Diamond Select Toys is Shutting Down

Minimates were down to 3ish 5-packs a year of Marvel product at the end, but were also making Hasbro properties like Joe, Transformers, and D&D. TMNT was also going up until the end, just not often.

Minimates are the greatest toyline of all time. I hope they can return.
 
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I have Minimates from at least a dozen properties - BSG, Ghostbusters, Aliens, T2 in particular. They did a lot of fun lines during the years for things no one else was doing in figure form, at least with not as much character depth.
 
Damien said:
I have no argument there.

I will say that, in my estimation, if DST was as successful as people wanted to believe they were, and were making good business decisions that were regularly keeping them in the black, there's LESS likelihood that it would be so easy to sink them, and more likelihood that there would have been a stronger push from higher ups to keep that arm of things operational somehow. Besides the obvious vulture capitalism, it's pretty rare for successful companies regularly turning a profit to just tank like this, even when a parent or sister company goes under.

But that's speculation.
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The only instances I can think of when a healthy profit turning company went down like DST (definitely not saying DST was turning profit) did was when larger investment companies/groupd would buy out companies and saddle it with the debt from other companies that they owned. It’s been a long time since I looked read about it but I want to say it was some kind of investment strategy. Buy a company load the debt onto that one and then let that one go under and sell it off. They might have also been using the healthier company to get better unrest rates on the debt/loans. I did a decent about of research on it around the time Toys R Us went under but my memory is fuzzy on a lot of the details after all this time.

Definitely sad to see the LOTR line and Minimates end. Those were pretty much the only things I was buying from DST.
 
Stoopid_Sandwich said:
Ohh I thought they bought out the company in 2015 and that’s why they stopped making their own 1/6 scale premium figures


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They still make 1/6 figures here and there. They just do not seem to be able to produce the same quality as Hot Toys while charging in the same price range. DST’s collapse may impact them a little bit with comic shops potentially not buying the product but I think most people buy Hot Toys and Sideshow online. I know whenever I see them in the store the markup on them is normally pretty high.
 
superdoug55 said:
The only instances I can think of when a healthy profit turning company went down like DST (definitely not saying DST was turning profit) did was when larger investment companies/groupd would buy out companies and saddle it with the debt from other companies that they owned. It’s been a long time since I looked read about it but I want to say it was some kind of investment strategy. Buy a company load the debt onto that one and then let that one go under and sell it off. They might have also been using the healthier company to get better unrest rates on the debt/loans. I did a decent about of research on it around the time Toys R Us went under but my memory is fuzzy on a lot of the details after all this time.
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100%
That's what I was referencing with the 'vulture capitalism' comment. It's not even that rare of a practice to buy a company, saddle it with a ton of debt to free up a different company from their debt, and then take the indebted company you don't care about and file bankruptcy on it. It's as brilliant as it is disgusting when it comes to ways to just free a company completely of their debt. Or even just to quickly make some millions, since part of the debt you can saddle on a company is executive bonuses. Buy Toys R Us, give yourself a sixteen million dollar bonus, which is all of TRU's operating capital, then let TRU file for bankruptcy when it can't pay any of its debts because all of its money is now gone into your pocket. Vile stuff. And neither the US nor Canada have really done -ANYTHING- to curb this practice.

That, of course, does not seem to be what happened to DST. There doesn't seem to be any indication DST was carrying anyone else's debt or paying out massive bonuses to suddenly-employed executives.
 
Damien said:
100%
That's what I was referencing with the 'vulture capitalism' comment. It's not even that rare of a practice to buy a company, saddle it with a ton of debt to free up a different company from their debt, and then take the indebted company you don't care about and file bankruptcy on it. It's as brilliant as it is disgusting when it comes to ways to just free a company completely of their debt. Or even just to quickly make some millions, since part of the debt you can saddle on a company is executive bonuses. Buy Toys R Us, give yourself a sixteen million dollar bonus, which is all of TRU's operating capital, then let TRU file for bankruptcy when it can't pay any of its debts because all of its money is now gone into your pocket. Vile stuff. And neither the US nor Canada have really done -ANYTHING- to curb this practice.

That, of course, does not seem to be what happened to DST. There doesn't seem to be any indication DST was carrying anyone else's debt or paying out massive bonuses to suddenly-employed executives.
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I worked for a company that was purchased by one of those "Private Equity" firms. It went from being an incredible job to being a total shitshow. It's a completely evil practice, and should be completely against the law.
 
TheGillMan said:
I worked for a company that was purchased by one of those "Private Equity" firms. It went from being an incredible job to being a total shitshow. It's a completely evil practice, and should be completely against the law.
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I remember my friends still at TRU excited about the acquisition. And then the slow bleed began and honestly hasn't recovered for a lot of them. Perfect storm of 2008 economy, Midwest, covid.
 
I question if TRU would have survived no matter what. Online specialty retailers and general retailers (Walmart, Target) have really killed specialty big box stores for toys, books, music, etc., compared to their heyday.
 
fac said:
I question if TRU would have survived no matter what. Online specialty retailers and general retailers (Walmart, Target) have really killed specialty big box stores for toys, books, music, etc., compared to their heyday.
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Welp.... TRU still exists in Canada. So, without Bain Capital, we can pretty safety surmise that TRU in the US would probably still be in business today. Can't speak to the future. But no reason to assume they'd be out of business already. Hell, I'm actually not even sure how TRU Canada stays in business. I never see anyone buy anything there. Their prices are like 33% higher than anywhere else and they never have anything good or new.
 
Sure, but most Canadians don't have computers (let alone internet) or live on roads that are accessible more than half the year due to ice and snow, so naturally once they ride their pet moose into the village to sell some wood carvings and pelts, they may want to buy some toys at a store. Here in the 21st century there are other options.
 
fac said:
Sure, but most Canadians don't have computers (let alone internet) or live on roads that are accessible more than half the year due to ice and snow, so naturally once they ride their pet moose into the village to sell some wood carvings and pelts, they may want to buy some toys at a store. Here in the 21st century there are other options.
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Racist comments like this are dangerous and incredibly misleading. Most Canadians ride geese and sell maple syrup. You'd know that if you stepped outside your bubble once in a while. Jeez.
 
fac said:
Sure, but most Canadians don't have computers (let alone internet) or live on roads that are accessible more than half the year due to ice and snow, so naturally once they ride their pet moose into the village to sell some wood carvings and pelts, they may want to buy some toys at a store. Here in the 21st century there are other options.
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See, I was really triggered for a moment because when I moved here, a woman from my WoW Guild was adamant that yes, All Canadians live in igloos and ride moose and always bugged me for pictures of penguins, and she was really upset when someone else proved how some US cities are higher latitude than some Canadian.

It was not a bit, she really believed Canada The Landmass was an Arctic land of midnight sun.
 
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