1. Was there ever a figure you received an advance look at, and you just knew from the start that it was a disaster?

Horrible sculpt, lame gimmicks, under or over sized, paint app nightmare...

And even when a clunker comes, in your position, is it wise to just smile at the Hasbro rep and say something like "Hey, that's another winner, Hasbro; boy, that's a bestseller right there!" when you really want to say "Who's doing to get fired for this one seeing the light of day at retail?"
--Derek

Would you believe almost all preproduction toys at trade shows look pretty superb? Usually stuff from any toy company is rough or unfinished before its debut in the press, so you see it and you go "so far so good!" You might see a toy a year before a movie comes out, so if the likeness is a little off you might not even know who it's supposed to be in the first place. If it's wrong, you don't know what you're looking at just yet. There are quite a few items - some entire lines - that get the axe early enough in development that a manufacturer may never show them to buyers/customers/the press, and little (but not nothing) gets shown to retail or wholesale customers that doesn't come to market. And, obviously, even less gets shown to the world that doesn't hit shelves eventually.

A line Hasbro showed to the public but never saw release was Star Wars Amp'd, which was like the current Mission Fleet line - but with more construction aspects. You can see some of them here. I overheard a lot of conversations asking people what they thought of it in numerous venues, including New York Toy Fair. It's one of the few times I've ever heard a large amount of apprehension over a line they showed to the press. I didn't think it would be a disaster, but it was different. Nobody wants to have to shift gears to a whole new scale and render their old toys obsolete. I would've enjoyed seeing 3 3/4-inch vehicles with weird upgrade parts.

Sometimes a good idea just doesn't gel. When I saw Force Link I thought this had tons of potential.  It could light up the Kylo Ren TIE Fighter's engines, which had no batteries on board. That's outright witchcraft!  It could add electronics to all toys with a chip and only a couple of batteries.   But the execution (shaking) was poor, the on-shelf explaination was not as clear as CommTech was back in the day, and it obviously failed.  Being replaced by Force Link 2.0 within six months killed what was - and I believe still is - a great platform that should be revisited.  If I could wear a bracelet that powers all my toys through RFID, I'm down for that.

One of the few things that I saw that I didn't know what to make of it when I first saw it was the Canto Bight Police Speeder. I wasn't sure if it was a movie vehicle or a made-up mini-rig thing, because we got some Hasbro originals for The Force Awakens like a mini scout walker (which I liked) and a black Speeder Bike (no complaints, honestly.) With a blah-for-2010s pilot and a pretty middling design, this is probably my least favorite vehicle and when your first reaction to a toy is "what is that?" and not "give it to me, I want to play with it," you know there's a problem. The Last Jedi as a whole was a weird one because I would argue the vehicles were more interesting than the figures, and the figures felt pretty redundant.

I also outright detested the Holiday Darth Vader (the all-red metallic Fan Club exclusive one) when we first saw that, but apparently it sold, so what do I know? Hasbro has since made several metallic figures, but generally few mono-color upcharged ones. But now, Hasbro is making upcharged repaints all the time - and many seem to be selling - so what do I know anymore? I'm old.

Generally speaking, the first time you see something from a Hasbro or a Mattel or a Funko or anybody, it's good. They know the importance of a good first impression. Toys are painted well, or photographed nicely. It's really tough to tell something will be awful until it's in-hand, and there have been things I initially didn't like but later (sometimes MUCH later) really enjoyed. Like Hasbro's Kenner's Marvel Legends 375 Collection! But this has less to do with the product than it does the line - if Hasbro made a retro Kenner Star Wars line that was just a Jawa, Hoth Leia, General Madine, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and a Stormtrooper, I'd probably find that confusing and unlikable, too.

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2. Any idea what happened to the Jakks Big Figs? It seems that entire style of figure that started in the 2010's and really peaked around Force Awakens just kinda tapered off. That said, they are pretty fun and a lot of them had pretty good sculpts.
--B127

I have no confirmation of this but the most likely answer is the death of Toys R Us.

Most toy lines come to an end eventually - costs, interest, or licensing agreements can expedite their journey into oblivion. Jakks Pacific figures weren't selling as well near the end, with Solo: A Star Wars Story guys being dumped at 99 Cents Only pretty quickly. The market for really big things got saturated and most licensors scaled back in the wake of slow Solo and The Last Jedi sales, which came after a massively overstuffed The Force Awakens hangover. Jakks also pretty much dropped its entire 20-inch offerings around the same time, which included Batman and Master Chief and even Mario. I don't know if costs finally caught up with them or if it was just Disney not opting to renew the license, but I would assume the death of Toys R Us is what put the nails in the coffin. Nobody else wanted to devote that much shelf space to something that big and that cheap, and online orders aren't great because shipping charges on something that large are significant. This kind of product doesn't have a home when The World's Biggest Toy Store ceases to be in America.

I wouldn't be stunned if new licensing agreements divided up the landscape in a way that wasn't conducive for Jakks to continue - we also saw Hikari and some other formats die off around that time. "Good product" doesn't always mean "good sales," especially as kids can only absorb so many huge toys - even if they're cheap. I'm kind of surprised I didn't see many of them dumped at Goodwill nearby, too, because clearly someone was buying them. But I've also got a 31-inch unopened Inquisitor and a few others here I probably just need to get rid of.

With the absence of one big giant toy store chain, a lot of products just don't make any sense in the current marketplace. Very few stores devote more than one or two aisles to action figures, and most stores devote one or two aisles to all of their toys. With Toys R Us, Target, Walmart, Amazon, and others all having aisles to fill Jakks' giant figures are a no-brainer. But you have to sell a lot of them to keep costs down, and with the biggest customer going away, your toy ecosystem takes a big hit. There was a definite shift from "kid" to "collector" across the figure

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FIN

Welcome back! And it might be deja vu season, because China has rolled back its "Zero COVID" policy. Will this mean anything to us? It remains to be seen. Lunar New Year is just around the corner, and factories shut down as people travel back home to celebrate with family and friends. With reduced precautions and lockdowns - a good thing when you hear the stories of buildings locked down for weeks or even months - it's a safe bet there will be a massive uptick in disease and hard-to-predict problems in manufacturing and delivery. In 2020, we saw lockdowns overseas keep illness down, and of course it slowed production and shipments to a crawl for a while. Heck, I think we're only just now catching up. The big question for 2023 is if factories can keep up with rightsized demand, which I would assume is going down a bit. I wish everybody everywhere safety and good health, but I don't expect it's going to be a rosy year everywhere. (Especially not until Spring.)

With any luck, Hasbro will give its offerings a look and hopefully put out a more diverse selection of hopefully new (and less expensive) product. It's amazing to think there hasn't been an X-Wing for 3 3/4-inch figures under $100 for quite some time, while Hasbro has shown an ability to make remarkably good $30ish TIE Fighters for kids. But this is probably all moot.  If I were to bet on 2023 I would expect we will have a period in time in either Q3 or Q4 - if not late Q2 - where we see release dates get pushed back en masse for all sorts of consumer products.   It's also possible factories might do some sort of lock-in to avoid outside exposure, but I assume that will be a temporary solution that ultimately will not be effective.

Happy new year?

--Adam Pawlus

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