Marvel legends Prices & Future

[PurpleLantern]

When this news dropped, I saw someone remark maybe Hasbro shouldn't try to make and sell characters people don't want. I thought that too and not just HasLab flops. I almost think just maybe Hasbro as a stakeholder should have at least a tiny bit of input to avoid something like Eternals pegwarmers, Luis & Ghost two pack. Things that retailers years later still can't get rid of.

[yojoebro82]

When this news dropped, I saw someone remark maybe Hasbro shouldn't try to make and sell characters people don't want. I thought that too and not just HasLab flops. I almost think just maybe Hasbro as a stakeholder should have at least a tiny bit of input to avoid something like Eternals pegwarmers, Luis & Ghost two pack. Things that retailers years later still can't get rid of.

The problem goes way beyond the fact that there are occasional peg warmers for ML. ML itself is just a small fraction of a huge company and peg warmers have existed in every action figure line from every action figure manufacturer since the dawn of the genre.

Right, Crystal Ball? This guy clogged Children's Palace shelves as a full-time job in the 80's, but he didn't cause 1,000s of layoffs.

[PantherCult]

Kind of ironic that to avoid a sales disaster like Crystal Ball you expect Hasbro to use a crystal ball to properly predict what will move and what won't

Predicting that Eternals would be a sales disaster is super easy in hindsight, but it's not hard to see how Hasbro got there. They badly underestimated audience reaction to the Black Panther movie and had to try to play catch up with figure waves after the fact. At the time they made plans for the Eternals wave Avengers: Endgame became one of the biggest movies of all time and their Endgame product rollout was insufficient to timely meet the demand.

Their approach to the Eternals movie was to roll out product in a way that they wouldn't be flat footed for the next Marvel blockbuster. Excitement was clearly there from retailers - they ordered a ton, each major retailer secured a movie specific exclusive, there was a movie based deluxe figure to coincide. Finally Hasbro was ready.

Then the pandemic hit and sent plans a little sideways. Then the movie came out and wasn't nearly the level of blockbuster previous Marvel movies had been and was the least kid-oriented movie the MCU had produced. So the toy line landed with an epic thud. Hasbro had committed fully to having a TON of product ready and not be caught out by the next Marvel juggernaut and it was a total fail.

But it's not hard to see why they committed to it the way they did. Experience had taught them they hadn't done enough with previous block busters so they tried to course correct and got it wrong - again

At least with the comic based waves they know what the baseline is... with movie waves they have to guess how big a movie may be to satisfy demand when the movie hits - or, alternatively kind of tip toe in to product when the movie comes out and then try to satisfy demand on the back end.

I think we can see the evidence of this with this year's movie waves. Guardians of the Galaxy has a proven track record so they get a full movie based wave. They are less confident about how Quantumania and Marvels will perform (partly because of female heavy casts which is its own seperate issue) and thus gave us the half and half approach where comic figures with significant parts re-use help off set costs of the movie figures. They expect Across the Spider-Verse to do well and so that movie gets a line of fully dedicated sculpts.

If Marvels is a huge box office smash I guarantee we'll see a "make-up" wave of movie figures - but I think they are going to hedge their bets with properties they don't see as guaranteed sales gold. And the sting of that Eternals wave is a fresh reminder of why to play it safe.

[fac]

I think even the MCU may be a little saturated toy-wise - it is after all up to 30+ films and shows, and a full collection of MCU Legends is hundreds of figures now, and much like the comic line, at some point the big guns are repeats and the new characters aren't as iconic. Other than new characters, I can't say I am excited to get another Ant-Man in his slightly different outfit this time...

[PurpleLantern]

I'm not saying one MCU wave in Marvel Legends is the reason for the failure, but the hierarchy that allows these failures multiplied by multiple toy lines. If I were a retailer, things like Squirrel Girl, Eternals, Luis & Ghost, would degrade trust with Hasbro.

Basic common sense is to sell what people want to buy at a reasonable price with decent quality control. Having fewer flops means less sunk costs doing background work like HasLab work before they even present the ideas for sale.

They should focus on asking fans what they want to buy while being mindful of the vocal minority throwing out obscure deep cuts. Surprise announcements should take a backseat to letting fans steer what they work on producing next.

[yojoebro82]

If you're talking MCU sales, I see three big hurdles:

1. No Iron Man (baring any revisiting of older movies)
2. No Captain America (baring any revisiting of older movies)
3. And Marvel Studios slow walking X-Men and FF.

[Scissors]

My personal guess (and that's all we are all doing anyway) is that Hasbro will eventually move away from the 6" Marvel collector line completely, as more and more of that customer base has been driven away and will continue to drop as prices go up. Look at how abundant the 2022 Marvel Legends figures were, clogging shelves everywhere and then went on deep discount soon after; ML is quickly becoming a failed product line for the big retailers, and that's extremely difficult to recover from because places like Walmart are very, very cutthroat about their shelf-spaces.

But the Marvel license itself is still profitable for Hasbro so they will hang on to it, but they'd be focusing on the more basic lines (i.e. the 5POA, the other kids lines such as Monster Hunters or Mech Strike or the bendy ones or the 12" Titan heroes) which parents are still buying for their kids, as well as roleplaying items.

[Akatsuki]

Of course, the solution is that Marvel should bring Iron Man back in the MCU!

By the way, the only ML figures that I saw peg warming recently were the AOA comic figures. Seems like several cases of just Cyclops and Rogue were by themselves at Targets. It was weird.


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[PurpleLantern]

I definitely didn't see an abundance of Marvel Legends in stores like Walmart, Target, or at Ross in 2022. It did seem like the 2022 figures were readily available online, but in stores were mostly empty pegs or just a few units.

Contrast with Dragon Stars where once I see some in Walmart or Target, they are completely gone the next week at regular full price. They're not really heavily stocked either. Gundam Universe also don't last long on the shelves.

[PurpleLantern]

I also saw tons of AoA at Target stubbornly kept at regular price along with Eternals.

I think part of the solution is making people know who is this character and why you should want that figure. I'm not absolutely sure I would have wanted X-Men Retro Silver Samurai or Viper if I didn't read the Uncanny X-Men 172 to 173. I may have gravitated to Silver Samurai eventually due to ninjas and samurais.

I wanted comic Sunfire due to the Amazing Friends cartoon and Giant Sized X-Men, but didn't want AoA Sunfire and didn't read much of AoA.

[spideyboy1111]

I'm not saying one MCU wave in Marvel Legends is the reason for the failure, but the hierarchy that allows these failures multiplied by multiple toy lines. If I were a retailer, things like Squirrel Girl, Eternals, Luis & Ghost, would degrade trust with Hasbro.

Basic common sense is to sell what people want to buy at a reasonable price with decent quality control. Having fewer flops means less sunk costs doing background work like HasLab work before they even present the ideas for sale.

They should focus on asking fans what they want to buy while being mindful of the vocal minority throwing out obscure deep cuts. Surprise announcements should take a backseat to letting fans steer what they work on producing next.

here's the thing... the longer you go without making certain figures like Squirrel girl (her figure wasn't the issue the price tag because of the dumb bike was) and MCU characters that would essentially be holes that need filled, is the internet will tell you one thing, but the casual shopper will end up telling you another.

The internet comic collectors had squirrel girl as a major want for quite some time, the MCU collectors go pretty deep with who they want... so no ghost, no luis would be a big void for them just as much as Agatha, Malekieth, Justin Hammer, Hammer Drones, Whiplash, Kurse, Killian, etc have been...

it's wrong to not make these characters.. and the occasional peg warmer isn't tanking the company.

The New CEO + COVID fallout are the problem.

China is still a mess, plastic prices like some other resources have sky rocketed due to production and shipping falling behind. The New CEO also saw record breaking profits during covid (which was before the drought on materials and workers really started) but raised prices and saw customers with some extra cash to spend with government money and spending less by not going out of their homes as often.

(no company should be making record breaking profit and raising prices at the same time)

Cut to now, we're all back to work, there's no government money, the priced went up again to cover hemorrhaging loss because god forbid his 20million dollar profit that went into his wallet alone, can't take a hit.... and to keep him from personally losing money and the company hemorrhaging, he's now laying off 1000 workers while prices are still going up and production has vastly increased (every year we get more individual figures than the year prior)

While other companies, like NECA for instance... (though smaller of a company) have realized they are going to be hurting themselves and their customers if they raise prices too high and release too much all at once (hasbro was releasing way too much even at the time of the Hell Charger, and that's one (of many) factors why it failed) Especially with the cost of plastic going up. For instance, the Cartoon Turtle Diorama's were announced at Power-Con (I was there) that their order windows would start going up by end of september (4 months ago) and these still haven't went up. Why? Because plastic is insane, there's too much coming out... and production is slower than ever for alot of companies in china.

so they've clearly decided it's not quite time to put them up.

[RoboKillah]

So, get fans to agree on what they want, and then make them want what they don't. Sounds simple.

[PantherCult]

Basic common sense is to sell what people want to buy at a reasonable price with decent quality control. Having fewer flops means less sunk costs.

They should focus on asking fans what they want to buy while being mindful of the vocal minority throwing out obscure deep cuts.

The problem is, of course, that if all they did was produce characters that sell the most the line would be nothing but Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine and the occasional Deadpool.

Luckily they include more than that to keep a robust line that appeals to people like me who would walk away in a hurry if it was just big guns over and over.

[spideyboy1111]

My personal guess (and that's all we are all doing anyway) is that Hasbro will eventually move away from the 6" Marvel collector line completely, as more and more of that customer base has been driven away and will continue to drop as prices go up. Look at how abundant the 2022 Marvel Legends figures were, clogging shelves everywhere and then went on deep discount soon after; ML is quickly becoming a failed product line for the big retailers, and that's extremely difficult to recover from because places like Walmart are very, very cutthroat about their shelf-spaces.

But the Marvel license itself is still profitable for Hasbro so they will hang on to it, but they'd be focusing on the more basic lines (i.e. the 5POA, the other kids lines such as Monster Hunters or Mech Strike or the bendy ones or the 12" Titan heroes) which parents are still buying for their kids, as well as roleplaying items.

eh.... most people buy online these days id wager

this seems to be a alot of assumption, id actually argue a good example of a line going under right now is the black series... BECAUSE they're rarely on shelves. they're not getting stocked very well while legends actually are getting stocked very well. Peg warming isn't as simple as "people aren't buying" but the store is "overstocking"

[spideyboy1111]

I also saw tons of AoA at Target stubbornly kept at regular price along with Eternals.

I think part of the solution is making people know who is this character and why you should want that figure. I'm not absolutely sure I would have wanted X-Men Retro Silver Samurai or Viper if I didn't read the Uncanny X-Men 172 to 173. I may have gravitated to Silver Samurai eventually due to ninjas and samurais.

I wanted comic Sunfire due to the Amazing Friends cartoon and Giant Sized X-Men, but didn't want AoA Sunfire and didn't read much of AoA.

target is also now the worst way to judge a peg warmer now since all they do is get solid cases... if you get 40 boxes of any character... you're likely to still have at least 15 left over per store of that character