Collectibles > Star Wars Rebels

Star Wars Rebels - 5 POA Animated Style Figs

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Nicklab:
Overall, I find it REALLY funny that this whole affair was the result of the nonsensical way that things are running over at JTA these days.  Hasbro's response to that particular question was certainly glib, but JTA should have pressed for more than a yes or no response.  As for the slew of ridiculous questions from the sites readers?  Well, it's the result of this mindset over there that all ideas/questions/comments are equal.  If you're running a collecting site and are interacting with a Star Wars licensee, it's incumbent on that news outlet to act like the adults in the room.  And from what I've seen since my departure there is no sense of sound editorial judgement at work, and little effort to weed out questions from the JTA readership that are pointless, unrealistic or perhaps even insulting to the people at Hasbro.  Personally, I'm very glad that I left the site because my own philosophy about running a site was in contradiction with Paul Mancil's (not his pen name of Harrison) ethos of entertaining the whiny contingent of fandom in an effort to drum up traffic.  I've conducted this Hasbro Toy Fair Q&A for JTA in the past.  And had I done so again this year it would have yielded actual news instead of just stirring up ****.

As for the whole female characters issue?  The long standing trend in the action figure business has been that female characters do not sell as well as their male counterparts.  Hasbro has confirmed that in the past, and like Jesse said, Hasbro has the sales figures but will not release them.  They never will, and consistently cite trade secrets as the reason why.  I'm sure if you checked with other manufacturers you could probably find comparable stats.... provided that they would release similar data.  But they won't.

Does it come down to character selection?  That's probably a major part of the equation.  Ahsoka sold VERY well in pretty much every offering:  the initial TCW figure was popular, the second version with the two lightsabers was one of the most HTF figures in the CW figure line, and the TVC version is pretty sought after, too.  But was she the exception to the rule?  Looking at The Black Series of 3.75" figures, female characters made up about 20% of that basic figure line.  The TBS Padme figure seem to have sold through reasonably well.  As did Mara Jade and Bastila.  But Luminara?  She sold pretty slowly, despite being a Jedi.  And Toryn Farr lingered the longest out of her wave.  So this could come down more to character selection.

As for the REBELS figures?  I maintain the fact that Kanan and Ezra are the central protagonists in the show.  You could even go so far to say that Ezra is the protagonist, with Kanan in the role of spirit guide, much like Obi-Wan Kenobi was a guide to Luke in ANH.  Agent Kallus and the Inquisitor are the chief antagonists. That means that those 4 characters have greater importance in the scope of the story than anyone else.  Zeb, Hera, Sabine and Chopper?  They're interesting, but they're also all supporting characters.  Hasbro, Lucasfilm Animation and Lucasfilm Licensing all know this.  And that's what steers their choices in terms of filling out the action figure line.

So then the question is how do you roll out those supporting characters in the action figure line?  If you approach this from the standpoint of sales demographics for a boys toy line, you're probably going to find that characters like Chopper and Zeb have greater appeal with the core audience for this toy line.  And I don't mean to demean girls who are into the REBELS show.  My daughter has watched the show with me a little bit.  She actually likes Chopper, truth be told.  Do I want positive depictions of female characters in Star Wars for her to enjoy?  Sure.  And I think characters like Sabine and Hera do that for her.  Is she into the toys?  No, not at her age.  Be that as it may, if you look at this from a sales perspective like Hasbro has, I think they're trying to put the potential best sellers out there first.  I think this backlash has caught Hasbro somewhat by surprise, and perhaps they'll change their thought process on this going forward.  Case in point, the Target exclusive version of the Phantom.  That might have been a good way to get Hera out there instead of Kanan.  It would have made sense and I would have sought out that version of the ship myself.

JediJman:
I don't think anyone's arguing that Ezra and Kanan are not the focus of the show or even "more important" characters than the other figures.  But do we need 4 ways to buy those characters? 

3-4 opportunities to buy:
Ezra - Legends Single Carded, TRU 3-pack, Mission Series (Cadet) with Kanan
Kanan - Legends Single Carded, Phantom Pack-in, TRU 3-pack, Mission Series with Ezra
Stormtrooper - Legends Single Carded, Mission Series w/ Zeb, Mission Series with Hera, Mission Series with Sabine

2 opportunity to buy:
Inquisitor - Legends Single Carded, TIE Pack-in

1 opportunity to buy:
Agent Kallus - Legends Single Carded
Chopper - Legends Single Carded
Zeb - Mission Series
Sabine - Mission Series
Hera - Mission Series

There's a cast of essentially only 9 characters, but it's nearly impossible to find over half of them, while the other half are available in three or four different ways!  And that's not even counting the larger sized offerings.  You don't need sales data to point out that this is a missed opportunity for Hasbro and their buyers.

As for the female figures, I'm just so tired of that canned response to them not selling well.  As if boys couldn't possible play with a female character or the characters don't have any appeal to girls.  You can spin the data any way you like, but what we see in the aisles is fact, not opinion.  I'd be willing to put money down that Hasbro doesn't have anything concrete to support this - someone just came up with the excuse at some point and it became a sacred cow.  Just in our little group, the only female examples being brought up are bit characters like Toryn Farr who had half a second of screen time.  Core female characters like Sabine and Hera would sell just as well as the rest of the line, especially in a lineup of under a dozen characters.  Just sad that the people managing this line can't seem to get in touch with reality.

Dave:
The biggest logic flaw is that if this is a boys line and only male figures sell, then why would you even have main characters be female in the cartoon?  Disney/Lucasfilm can create whatever characters they want. 

I assume the mission of Rebels is prime audiences for TFA, and appeal to younger kids (boys only?) that will bug their parents to buy them stuff.

So they get my 5-year old daughter all excited about the program, all excited about Sabine, and "release" (not really available) her well after the Christmas surge. 

Sabine could have just as easily been a male character, or some androgynous alien, or a droid.  But they chose to make her a young woman / old teenager, I assume to appeal to young girls and pull them in to the story and collecting.

If that is the case, make and release the damn figure straight out of the gates.  Capitalize on your plan to pull in young girls.  It also kills me I have to buy a Sabine t-shirt from Her Universe because Disney and others don't make one.

To me there is a lot of shared ownership on these oversights.  Hasbro has missed the boat, and Lucasfilm/Disney licensing has missed the boat.  I'm sure Disney could have strongly encouraged Hasbro to have Sabine (or Hera) be available at launch.  Maybe they were too busy figuring out what new color of whiny fairy they could add to their Tinkerbell portfolio... ::)

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