I've seen two waves canceled so far. Watch the combat heroes clog pegs and the local stores barely restock ( in fact last week they restocked with wave 1!)

Its obvious at least at my local Walmarts andTargets were the priorities are. SW Indiana Jones and TF share one side an aisle at wally world and the Joes or sandwiched on a three peg sliver between Macfarlane's halo and Sports figures. Target might have 2 pegs about 3 figs deep and a shelf of vehicles. I dominate 3 toy lines all have some form of current media. TF shining brightists I think. and Transformers Animated became a hit with old fans and new. My son and I love it.

I'm not looking forward to the Live action movie with any hope and wonder if the line can last long enough to see a movie buzz.

That is the point of Resolute, there is a new cartoon accompanying it which looks pretty neat. Now the question I beg is that is it too little too late.

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I've seen the resolute sneakpeek. but real bullets, Warren Ellis, and webisode... that's more for the fanbase that's already been sold for 25 years then network toyline tie -in cartoon like CN Clone Wars and TF/A

Remember all that talk of a toy line needing a cartoon/movie to sell real well nowadays? And how some said it wasn't true? It is, look at Bakugan...or the lack there of.

I will say that I think the waves are being cancelled to make way for the movie stuff to hit. If they clog the shelves with what was supposed to come out and mix in the movie stuff, you would end up with a Star Wars type of toy isle with three different styles of toys. While that will work for SW fans and TFormers fans, Joe fans wont buy into that as much.

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Bakugan is on cartoon network every day but sunday......

I still argue a lack of product (or now should I say new product since rehash waves are pegwarming) has frustrated some collectors to the point they gave up. Interest was pretty high this time last year but waves 2 & 3 were almost non existant. Sputters of waves would be snatched up by scalpers leaveing nothing for the adverage collector who really doesn't have the time or the energy for such persuits and if they went the scalper route paying nearly twice to three times retail and now feel burned seeing the same product pegwarm, well that is probably a lost customer too. I honestly believe the Distro nightmare had farther reaching effects than anyone thought it would. Hasbro kept cancelling orders since theycouldn't keep up and did nothing to fix the problem, people faltered out of frustration and in some ways I do not blame them.

The Joe line has slowed due to natural progression. It came out at a time when Star Wars product was at a low point in releases and there were no other "hot" toys at the time. So, Joe got a brief run from the general toy collector who buys retail toys. But, two things then happened.

1. Other toy lines started pumping out product that catered to collectors. That sucked the collectors away from Joe.

And, 2. Joe finished up most of the highest profile characters. For people who are only casual fans, once they have the 15-20 core figures they want, interest wanes. Now, we're into characters and figures that mostly cater to the hard core fans. And, that group has been unable to support Joe at retail.

So, this shouldn't be any different. The movie will change things as that will push a ton of product out. But, I doubt the collectors will follow. So, if kids don't buy the movie stuff, we could be in a bad place.

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Mike has some very valid points, but I wanted to bring something else up with regard to those "clogged pegs" out there.

Wave 8 and 9 started to arrive at retail in June and late July, respectively. Between August and November, those two waves kept shipping revision cases, swapping out a figure here or there with a harder-to-find figure from a previous assortment (IG Destro, Battle Armor CC, Major Bludd, Rock n Roll, etc.).

That was all well and fine, except it kept putting 86 Roadblock, Bazooka, Hawk, Wild Bill, Spirit, and others back on the pegs week after week after week. So, the product sits, stagnates and doesn't move. Retailer orders change, they cut back numbers or they simply stop ordering.

So, I don't think we have a lack of media exposure to blame, we have what Mike has said (Joe filled a vacancy in the retail collecting world) and we can lay blame at the feet of whom ever decided to keep shipping wave 8 and 9 to retail for nearly six months and that could be retailers who saw great numbers at first and kept ordering, or Hasbro or a combination of both.

Does seem like the only thing to push the toys right now are the toys and with some retailers ordering more comic packs, DVD packs, or shelf warming waves than they can move lots of stores really don't have anything new and exciting to draw in people to the Joe section. How many times can you see the same funky arms Vipers and first DVD packs before you stop looking over in the same old same old section of the store?

With the time lag on the change from Devils Due to IDW the Joes haven't had a comic book for a long time now. No cartoon to let kids know how cool the world of GI Joe and Cobra is so if dad or grandpa isn't pushing Jr into GI Joe there is no push to get kids in. No GI Joe video games to get the characters out there. No movie trailer still.

Yea right now it's just the toys and us crazy collectors. Outside of those areas you'd be hard pressed to even know GI Joe was still around.

Okay let me speak from my past experiances.

As a kid buying Joes was about the toy.. It was a real treat to see your favorite toy in the toon. But the toon only used a hand full of characters. I only got into the comics now and then and did not read them regularly at all. (I only got them now and then from a local drug store.) The toon did not change my buying wants. But it did give a story to the figures. Without the toon I would not have known Destro was just an arms dealer, Duke was the field leader while Hawk was in over all command.

Now on to more resent years.. My son once reaching toy age didn't really want GI Joes. He wanted Pokimon, Yugi Oh, Ben 10, Naruto and so on.. I think he would have been a Barney freak if they would have given that purple dinosaur a gun.

My conclusion, based only upon my experiance is this.....

My generation (and probably yours) did not need a media outlet to tell us what we liked. Today however, for whatever reason, children depend on media forms to tell them what is kool and what is not..

What this may imply.....

To sell to collectors of old, no media form of any kind is required. It is however a treat to see thier favorite characters portrayed.

But to sell to kids today you MUST have a media outlet. TF - ANimated Ben 10 DC/Marvel figures and so on all have a run of some sort going on to help push their products to the mindless drones we call our children.

This study of toy marketing was done as of 2008 all rights reserved. Case subjects 2.

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don't kid yourself< SB, we were drones at that age. If it hadn't been for joe being on five days a week, I would have had zero interest. He-man, same, I mean the figures were barely articulated and I don't know anyone who thought they were fun to play with, "look Heman can move his arms, kind of"

The overflow of crap fillers is what killed the collection for me, we have 15 vipers 10 bludd, 10 wild bill at both WM right now. I managed to pick up the best of 80's dvd, under about a dozen of sets 1 and 2, most people I guess didn't bother.

While I think resolute looks good and the figures are exceptional, I wonder about the cross of lines. I would have much preferred them to finished out at about wave 10, then do a couple waves of resolute only to coincide with the cartoon(but if its going to be online only, I fear only old men huddled around their aged computer will be watching).

If the movie didn't look like a streetfighter sequel, I'd be more optimistic, but I do think we'll see some sales as there will finally be joes visible to a new generation. But I fear, the same sad fraternity of people will be buying this stuff up again.

But, since I only want fodder for the most part, this is all good news for me. I comfort myself with the fact that Hasbro is cheap, we'll see 25a construction on everything they do from now on, as its already been paid for,

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That all would be right if the stuff ever hit the shelves in the first place. Here in lies the problem. And I don't think people really take into account how that frustration effected later sales.

Orders were cancelled, I know the party line says otherwise but the reality is they were (muliple stores have confirmed this) After a few months even the most die hard fan will give up with absolutly no product on the shelves. I know people who still say "Why start, I'll never get all the ones I want." dispite the fact so many of the figs from last year are warming the pegs.

I'm looking at new product I bought from Hasbro or new from other retailers and I've bought like 100 new Joes this year!!!!!! I don't think I've ever had a stretch like that since '87-'88!

When you look at the amount of product released in 2008, you have to conclude that the 25th line is doing well, especially considering Hasbro is one of the several companies in this economy that is still doing well.

From my point of view, they're doing great!

Well, the only advertising I have seen has been in Wizard, ToyFare, Tomart, and Lee's.

I have seen nothing else anywhere in print.

I can't speak for tv ads, since I don't have cable.


The only other print I've seen has been the sales in the various store flyers.



It's too bad Hasbro doesn't buy some space in the various popular comics or other magazines that are popular with our age group (Maxim, etc). They want their target demographic, yet they are not reaching out to properly make those people aware.

The only downside to this is Hasbro absolutely has to work out their distribution process better. If you advertise for you product, you better have that product available.

Otherwise it's just jumping the shark.

So what needs done?

1) Address the HTS issues. HTS is supposed to be an alternative outlet that allows the consumer to bypass the brick stores. It needs to be efficient and customer friendly. It doesn't say much for a business if they can't even place fill personal orders correctly-doesn't give me faith about the ability to get product on the shelves. HTS needs to be shook up a little. If you don't have the product, people will go elsewhere.

Take a look at the previous orders and trends. If people are trying to purchase certain things and they get sold out, contact the customer to apologize and ask them if the product becomes available again, how many would they be interested in. Not so much a pre-order, but more of a wish list/queue/back order thing to have the customer have the option to say, "Man, I'd like to get four of that one whenever they are in stock." This way the company sees that there is definite customer interest and they know what kinda numbers they need.

A wish list, a '1 of each' type approach, or even a 'put down a buck on the figure(s) you want and we'll reserve it(them) for you' are some options.

Personally, if a company contacted me to say, "Hey, we noticed you've tried to order the ______ a couple times now and we've been out of stock. Please let us know how many of ______ you are interested in purchasing and we will set that number aside and contact you when they come in," and then I am contacted and have the chance to buy the ones I want before they go up on the site would make me a loyal customer.

2) Know your target demographic. If that means getting Hasbro people to go online and join the various joe sites, then working to improve customer/company communication. Forget the current Q&A. Ask the questions about how to improve things, ask for input, and be willing to accept all feedback. Don't give out the standard evasive answers. Find out what the pros and cons are and what issues need improvement. Post polls or fan-pic polls to find out what people want. Talk with the collectors and fans to get a feel for what they are interested in.

3) How about even sponsoring, advertising on, or supporting some of the sites? That shows you care about the customers and you get the name/product placement, and do something good.





The problem is, any advertising of the 25th is nullified by the difficulty in obtaining the product. Until certain issues are resolved, it would just be throwing money away. And then the consumers would take the blame for not buying enough to support the line...

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Not all of us. I had neither the cartoon or the comics when I was a kid. I based all my kiddie characterizations on the filecard or whatever my imagination thought was cooler.

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