Interesting time to bump things Brian, it would seem there's been some change.
The most fascinating of the bunch is McFarlane Sportspicks. TRU up here has pretty much stopped carrying the line, another retailer refuses to carry them except prior to spring (going so far as to cancel orders of the Team Canada series, NHL10 & 11 and Legends 3 hockey). Walmart and Zellers still carry a fair number of cases, but even that has diminished. I'm not clear on what killed it either. I do think, as I mentioned above, the peg warmers of unpopular or overproduced figures really hurt the line. NHL Legends 1 was by far the worst with 7-8 Wayne Gretzky figures per case of 12. I can still find either of those figures on any given day at one retailer that never cleared them. Walmart had the Legends 1 Kings Gretzky priced at $2 and was still hanging around. It finally cleared for $1. What a change in just three years.
Star Wars moves well, but Hasbro Canada has no clue what they're doing any more than the parent company in the US. They don't understand what products they're making and what the demand will be. As such we have a ton of Carkoon wave sitting like crazy and it will be there for a long while. But retailers cannot specifically request certain waves, just more cases. Fortunately we've moved onto the Hoth wave for now, though even at that Rieekan, Claven, er Derlin and to a lesser extent Veers are already warming a bit. Funny thing is at TRU retail is $9.99 and there's still some deluxe Saga Rieekan sitting there for $7.99 with the accessory not moving. Doesn't bode especially well. I suppose someone has to keep all the Lobots, Madines, Undulis and Shmis company
Walmart sucks horribly with this line, bringing in a couple of cases every six weeks or so, selling them out within a couple of days and then filling that space with Turtles figures.
Marvel Legends moves well, but I think ToyBiz is making the exact same mistake with the line that McFarlane did with Sportspicks by flooding the market with chase figures. I'm sure they got lots of grief about the difficulty of finding chase figures and the prices on the secondary market but they are making the same mistake that McFarlane did by upping the numbers. There's no difficulty in finding chase figures now and that will ultimately depress the line.
That said, the line sells well, to a point. Our obscenely high regular retail prices ($14,97 after taxes) make picking these up primarily a collectors market.
And speaking of ToyBiz, one word: Gollum. Ok, maybe not one word...Gollum, Frodo, Aragorn. These guys learn case ratios from Mattel? Want to know why the line is dead? Look no further.
Turtles and Power Rangers must sell, because they're everywhere with considerable shelf space. I don't quite understand it, but I guess there's some profit to be had there.
DC does ok, but not great here. Same product line as Brian mentioned and it sells, not spectacularly. The newer Batman line with Bane in it is selling very well.
Other Marvel stuff.... does pretty well. Figure factory sells, but not huge volumes. Spiderman is a staple and continues to sell well but I've never seen less product on the shelves than I have right now, so that's a bit odd. FF stuff is clogging the pegs much as the Hulk movie stuff did. Blech.
Simpsons. Gone.
MOTU. Gone.
Muppets. Gone.
Military - seriously reduced amount of space.
Actually a general trend is to a serious reduction in the amount of space alotted to action figures as compared to three years ago. They just don't seem to be doing well as a genre.
Barbie's still kicking ass, as are hot wheels. I'd say that the die-cast market is the hottest segment these days. All that space that used to go to action figures is now die-cast in various scales. I blame NASCAR.
As opposed to my last reply in this thread I don't really expect to see much at this time of year, so what does show up is a bonus. Post-Christmas, pre-spring is generally depressing for toys. Not really expecting it to brighten until late summer, but we'll see what happens.
