Let's be very clear here. Make no mistake, the #1 culprit here that dwarfs every other factor is Walmart. Wally sells toys cheap to get people into stores. They aren't trying to keep their lights on selling toys. For that business model to work, they have to have volume throughput to continually attract people to come back. That volume requirement dictates that they can only carry stuff that's tied to major media pushes. Add in their notorious store-wide practices of squeezing every supplier, forcing them to produce cheaper goods, and you get nothing but cheap media tie-in toys. Bingo.
Places like TRU could hang on because they offered such a wide selection and didn't require every item to be a huge volume seller. They could effectively play the long-tail game in the store. If you wanted something that wasn't cheap media tie-in, i.e. the "good" toys, TRU was the place to go. But with the rise of Amazon and Ebay (the ultimate players in the "long-tail" game) - and to a lesser extent BBTS and other online outlets, the ability to find the "good" toys elsewhere for less money was suddenly at our fingertips. That left TRU as the king of... nothing. All they had was higher-priced, low-demand stuff in buildings with expensive leases. Unless you really needed to make an impulse buy of something not carried by WM/Target, there was zero reason to set foot in a TRU. Why do you think they have so many store exclusives? They struggle to compete or drive foot traffic outside of holiday shopping. It's a harsh reality, but they've lasted longer than a ton of others across the retail spectrum.
However, I don't buy the "cheap Joe fan" theory. We're the same group of dorks that doesn't think twice about dropping a benjamin or two on a 3P Transformer. There might be some cheap bastards out there (like the assholes that keep figure-swapping and stealing BAF parts from Marvel Legends), but the market in general is full of middle-aged dudes with disposable income.
You could call me hypocritical, as I have refused to join the Joe subscription services because of price,... but I hardly consider scoffing at a $30 four-inch figure "cheap" when the fucktards at mattel can produce 6" MOTUC figures for the same price. If Hasbro actually produced something worth buying (6" Joes!), I'd gladly pay through the nose and exhaust my kids' college funds hoarding the little bastards. The fact that they don't seem to know how to adapt the property for a new generation and don't seem to want to cater to us "olds" is the issue, and that's hard to diagnose further from the outside.
NSA, I agree about PTE though. It's astounding that some Amazon 3P seller hasn't cleaned up by importing a few shipping containers of the PTE stuff that's hard to get over here. If I had more time... I've got the storage space and have the ability to set up a shipping operation pretty quickly.... hmmmmmm.
Places like TRU could hang on because they offered such a wide selection and didn't require every item to be a huge volume seller. They could effectively play the long-tail game in the store. If you wanted something that wasn't cheap media tie-in, i.e. the "good" toys, TRU was the place to go. But with the rise of Amazon and Ebay (the ultimate players in the "long-tail" game) - and to a lesser extent BBTS and other online outlets, the ability to find the "good" toys elsewhere for less money was suddenly at our fingertips. That left TRU as the king of... nothing. All they had was higher-priced, low-demand stuff in buildings with expensive leases. Unless you really needed to make an impulse buy of something not carried by WM/Target, there was zero reason to set foot in a TRU. Why do you think they have so many store exclusives? They struggle to compete or drive foot traffic outside of holiday shopping. It's a harsh reality, but they've lasted longer than a ton of others across the retail spectrum.
However, I don't buy the "cheap Joe fan" theory. We're the same group of dorks that doesn't think twice about dropping a benjamin or two on a 3P Transformer. There might be some cheap bastards out there (like the assholes that keep figure-swapping and stealing BAF parts from Marvel Legends), but the market in general is full of middle-aged dudes with disposable income.
You could call me hypocritical, as I have refused to join the Joe subscription services because of price,... but I hardly consider scoffing at a $30 four-inch figure "cheap" when the fucktards at mattel can produce 6" MOTUC figures for the same price. If Hasbro actually produced something worth buying (6" Joes!), I'd gladly pay through the nose and exhaust my kids' college funds hoarding the little bastards. The fact that they don't seem to know how to adapt the property for a new generation and don't seem to want to cater to us "olds" is the issue, and that's hard to diagnose further from the outside.
NSA, I agree about PTE though. It's astounding that some Amazon 3P seller hasn't cleaned up by importing a few shipping containers of the PTE stuff that's hard to get over here. If I had more time... I've got the storage space and have the ability to set up a shipping operation pretty quickly.... hmmmmmm.
(Their Joes are asian)
