Something to consider, and I was touching on this in my original post...
What if sales weren't "high" because production wasn't high? Adam Pawlus's Q&A column hinted that much of OTC was not highly produced.
Like I said, we view this as great sales... Things moved off the shelves quickly, product didn't really sit stagnant (some did and still does). But what if production didn't match nearly what a normal run of figures/sales does for Hasbro? Sales aren't so great then...
I tend to agree Scott, that we're seeing a bad precedent beginning with OTC. At the same time though, tooling new figures can mean higher sales in total units sold... What it'll depend on now is if their department for determing cost and cutting from certain areas/activities will find out if re-releasing short runs of figures is more financially sound than making higher production runs of new product.
What I think we'll wind up seeing is more of a mix in non-movie years, somewhat similar to OTC. Idealy it would be MORE new product than repackaged though, for us.
Like I was saying in my first post though, yes things moved, but did Hasbro really make a TON of money with it? If they didn't sell nearly as much as they would've if it was all new product, there's two possible answers... That the lower overall sales outweighed the lower costs and they made $, or that new product maybe would've cost more but they would've sold more units and made more $ in the long run. That, I don't think we'll ever know, but one thing is for sure...
If Hasbro gloats up SW in a press release, they did well... If they don't, then you can bet OTC didn't do as well as people are maybe thinking by looking at the pegs of their local store. This isn't a black & white issue though, there's a lot they've gotta look at with this.
And with the DVD release and all that being a big media blitz, I just really wonder if OTC really didn't do ALL that well beyond it NOT clogging pegs. I'm not ready to say OTC was "a hit" though myself. I'm leaning right now towards Hasbro, at most, doing a mix of re-releases now more steadily with new product, especially in non-movie years.