General Marvel Legends

fac said:
One last thing - if we assume that the adult collectors are the baseline that more or less supports the "floor" of sales (regardless of the character name), it could be that children engagement represents the ceiling - so any Legend will sell say 25,000 units from the core customer base, but the only way they sell say 100,000 units or more is for a movie Spidey or Iron Man because kids are the additional customer...that potential skewing of the sales curve for the hottest characters could make the kids the key for a figure doing OK and being a hit.
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That's certainly a possible interpretation. I think the problem with it is the crossover potential. Undoubtedly there are always going to be kids that are part of the 'floor' of 'always sales.' Likewise, I would assume a lot of adults factor into that 'ceiling,' since probably most adult collectors at this point are not buying everything and the best chance for the highest sales numbers is to engage as many adult collectors as possible, as well as the kids.

So things like your new-body Symbiote Spider-Man, which certainly has appeal in every direction and I'd be surprised if it's not one of the best-selling Legends figures for the year it was released (can't remember if that was early this year or late last year, to be honest).
 
Damien said:
One could also argue that the existence of things like the Made-to-Order products and the HasLabs proves that even Hasbro doesn't really view this as a line that mostly appeals to kids, or they wouldn't bother with stuff like this and they'd make things more kid-friendly and wallet-friendly to stick into Walmart.
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Exactly. Are they really producing HasLabs or expensive exclusives for 40% of the customer base? The existence of exclusives like the SDCC Savage Land set are enough for me to call bullshit.

I got into Marvel Legends at age 10, but that was 22 years ago. Toys were $7.99. I could get an entire wave for $60. Nowadays, $60 gets you two figures and a pack of gum.

With Marvel Legends as expensive as they are, each kid can only buy a fraction of what the adult collectors are buying. For his math to work, there'd have to be tens of thousands of kids under 12 buying Legends. From the anecdotal evidence from folks here with kids, that seems incredibly unlikely.

From Robo's Discord server, I know there are high school and college-aged kids into collecting, but that's a far cry from kids under 12.

The only other alternative is that we adult collectors are whales. The Marvel Legends community on Reddit has nearly 80,000 members, so I find that unlikely.

Next, Jesse is going to tell us that 50,000 of those Redditors are nine years old.
fac said:
One last thing - if we assume that the adult collectors are the baseline that more or less supports the "floor" of sales (regardless of the character name), it could be that children engagement represents the ceiling - so any Legend will sell say 25,000 units from the core customer base, but the only way they sell say 100,000 units or more is for a movie Spidey or Iron Man because kids are the additional customer...that potential skewing of the sales curve for the hottest characters could make the kids the key for a figure doing OK and being a hit.
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Unknown sales figures are the only other plausible explanation.

@EnigmaticClarity noted that the Psylocke/Thanos set sold 10K units according to Target.com. That's a peak behind the curtain that we never get. Major retail releases—your classic Spider-Mans and MCU Caps—could be selling ~100K units. It's possible, I guess. One misstep would have every B&M store from here to Timbuktu choking on pegwarmers, though.

Long story short, I don't buy it.
 
I haven’t met many kids who collect much of anything. Hardly means I can predict their buying power. Similarly, I’ve hardly met a single frequent adult action figure buyer without being in a toy aisle/store/event. If my Targets sold as many cases of the MCU evergreen rereleases as it looks like, over time they easily outmatched the tiny amount of ML that trickled in for collectors this year.

Jesse might’ve been ball-parking on the numbers, but I’d trust him since he’s been around so long at every level of Legends.

People have totally different buying trends internationally too. Like, in the totally insane (and large) Asian toy market these might be viewed as relatively cheap toys that market well to kids and there’s a lot of kids there.
 
Just did a check of the sales numbers available from Target.com a/o 7/30:

all are "+ bought in last month"

Psylocke/Thanos - 15k+
MCU Cap Re-Issue - 2k+
X-Factor Jean - 4k+
Adam Warlock - 300+
Electro - 4k+
97 Wolverine - 5k+
97 Rogue - 9k+
Comic Miles - 3k+
MCU Iron-Spider Re-Issue - 1k+
Daken - 400+
Savage Xavier - 5k+
Gamerverse Venom - 300+

SW TBS Kelnacca - 2k+
SW TBD Jedha Patrol - 3k+
Vader Re-Issue - 2k+
Krennic Exclusive - 2k+

GI Joe Breaker - 14k+

Nice to see the bestseller be a female-led product. Unless someone tries to give that credit to Thanos.
 
I also wonder about the stat gathering. I have a son. He's 16 now but for his entire life I've been buying Marvel Legends. I have bought him a total of two figures... whic he gave back to me. He doesn"t care about action figures at all. Never has. He did like Chuggington and Cars toys and a brief obsession with My Little Pony, but never really action figures. If Hasbro is taking my purchase data and attributing all of the Legends and Classified I buy as being for him that would be entirely wrong and skew their analysis substantially.

Its hard to imagine kids being the primary buyer of Marvel Legends
 
raybot said:
People have totally different buying trends internationally too. Like, in the totally insane (and large) Asian toy market these might be viewed as relatively cheap toys that market well to kids and there’s a lot of kids there.
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That is a good point as we're mostly North American residents here, though my assumption has always been that's where the bulk of the sales also come from, but I don't know that I've ever heard anyone say that.
 
A Winter Soldier re-do and new Annihilus have crept their way to the top of my hopes and dreams for the next few years of releases. That last Winter Soldier is so goofy looking.
 
altcunningham said:
My question is for parents: how are these kids affording these prices?

What's allowance like these days?
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As a step-dad I didn't get much say in this, but the boy gets $40 every 2 weeks plus basically any money when he asks his mom for more. It goes exclusively to digital purchases though. Dude could care less about toys. I think he thinks of them as an old person thing.
 
I pay out for good grades. My kids are still in elementary school and have fared well with my system. I think my daughter is sitting on over 200 bucks right now and my son isn't far behind. They too spend most of it on digital stuff (Roblox, Fortnite). Every now and then my daughter goes for a Squishmallow or Aphmau thing.
 
Yeah, I'd love to see the sales figures they have showing that kids are the main audience. I WANT it to be true because I want to believe kids still like and play with action figures but I've got a gaggle of nieces and nephews and see what they ask for and buy and even when it is action figures, it's not Legends. They like cheap stuff they can buy a ton of all at once (those oversized 5POA Marvel figures Target carries), Legos, and my nephew who is super creative and actually DOES love action figures is really into these cheap 3D printed garbage unnamed action figures from Amazon.

My whole family surprised me and came up to my place for my birthday back in March and the kids got a look at the nerd stuff I have around the house and the POTENTIAL is there--they were fascinated by it all--but the one who went home with a Hasbro 1/12 figure? My younger brother who won't spend money on himself for anything, sent him home with an extra Mandalorian I'd meant to send to a friend who didn't need it. Now, his son BEGGED to open it up and play with it in the car, and even told him you gotta unbox it, enjoy the damned thing, live a little, it's not that valuable, but he waited til he was home and stashed the pistol so it wouldn't get lost so even with his first action figure as an adult he went right into careful collector mode.

I dunno. I hope kids are buying them cos the future of nerd stuff is kids but I'm surrounded by nephews who love Marvel and games and Legos but who show zero interest in these figures, and mind, all of them are that under 12 range mentioned in the interview.
 
It seems like at some point the action figure got left behind when it comes to kids. It peaked in the 80s/early 90s and I firmly believe it's those kids (now adults) keeping the medium alive, for the most part. For whatever reason, kids still like Hot Wheels, Barbie, and other types of toys. I do think it's mostly kids fueling demand for Bluey and Sonic figures, but the more dedicated, more expensive, action figures from Marvel, Star Wars, DC, etc. are firmly in the adult world. The only exception I notice in-store and at home with other kids are wrestling figures. For whatever reason, that still seems to resonate. I guess because kids are watching it on TV regularly, or because there is just something inherent about the world of professional wrestling that will always resonate with kids even if the personalities aren't as cartoonish as they were in the 80s.
 
Agree with you, @Misfit and I think the same goes for comics for the most part. I took my son to a comic show earlier this year. There were maybe 3 other kids. The rest were 40-70 year olds, many with lists in their hand trying to fill out their collection. It's just a different time with on-demand digital media. I say so many times that I'm glad I grew up without the internet/social media, mostly because of how I would have misused it (I was a rapscallion in my youth), but also because I would have missed out on comics, action figures and saturday morning cartoons.
 
I'd love to see some sort of cultural analysis of it. I think part of it is we were marketed to for action figures specifically and relentlessly - we had cartoons on all the time specifically to get us interested, where their world is all streaming, on demand, bespoke/niche. We had multiple toy stores overflowing with product, and they have anemic toy aisles in Walmart and Target. They go from little kid toys to digital games and for a lot of them, from digital games right into a relentless demand on their time for sports and school activities, very little downtime to imagine and play (my godson was super into toys and play until he discovered he's good at baseball and I literally haven't seen him for more than a half hour since April because he's got games and practices seven days a week).

I've got one niece and one nephew who will literally play with toys, like if they don't know you're looking you'll see them creating stories and dialogue with action figures or dolls, sometimes together. My brother really works to not inhibit that because he wants them to have imagination. And I, being the nerdy childless uncle, will be like "What's he into right now? He-Man? Okay a box will be arriving in three days with six new figures in it, tell him I say hello!" And man do I hope I don't lose the opportunity to spoil them with action figures too soon. There's gotta be SOME benefit to having an uncle who works in superhero stories.
 
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