The Playset Thread

[Darth_Anton]

Sincerely, I jumped the gun there. Twelfth parsec did do that to a close friend of mine, so it chaps my hide to see them promoted.

[Muftak]

Sincerely, I jumped the gun there. Twelfth parsec did do that to a close friend of mine, so it chaps my hide to see them promoted.

No worries. 

If that's true then my esteem for their work has dropped considerably. This hobby is hollow without its ability to build ties between fellow collectors.

Karma will get them theirs. 

Back on topic, I believe a lot of what Nicklab wrote is true, but I don't think Hasbro feels they had too many "misses" with the last Force Friday offerings. I expect more of the same from them this time out.

[Jesse James]

Hasbro made $ and didn't lose...  It's not like they're doing things wrong really, it's just a matter of whether you like it or not ya know?  They've always made things that didn't work and things that did, so I honestly don't see things changing much either.  It's also, as I've said before I know, uncharted waters not only for us but them.  A movie a year for Star Wars is very different than this line ever had to deal with.  Kinda weird to see what they may look at doing differently going forward.

Re: Twelfth Parsec, that sounds like an interesting story, and that this was an honest mistake... so thank you for the apology to Muftak, Anton.  No harm no foul.  I tend not to promote things unless I'm sure it's a legitimate dealio, especially on the front page.  Twelfth Parsec appears to be, but not all of these "garage kit" guys are and that can bite you in the ass IMO.

I think the future, if one is there for these playset/diorama display things, really only exists with these guys building stuff out of their garage for people in small runs.  And clearly they're priced where you either can afford it if you want it bad enough, or you just didn't want it that bad in the first place. 

And the garage model kit world is like that too...  They're resin, they're usually pricey...  But if it's your bag, you'll pay it.

[Nicklab]

Kind of bummed to hear that there may have been some chicanery and shenanigans with regard to Twelfth Parsec.  But with any situation like that the reality may be a little different from any one person's perspective on things.  I don't have a dog in that fight other than to regard some of the product as being very cool to look at.

As for Hasbro reevaluating post THE FORCE AWAKENS?  Like I said, some of the novelty items will probably be the area where we see the more sweeping changes.  And I think there will be more fine tuning with the 3.75" figure system.  Notably in some of the assortments.  Buyers seemed to focus much more on buying main characters and troops this time around.  Third tier characters like Goss Toowers, PZ-4CO, Zuvio, etc seem like they might get a little less love from Hasbro this time around.

[P-Siddy]

Third tier characters like Goss Toowers, PZ-4CO, Zuvio, etc seem like they might get a little less love from Hasbro this time around.

I just hope that Hasbro doesn't take this as, "Why should we release the Tonnika Sisters or Sim Aloo.  Background characters don't sell."  I believe fans would prefer those characters from the OT and PT than the NT.

[Dave]

Third tier characters like Goss Toowers, PZ-4CO, Zuvio, etc seem like they might get a little less love from Hasbro this time around.

I just hope that Hasbro doesn't take this as, "Why should we release the Tonnika Sisters or Sim Aloo.  Background characters don't sell."  I believe fans would prefer those characters from the OT and PT than the NT.

I just think their character mix was off.  Too many background characters packed with not enough heroes. 

For the most part I appreciate all the blink and you miss them characters they created for us, but they needed more Rey, Chewie, Kylo Ren, etc. mixed in.  You almost never saw those figures on the pegs, and if you did they didn't last for more than a day before they were snapped up.

I hope with all the new movies coming in rapid succession they find a way to have a constantly evolving mix of heroes, background characters, OT, PT, ST, Rebels, Clone Wars, and EU all thrown together.  I think if they try and have individual lines for each successive movie they risk missing the mark with the short window they'll have between movies.

[Nicklab]

Third tier characters like Goss Toowers, PZ-4CO, Zuvio, etc seem like they might get a little less love from Hasbro this time around.

I just hope that Hasbro doesn't take this as, "Why should we release the Tonnika Sisters or Sim Aloo.  Background characters don't sell."  I believe fans would prefer those characters from the OT and PT than the NT.

I just think their character mix was off.  Too many background characters packed with not enough heroes. 

This is probably spot on.  But the lack of scarcity of the core characters was definitely an issue after a while.  Poe and Kylo Ren were probably the more plentiful of the core characters.  But Rey, Finn and Han Solo all became a bit tougher to track down in the basic figure line.  Especially after the movie had been released.

[Diddly]

I believe more casuals, i.e. women, were buying figures too, if the #wheresrey movement showed us anything. And they were not the people buying Sarco Plank figures.

[Darby]

I think - relative to the character selection - it was a situation where Hasbro was stranded between what they could and couldn't show, and there was no real '2nd tier' in this movie. There was front line main characters, defended against day one spoilers, and people who had nothing to do with anything and therefore were ok to promote, except those characters by and large either got pushed into deep background (the equivalent of Kenner leading out with say Wuher in 1978) or pushed out of the movie altogether (Zuvio, Sarco Plank). So that's one aspect that I don't think worked, especially in the wave with PZ and Hux where the majority is people not on screen.

So the combo of not enough Rey relative to the seeming avalanche of Who the F is this has made for some odd pegs at retail, but as others have pointed out, Hasbro has clearly $$$ in on TFA and isn't looking back. There will be come course corrections with Rogue One (Rey all over the place, maybe less who is this, but doubtful - that ship has largely sailed) but all in all TFA got SW back on track in the toy aisle and that matters. It's not all fun and games but then, it hasn't been for a lot of us for a long time.

Playsets - just not a factor anymore in SW. Clearly Playmates is giving it a go, but the play pattern for SW has been broken for a very long time. It's about the figures and nothing else. LEGO owns environments and until Hasbro finds some answer or counter to that, we've seen the last of anything outside of significant vehicle / playset combos (Falcon, AT-AT, etc.)

[Qui-Gon Jim]

Hasbro has eschewed playsets in lieu of "environments" like the play features of the Falcon.  It isn't really what we consider a playset but it serves the same purpose.

[Matt_Fury]

While I loved the playsets that came out with Vintage (the Death Star was one of my favorite toys as a kid), I honestly wonder how seomething like that would be received today.

I have the Mustafarr playset from ROTS and think it's a decent effort, much like the AOTC Geonosis Arena.  Both of those were not received that well.

[Muftak]

While I loved the playsets that came out with Vintage (the Death Star was one of my favorite toys as a kid), I honestly wonder how seomething like that would be received today.

Today a Death Star playset would look a lot like this:



...and collectors would love loathe it.

[Jesse James]

Yup.  THAT is a playset.  A 6"x6" floor with a wall is a stand on steroids.   Once that is universally agreed upon we can have a more honest debate on the topic.

Hasbro does tons of things I don't like and won't do things I wish they would...  I get it though, on this one.

[JediJman]

Yeah but that's like saying Dodge is missing out on selling 69 Charger replicas because you own a couple originals.  To make that, it'd cost X and they'd have to sell Y to be profitable...  Just because you are buying old ones and want them to do new ones doesn't mean that's a good idea for them, or that it's going to make them $ guaranteed.

That might be the worst analogy. Ever.     Look, the "We can't make enough money on this" bit is so tired and overplayed and frankly, lazy.  These things have a fixed cost.  If you need to make more profit from them because you estimate low volume, then charge a premium.  Make it an exclusive.  It can't possibly sit around any more than a number of the random vehicles like Finn's Dunebuggy or even Ray's Speeder that dropped down to $5 clearance.  People said Hasbro couldn't make a 6" line work at $20 either, but that line is constantly in demand outside of stores that get bogged down with Zuvios and Finns, and I know zero kids that are collecting 6".

I don't want to get on a bash Hasbro session, but I seriously doubt they have any solid data on how much of their product gets purchased by collectors vs. kids.  I know kids that have Star Wars toys and my collection is easily 100 times beyond what any of them has.  You would need an awful lot of kids to make up for the buying power of a serious adult collector.  I work in Consumer Research for a CPG company and in many cases you have 20-30% of the buyers accounting for 70-80% of the volume.  I'd be surprised if Star Wars was much different.  I've never once been polled or surveyed despite 20 years of collecting and daily activity posting about Star Wars toys and neither has any collector that I know.  Exactly what data is Hasbro basing their analyses on?  And this all assumes kids don't like playsets - you know, like the ones Lego constantly sells out of.   

Conversely, think about the added benefits from selling playsets.  Collectors and kids already have a plethora of figures and ships.  Each additional ship or figure can become diminishing returns, but a playset could be new and more appealing.  It's also a companion piece to the rest of the line.  If someone buys a playset, they're likely also buying a few figures to join it.  Sure, many would have bought figures anyway, but there's a level of incremental figure sales that accompany ships and playsets.  Making them modular can drive "army building" as well, so you'll benefit from some people buying multiples, whereas it's unlikely that someone is going to stock up on most characters or ships.  There's a lot of rationale that these could succeed in the face of a blanket "playsets aren't profitable" stance.

Getting off my soapbox now...

[Nicklab]

The part of this playset equation that really needs more attention is what do the retailers want?  Because the retailers are on the front lines here and they've got the sales data.  Very likely they're seeing things like Force FX lightsabers or vehicles selling in higher volume than the playsets.  Those are the sorts of offerings that would occupy the shelf space where you would probably find a playset.  And those tend to sell in fairly high volume.

Likewise, look at a line like GI Joe.  Hasbro owns that IP, which means no licensing royalties, which translates to lower costs/higher profit margins.  Well, when is the last time that GI Joe offered a really large vehicle or playset?  And what about the Marvel licenses?  The last really big item they offered was the Helicarrier.  The trend across these licenses seems to be a smaller retail shelfspace footprint and only rarely going into that $100+ price range.