Hasbro possibly doing Tron?

I do think there was more of difference even 10 years ago than now let alone that some of us recall the 20th century when 5 point articulation and minimal paint was the norm for 1:18 scale. That style was (and still is) cheap - when 1:12 scale took off it was a vastly different product in terms of detail, articulation, paint. I think the 1:15 scale was really the first step, with lines like Playmates Trek and Tozbiz pre-legends Marvel upping the game from 1:18 scale but still not at the level of 1:12 Legends and LotR and others.

1:18 has gotten much closer to the articulation, detail and paint apps that we see in 1:12 the last 10 years But I think when 1:12 first came on the scene they were not easier to make nor the same cost as 1:18.
 
Damien said:
Lol. Ever since I was a kid, I've studied history. Lots of sources are translated into English by Brits, and lots of historians in general were Brits. So I used to get in trouble at school for putting 'u' into words like armour, labour, favour - etc. Because that's how it's spelled in all the books I was reading.

So definitely not a Canadian thing. That's just a 'this guy is a little weird' thing.
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I used to get in trouble in school for this ALL the time. I have forced myself to Americanize my spelling as an adult, but I've always preferred the British spelling
adrienveidt said:
Damien was Satan's Child, so... Hell. Or is that Heull?
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Wait...Damien is Glenn Danzig's brother?
 
fac said:
I do think there was more of difference even 10 years ago than now
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The big shift seems to have started around the time Mythic Legions kicked off, as the 4H made a big point about how Mythic had been conceived as a 4" line, but the price they'd have to sell them for wouldn't be much different from the price if they did 6", so the line went the way most of their collectors had already gone. Probably didn't help that their Power Lords 4" line failed.

Of course, it's also notable that G.I. Joe was still going as a 1:18 property at the time, but when Joe came back in 2020 (so conceived probably in 2017-2018), it came back as a 1:12 property instead. Even Hasbro, that had always been known for 4" figures, clearly couldn't figure out a way to make it work. Hence also the return of Marvel Legends in 2012 as Marvel Universe 4" failed. So we can go back and say the writing was on the wall for 4" retail action figures as far back as around 2010, for sure.
 
3 3/4" was only ever really a thing to accommodate vehicles and playsets, right? I know there was talk of oil shortages in the 70s and all that, but Hama went on record saying Hasbro lost money on Joe figures and then made it up in vehicles. I think lines that don't concentrate on accessories were always larger.
 
Kenner Star Wars was hugely successful in 1:18, as was the Micronauts, in the late 70's and early 80's. But both of those were also vehicle and playset heavy. But Star Wars being such a huge seller made the 1:18 scale pretty popular.

Before that you had things like GI Joe, Captain Action and Six Million Dollar Man which were 1:6, and Mego was 1:9. FYI - Microman was a decision by Takara Japan to have something besides their 12" Cyborg line that was based more on GI Joe proportions, and was essentially the first real 1:18 line.

I guess He-Man was the first major approx 6" line?

I am skeptical that the figure side of 1:18 Joes lost money. I am sure they made alot more on the vehicles but don't have loss leaders with the figures.
 
Yeah, that doesn't seem to track with the 'official' history of Joe; which always suggested the original figures did gangbusters.

I think maybe this is being looked at a little backwards, though. I'm FAIRLY positive that the idea of 3-4" figures came first from Star Wars and it was more of a retroactive thing to be like 'oh, fuck, I guess we could do some vehicles for these guys too.' So it was more that 1:18 just so happened to lend itself well to also offering vehicles. And then when Joe came along as a concept, keeping the figures small like Star Wars so you could make military vehicles was an obvious decision to make at the time.
 
I dunno. They sold a shitload of vehicles:

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Yeah, of course they did. I'm not sure what difference that makes to the point I made, though? Respectfully!
 
I guess I was more responding to the general pushback. I think financially what Hama says could be entirely accurate. To your comment when you say original figures are you talking about 1982/RAH, or the original 12" line?
 
Chooch555 said:
I guess I was more responding to the general pushback. I think financially what Hama says could be entirely accurate. To your comment when you say original figures are you talking about 1982/RAH, or the original 12" line?
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Ah! My point was only that the figures sold really well themselves, independent of the vehicles. And yeah, I was talking about the '82 non-swivel arm ARAH figures. I mean, I don't think we can ever know, but we can certainly surmise that maybe the original run of figures sold as well as they did -because- there were also vehicles to buy. But my understanding is that they did sell extremely well.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone but Hama suggest that the figures themselves weren't making money, or were losing money. I could absolutely be wrong and this is just a point of Joe lore I've somehow confuddled in my brain.
 
The Hama quote is my only recollection of anyone discussing profitability openly in detail. It's been awhile since I watched the Toys That Made Us episode about it, but I want to say they just talked about sales figures overall? I remember the one guy on there saying they wanted a whole years worth of toys to be sub-$100 until they saw how successful the line was out of the gate, tossed that idea aside, and put out a freakin' aircraft carrier by year 4.
 
Damien said:
Yeah, that doesn't seem to track with the 'official' history of Joe; which always suggested the original figures did gangbusters.

I think maybe this is being looked at a little backwards, though. I'm FAIRLY positive that the idea of 3-4" figures came first from Star Wars and it was more of a retroactive thing to be like 'oh, fuck, I guess we could do some vehicles for these guys too.' So it was more that 1:18 just so happened to lend itself well to also offering vehicles. And then when Joe came along as a concept, keeping the figures small like Star Wars so you could make military vehicles was an obvious decision to make at the time.
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If I remember correctly, Kenner was first going to do vehicles, but realized that kids would want the characters to pilot them. They knew placing them in the common scales of Mego and the 1:6 offerings of the time would be a no-go, so they settled on making them around 4 inches. They really thought the vehicles would be the big hit of the line, and that the figures would be more of a supplemental thing, but we know how that turned out. Sure, the vehicles sold well, but the figures were just a huge smash hit that no one in the toy industry predicted.
 
I am clearly not a toy historian. You want that kind of accuracy, you guys can go talk to Dan over at Secret Galaxy. He's also generally a nicer person than me, so it's mostly a full trade up. I do have nicer hair, though.
 
One has to believe the Joe figures were profitable simply because they put so much money into making so goddamned many of the things. There wouldn't have been any vehicle drivers if they were simply cost sinks, I'd think. You'd just use one of the single guys you bought they already lost money on, instead of losing money on the money-maker vehicle as well.

And yes, the super-articulated MicroMan from 1974 is the human species' first 3.75/4in/18th action figure line; brought over to America in 1976 as the MicroNauts. Mego was offered the Star Wars license but they turned it down as they already had a proven money-maker. If they hadn't, maybe the would would never have been afflicted by that shit-tier 5poa 'articulation' format and we'd have had super-articulated Jedi fights from the get-go instead of 40years afterwards.
 
The thing is Kenner Star Wars (and secondarily Micronauts) killed dead the soft goods boys 12" and 8" dolls that were the main action figures at the time. Classic Joe was just about dead (that also had cultural headwinds at that point). Action man dead. Mego - which was the main game in town for pop culture figures (Marvel, DC, Trek, Planet of the Apes, etc.) - dead. Even the 12" scale Star Wars figures never sold all that well. But they sold 100's of millions of those 1:18 figures. Just incredible numbers. And part of that was they were cheap, so any kid with an allowance or birthday money could get a figure for a few dollars. This is why it became the defacto scale by far for media tie-ins - in and of itself a whole new world for boys toys.

The other thing Kenner SW did was have a depth they never had before in a toy line - Kenner only made only about 100 vintage figures for the OT - but that was unheard of at the time. I think that they were able to sell the cantina aliens and R5-D4 in a second wave was the real surprise and showed the line had legs and people wanted more.

The idea they mainly wanted the 1:18 figures to pilot the vehicles makes some sense although I am skeptical of that as well - they never made a TIE Pilot (which frustrated me to no end that I had to use a Stormtrooper in the cockpit), and the vehicles came out after the first wave - and they only did the X-Wing, TIE and Landspeeder initially, with the Vader TIE and Falcon not out for a couple of years.

The GI Joe revival in 1:18 was 100% trying to mimic the figure + vehicle success that SW had. And they were very successful.

I still have all my vintage SW figures - I never had them all as I stopped after the RotJ batch, but had most of them - I did however get rid of the vehicles I had. And I still had some of my Batman Megos, Micronauts, and Bionic Man figures (but had to get better versions as an adult).
 
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