I'm sticking with the, "I bet you don't know what sold and what was replenishment" stock theory on this... No offense meant to anyone by that either, but it's a pretty common thing really where people think they're seeing nothing move, but it actually is selling and getting replenished. I'm sure sales weren't fantastic everywhere, but like I said around here Target got the jump and sold through a lot of product with several restocks till the movie came and went... TRU then did ok, and WM was late to the game so they seemed to have the worst sell-through by me, but still my WM stores never put them on any steep discount ($5 I think was the lowest). Then they put them back to full price and even brought out space for playsets, which till last month had only been available at Target and TRU (and KM for significantly more money) locally.
I don't think Playmates is willing to dump more tooling investment into a line that never sold anything. They're not really innovating anything, they're just continuing the line that, as far as they are claiming, was a good seller (and admitting the 6" line didn't do well). It was one wave of figures, so pegwarming was inevitable IMO if there was steady restocking, and now we're seeing a clearance. If retailers pick up subsequent waves, then I think the proof is in the pudding that the line sold well enough to maintain shelf space for it. If ST is dropped from the action figure aisles all together, then I think Playmates is in trouble to try and sell this stuff and maybe were reading too much into their sales data.
I'm sure everywhere right now has a glut that isn't moving, well, but the determining factor seems to be how well they did through the Summer, which all signs currently say they did better than the public must think.