1. Jurassic Park left 6” and went back to 3.75” with the Hammond Collection. However I notice that the human figures in particular end up on 70% off clearance at Target with each wave. How has that line been doing sales wise? It seems to be the only line going back from 6” figures, but the clearance has me worried. I want the line to continue but the frequent clearance has me worried that it’s not a hot seller. If you’ve seen any data about the Hammond Collection I’m curious how well you think the Jurassic license is doing.
--Matt

I think Hasbro probably really regrets giving it up, while also clearly not having the bandwidth/desire to nourish and/or support yet another major IP. (The Quantumania line was literally two repackaged SKUs.) While every line is different, I think it's best to look at Mattel's 3 3/4-inch Jurassic Park line in 2023 the same way you looked at Kenner's Star Wars line in the 1990s. It's for everybody. Kids want those dinosaurs, and so do adult fans - joints are nice to have, but if you make the right dinosaur everybody is going to flock to it (if it's one they want.) Think about it - kids love dinosaurs, regardless of brand, and there's no more widely distributed (or diverse) line of dinosaurs right now. 1990s kids have kids now, so they'll buy stuff for their kids. It's not hard to convince an adult that these are good toys worthy of their business, even if it isn't for their personal collection.

As a product, most Jurassic World toys are pretty great. I picked up a Nothosaurus recently and it costs less than a Vintage Collection figure... and it's bigger. And it has a unique sculpt. Kid or collector, this is the only Nothosaurus you're gonna see, so odds are you're going to buy it if you want one. It's not like Reva or Darth Vader or Obi-Wan Kenobi with multiple toys in different competing sizes on-shelf all at once. Jurassic has, as far as I can tell, done best with less. Do one scale, and the collectors will probably buy it if the right characters or creatures are sold.

In the toy world it seems Jurassic is a top performer right now. NPD seems to think so. The humans - and rereleases of humans on clearance - get boring after a while, and it's not a deep bench of humanoid characters. After you buy the main cast once or twice, do you really want anybody else from that first movie? No, and they keep remaking them. But the dinosaurs keep selling, with secondary market prices on the interesting ones being annoyingly high. I'm finding things at grocery stores, of all places. If what you want is more humans, yes, you should be worried. But dinosaurs tend to keep doing well when they make it to US store shelves.

Like anything, if you make too much, it goes on clearance. It's probably a great blueprint Hasbro should steal and copy and do a 3 3/4-inch kid line for Star Wars with recognizable vehicles and figures (and some weirdoes) to keep adults and kids interested, instead of the same basic guys over and over. 6-inch Jurassic humans are not a line you can do forever, whereas if you pick the right characters at the right production quantities Star Wars could probably go for several years. But Disney is putting its thumb on the scale for Disney+ characters, which would probably only work well if you get them in stores before people see the movie/TV shows. With Jurassic it's kind of the opposite - I guess they could do 6-inch figures of Tea Leoni and Julianne Moore from the sequels, but I don't expect there's a big business to be had there.

Everything has an end point, but if properly handled Jurassic World's dinosaur line can last for years with no new movies or humans. New fossils are discovered all the time, and there are all sorts of directions they can go, like this year's "93 series" in Kenner colors. There's still Chaos Effect deco, probably some sort of "concept art" of unused movie ideas or unrealized Kenner prototypes, and they haven't really delved into some of the wackier things like "night attack" glow figures or arctic deco yet, either. If Mattel can keep a steady stream of the right recognizable dinosaurs coming along with new discoveries, this line can probably last until kids stop loving dinosaurs. Similarly Hasbro could crank out some classic aliens and hype them as never-before-made, but instead we get rereleases of the Emperor's Royal Guard and increasingly higher price points for things that aren't exactly an impulse buy. That Hasbro Cyborg Spider-Woman figure is really something - but $58.99 for a slightly-larger Marvel Legends toy is completely crazy. Eventually you're going to have to embrace the small scale again just for budget reasons.

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2. In all your years, have you ever seen merchandise thrown out that now, in hindsight, you know that someone would have happily given money to have? I’m just thinking of all the dumpster divers who collected studio used props and costumes when the original trilogy was filmed.
--Derek

I have seen a handful of interesting items in the hands of employees who "rescued" them over the years, but nothing in the last couple of decades. Some of it is getting out but I assume a lot of people are keeping mum because nobody wants to invoke the wrath of Disney or whoever the heck might care these days about such things. Depending on who you ask, the "trash" in the dumpster might be stolen goods. (Ridiculous, I know.)

I have seen things show up in unusual dumping grounds, but I usually pick those things up. I haven't seen anything in actual dumpsters, but once in a while things show up in "take one" piles or company stores and I just show up with my wallet and take them. I've got at least two Hasbro vehicles I don't think I've ever seen online anywhere - but they're not in a normal scale and weren't meant for the US market. I'm sure a few Vlix samples got trashed and I'd probably trade a couple of mortgage payments for one of those. I've also had my share of "hey put my name on that store display and call me when you throw it out" over the years, although some are lost to the ages due to being in my parents' house when some mold hit after I moved the toys out.

There are a lot of concept drawings that got lost or thrown out that show toys I would love to explore the legality of manufacturing. Remember that Millennium Falcon Mini-Rig Adaptor? That, for example. I assume it was never trademarked, and I assume there's no legal authorship for a rejected concept idea, so I'd love to know - got any attorneys out there? - what would happen if someone made a very similar item but made zero mention of Kenner/Star Wars/Mini-Rigs/whatever on the box?

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I would like a new computer soon, I think. You may or may not know this, but I'm a Mac user who's been using an iMac from 2015, so I'm probably on borrowed time. If you ever feel like you might be interested in contributing to a Patreon, and I mean like literally a dollar, have you considered the Galactic Hunter/16bit.com one? It's how I fund replacement parts, servers, and the occasional new computer. I try to get about seven or more years out of a machine, but sometimes they don't quite make it. This one has been good but its built-in monitor has had some issues over the past couple of years so it wouldn't be the worst thing to look into something new. (And hey, if you are an Apple employee with discounts on iMacs or Mac Minis or Pros, I'm all ears.) I assume at this point in my life I'd be running a fancy Quadra, but those haven't been a thing in like thirty years. I miss the G3 towers. But I digress.

One of the questions that used to come up a lot - but stopped coming up - is "when will all of this end?" I think we might be seeing what happens when things go wrong right now. From where I sit it seems the most success in fan/collector circles always seemed to come in that sweet spot when you target kids, fans, and collectors with the exact same product. Sure, there are high-end Barbies, but when you can convince all the groups to buy the same ones? You sell more. The same is true with Hot Wheels, Masters of the Universe Origins, and Jurassic World, just to name a few. Back in the 1990s we all bought the same Power of the Force figures, and while the designs weren't all perfect the prices were. $5 for a figure. Vehicles for $20. You didn't get swappable hands or alternate heads - but for $5 a figure, they could just make Darth Vader with an alternate pose in a 2- or 3-pack, and you'd buy that, too. That's probably where action figures need to go in order to survive - one size fits all, and that size has to be good for kids too.

It seems unthinkable that Star Wars at Hasbro will die soon unless Disney forces Hasbro's hand, but without some more cohesive lines - or just less of them, even if it means my favorite segments get the axe - I have a hard time thinking it can go on forever. I'm seeing the Andor wave of The Black Series on sale at Target already and that's no good for something this new, but here we are. I assume we've got a few years to go before things go south, but I also know what the readership of this column looks like, what pre-orders look like, and what my cluttered office looks like lately. Less is more. (Except my readership, that's just less is less.) But then again, I see walls of used/collectible Funko figures at the record shop that have squeezed out the old 1990s Star Wars and Star Trek stuff, and what's funny - especially in light of Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks' believe th at adult collectors will help the business when I'd wager that they're aging out of the hobby with no young replacements on the horizon - I just don't think it's going to get a heck of a lot better.

I know some collectors will complain about the loss of super-articulation, but I haven't found those extra joints to be of any actual use for most figures. They don't help Boba Fett fit in the reissue Slave I if the figure is too bulky - you have to make the entire ecosystem fit together, and not sell us a $200 set where he can't easily fit in his own driver's seat. We're in a place where we're seeing a lot of exclusives get marked down pretty quickly at Target, or not ever actually stocked in-store at all at Walmart, and GameStop's slashing prices pretty quick too. It's funny to say this, but tightening up all the lines - and spreading out releases - might be the best way to go. To ensure something new is out every month, combined with a cadence of regular reveals and/or pre-orders, could do wonders - but also I kind of miss how they did it in the 90s. Back when $100 would get you 20 figures, and not 3 or 4.

Hasbro, if you're reading, some lower-priced 3 3/4-inch-scale-compatible vehicles would be great before things end. I think it would get a lot of us pretty excited to buy a $20-$30 Landspeeder or TIE Fighter rather than a $30 Krrsantan. Mission Fleet shows such things may well be possible.

--Adam Pawlus

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