scalpers who thought they could resell at a profit are selling under retail, on eBay and Amazon. Their glamour is wearing off a little bit, especially in the post COVID economy. I've seen this with Mythic Legions, too.
Uh, no they didn't, I don't know where you pulled that from. The reason why figures don't go on sale is because at Target the NECA stuff is 99% not theirs to mark down. That whole section is paid for by NECA, and it's why most of the Target employees won't touch that section or stock it or help you. It's a vendor area, like Hallmark. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, can and does mark things on clearance if they see fit. The only thing that would get marked down at Target is stuff that actually ships to them, in their inventory and "theirs" like those Target exclusive Godzillas or what have you.
You don't seem to understand how any of that stuff actually works and so you're making things up. And then randomly throwing Mythic Legions in there too...what? MLs are as popular as ever.
Every character is SOMEONE'S favorite character. When you make the big players the good figures and cheap out on everyone else, you're potentially (in fact, certainly) short-changing someone's favorite character. Do that often enough, which you would be in a format like this, and it still hurts goodwill with customers.
I'm pretty transparent about not really knowing how the business works, but speaking as a fan of some less-popular characters, I wouldn't be offended. If it's the difference between getting the character with fewer accessories or not getting the character at all because there aren't enough fans to offset the cost of a deluxe version, I'd take it.
I suppose that's moot in the face of your tooling insights, but that's my general take.
NECA used hype and exclusivity to keep their TMNT line hot—many figures should have gone on sale, but didn't, and they prevented Target from including them in their toy sales. They shuffled their peg-warmers from store to store, and now many are sitting in a warehouse on costumes.com, still at full price. I imagine its worth it to NECA to maintain brand prestige over freeing up warehouse space shared with a costume website. Meanwhile, third party scalpers who thought they could resell at a profit are selling under retail, on eBay and Amazon. Their glamour is wearing off a little bit, especially in the post COVID economy. I've seen this with Mythic Legions, too.
Uh, no they didn't, I don't know where you pulled that from. The reason why figures don't go on sale is because at Target the NECA stuff is 99% not theirs to mark down. That whole section is paid for by NECA, and it's why most of the Target employees won't touch that section or stock it or help you. It's a vendor area, like Hallmark. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, can and does mark things on clearance if they see fit. The only thing that would get marked down at Target is stuff that actually ships to them, in their inventory and "theirs" like those Target exclusive Godzillas or what have you.
You don't seem to understand how any of that stuff actually works and so you're making things up. And then randomly throwing Mythic Legions in there too...what? MLs are as popular as ever.
Yes, I understand why Target can't mark down NECA's stuff—because that's up to NECA. Yes, I understand that NECA has independent contractors stock their shelves. But NECA could say "sure, let's do a sale for these sets of figures that are collecting dust" either there or at their own webstore or costumes.com Like others have mentioned with LEGO, though, they similarly don't want to damage the brand or perceived value.
And yes, NECA 100% uses hype and FOMO to market their product, which was the larger point. Haul-a-thon, Fall Geek Out, that bat shit AutoT system that was invented basically to do everything I just described. They did a scant release of April O'Neil and are now charging more for her than Target did plus a pretty high rate of shipping. Right now w/tax and shipping included April is $54. Now, why would someone pay that, the cost of what a 2-pack costs at Target? Scarcity, hype, FOMO, glamour, exclusivity, fear of never being able to get it. Brian Flynn just did an interview with Veebs where he straight up said "you better order our figures now or you won't be able to get them ever again and the current sold out figure is selling super high on ebay" They know what they're doing.
As for MLs, I didn't argue that they weren't popular, but that I'm seeing some of the heat come off their recent waves as opposed to the "buy them now, they're only going to increase in price later!" mindset of yesteryear. They don't allow retailers to discount their items either to keep the shine evergreen and drive customers to buy directly from them. However, I've now bought all of my ML figures from Illythia and up off of Mercari, eBay, Amazon, and from sellers on the Cabal and at toy shows/comic conventions for close to the Store Horseman price and far bellow retail, sometimes even below the Store Horseman price. Some I think are retailers trying to dump stock on the sly. Things can still list high, but they pegwarm on eBay.
Ultimately the big difference between NECA and the Four Horseman vs Super7 is that IMHO they produce a much higher quality product and the reviews for their figures are usually glowing. Which is why I said "their glamour is wearing off a little bit." Their customers are generally very happy. But that's not to say that we aren't being marketed to and that tactics aren't being used to keep prices at a point that doesn't actually represent its value.
None of that is up to NECA with the in store promotions. That is all Target's doing and want. Yes, NECA goes along with it, because fucking of course they will, it's the store offering them money and improves their relationship with getting product into stores. It's a giant duh. But Target wants the foot traffic, so they get these things going. And why would they mark down their own figures? The product doesn't suddenly go bad just because you think it shouldn't be there. A company wants the purchase, and that product sitting there is still bait in the water for the fishes to nab on to. When it happens isn't a concern.
It has nothing to do with fomo. That's on you.
They put April up to let people get it who missed out. Why is that suddenly a problem? Because of shipping costs? Have you tried shipping anything lately? It's not cheap, and they're understandably not going to take the hit on those shipping rates themselves.
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