General Marvel Legends

I guess I should have asked this at SDCC, but regarding the four Magic the Gathering figures: is there some tie-in as to why these four characters were selected for this besides being Spider-Man related, or was it really just random?
 
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When my kids were little, they each had their own collections of action figures, mainly Star Wars and Super Heroes. It didn't seem like many of their friends did though, but my daughter's friends did still play with dolls.

Now that my kids have grown, I've bought some figures and dolls for my nieces and nephews, and they seem to like them okay. Still, my nephews seem to prefer stuff like Legos and role play like nerf guns or lightsabers over figures. The nieces. seem to like squishmallows, and dolls. What I don't really see is them buying any of these figures on their own though. They seem happy to get them, and I see them playing with them, but if I take them somewhere to get toys, they're looking at Legos or those mini-brand blind package things. When Christmas rolls around, the nieces usually want stuffed animals, while the nephews usually ask for either Legos or nerf guns. I will say that some of the properties I dig are still the focal point of the kids interests though. I have a five year-old niece who is obsessed with Spider-Gwen/Ghost Spider, and an eight year-old that loves Hulk. Their toys of these characters tend to be in plush form though. One of my nephews was really into building Star Wars Lego ships for a while.

All this is to say that while some kids may be buying figures, I don't really see it. It's almost always adults I see in the toy aisles, looking for Marvel Legends, Star Wars Black Series, DC Multiverse, etc.. I truly hope that kids ARE still buying them, and that Jesse's assessment is correct, but I'm incredibly skeptical this is actually the case.
 
Thanks for the links to the interviews, everyone!

What Jesse said is actually this: "The metrics are the majority of the people that buy the volume of Marvel Legends are under 12 years old. ... That's not to say they are buying Dragon Man, I'm talking about stuff you see on shelf at mass market. I think that's where I would differentiate between real true collectibles and every day toy and collectibles."

He then name checks '97 as being one for kids and adults and the A-List re-issues being a huge success.

I am sure by some metrics, he's accurate. But let's be fair - A-List are actually available *on retail shelves all year* versus one case of Gamerverse per store, maybe two. Of *course* that will have a higher volume of sales.

The real question is why everything else is so understocked at retail.

Also, it's six MCU Caps to one Rom/Banshee/Miles/Warlock/Daken/IM in a case - since Target sold 2000k Caps last month, that's 333 cases of Cap - there is some equivalence to Daken and Warlock selling 400/300 in the last month, which are one per case.

I don't have the numbers, but I have 35 years experience in this hobby and in the toy aisles and while kids may have figures bought for them, the amount of kids I see buying figures is extremely low. And I still say a huge reason for that is because they cannot reach them - literally, as in they are too high for children to pick up off the shelf and metaphorically, meaning price.
 
I also wonder if, because he mentions the kids programming - he's taking into account the kid oriented lines in those sales, or he's specifically talking about Legends. Those 5 point articulation toys with vehicles and stuff is precisely Birthday Party material - I've bought those for that exact reason. But Legends? Those numbers make more sense across all Marvel properties Hasbro is releasing.

It's also not totally out of character for Jesse to just say things off hand that may not actually be true or researched...
 
"The metrics are the majority of the people that buy the volume of Marvel Legends are under 12 years old. ... That's not to say they are buying Dragon Man, I'm talking about stuff you see on shelf at mass market. I think that's where I would differentiate between real true collectibles and every day toy and collectibles."

I don't believe that at all. I'd love to know how they gather this metric to say "the majority". Where are these toys being bought? I have to imagine Amazon is the biggest seller and I highly doubt there are more children buying $25 action figures than adults on there (or anywhere). Kids want free games, phone games, youtube, they're not out spending $25+tax on selling out Emma Frost pre-orders.
 
I'd love to see some sort of cultural analysis of it.
I have a few pet theories.
I think part of it is we were marketed to for action figures specifically and relentlessly
This is part of it, for sure. Shows were created to sell toys in the '80s. Literally. They still merchandise cartoons and movies, but they aren't designing toys first and creating storylines after. Secret Galaxy did a great episode on why:


Spoiler: as with most bad things in America, it can be attributed to Ronald Reagan.
where their world is all streaming, on demand, bespoke/niche.
This is another piece. There used to be four TV channels. Cable TV—and later the internet and YouTube—led to the death of monoculture. It's easier to sell toys when every boy under 12 is watching one of five shows.
They go from little kid toys to digital games
You're alluding to the biggest cause IMO: video games. Previous generations had no choice but to go outside and play.

I'm sure kids today are still bored, but they have 1000 times the options I did as a kid, even 20 years ago.

You have TV, countless YouTube channels, social media, and countless video games. For almost every kid, there are thousands of great options to occupy their time before they arrive at "play with a physical toy."
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.
This is the last piece. From what I've seen, parenting has become a lot more hands-on than it was when I was a kid. I'd say 80+% of my free time was spent alone. I loved it. It allowed me to develop an imagination and learn to entertain myself. Would I have a better relationship with my parents if we spent more time together? Probably.

My friends with kids spend the vast majority of their free time with their kids. They go to the park, watch a baseball game, and even play with toys together. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but it is different.
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).
Youth sports becoming a cottage industry is so gross. I played youth soccer as a kid. We practiced and played a game once a week. It was a four-hour commitment, all done at the park 10 minutes from my house. Today, parents with kids in sports have no free time. It's not better for the parent or child.
 
I mean... it's something to say, sure. But how do you possibly even get these metrics? Are they somehow polling parents buying Legends in-store to ask who it's really for and how old their kid is? Or following up on Amazon sales? Do many 12 years olds have Pulse or Amazon accounts? Is this just based on some focus group of 100 people asking who they buy toys for? Because if that's the case, and it's probably closer to the truth, how do you possibly try to account for the adult collector market? It really feels like a number Jesse pulled out of his ass. And that's fair... we're talking about it like it's fact.
 
A conversation for a different time and place, but kid's sports makes money now. A shitload of it. An insane amount of that - predicated on parents who get too wrapped up in it thinking their kid is going to the big leagues and seeing it as an investment. It's fucked.

And then you have parents who put a tablet in their kids hands and they get hooked on watching OTHER kids open toys, or play games. It's kinda fucked too... but saves a lot of space I guess. Zero actual use of their own imagination or development of gaming-associated skills.

Trying not to turn this into a Facebook Mommy group - but these things definitely factor in to who is buying Legends these days.
 
I guess I should have asked this at SDCC, but regarding the four Magic the Gathering figures: is there some tie-in as to why these four characters were selected for this besides being Spider-Man related, or was it really just random?

They are all Spider related because the game is Spider-Man centric. I assume the set of cards was designed and then Hasbro got to choose characters that have individual cards in the set to make figures of.

A Spider-Man was a given. I assume they've been trying to figure out where and how to do a new Man Wolf and this execution afforded them a bigger budget to get it done. The Mary-Jane Scarlet Spider is something they haven't done before, and the Agent Anti-Venom allowed them to dip into the Venom corner of the verse without rehashing characters that have been done over and over.

I will be interested to see, if the game takes off, if they revisit this and find a way to upcharge us for fan demanded characters like Cardiac, Calypso, the Spot or Swarm - assuming those characters get cards.
 
I listen to a podcast that covers the Hasbro quarterly earnings report pretty clear-eyed but with a focus on the gaming side of things and I feel like every quarter "physical toys are declining in general" has been the header and I keep thinking well, yeah--we're dying, the grownups who buy toys are going a little bit more extinct every year, of course it's declining. Meanwhile pound for pound Magic the Gathering half-way carries the company (which is why I'm annoyed but not shocked they're making Magic Legends and charging a left testicle for them) and their other massive earner is Monopoly Go, which sends me into a depressive existential crisis I may never dig myself out of.
 
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 got paid out for report cards, but also $20 a week for bathroom/trash/garage/lawn/washing the parents' cars.

Of course, that was when $20 treated you like a king at TRU or KB (the bin of BOGO!).

Funny how video games still cost the same in the 90s. I remember scraping the $100 for Chrono Trigger and not batting an eye.
 
Alright - I just watched an interview where Jesse describes the quality - specifically referring to the new F4 movie wave - as being mini Hot Toys. The likenesses for that wave are... notoriously soft.

The man just says things. It's part of the charm.
 
I got paid out for report cards, but also $20 a week for bathroom/trash/garage/lawn/washing the parents' cars.

Of course, that was when $20 treated you like a king at TRU or KB (the bin of BOGO!).

Funny how video games still cost the same in the 90s. I remember scraping the $100 for Chrono Trigger and not batting an eye.
One of those weird phenomena. Video game and RPG book pricing really did stagnate like, 30 years ago. Granted so did wages so those things feel expensive now, but it's so weird to me that games are on some alien version of inflation nothing else is. I look back at photos from Toys R Us for action figures in the 90s or earlier and my heart races.
 
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