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Thread
:
(My) Thoughts on the future of GI Joe
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05-18-2009, 02:10 PM
zuludelta
EQ-Viper
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 4,343
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jmacq1
That'd all be well and good if G.I. Joe's "pop culture cachet" wasn't primarily as a punchline...
... Beyond that, G.I. Joe has always primarily been a toy property, and likely always will. It's kinda the whole point of its' existence as a brand. I think you're deeply overestimating its' "pop culture" stake...or at least mistaking the nature of it: Once again, to most non-fans, G.I. Joe is a "Knowing is Half the Battle" joke, "Village People with guns" or an appearance by a Latta-esque Cobra Commander on
Family Guy
.
I don't know. Personally, I feel that the 1980s-era GI Joe has been commercially viable for as long as it has been not because of the toys
per se
, but because of the characters and the mythos that were built around the toys in the associated media. Tying the property's visibility intrinsically to toy production and sales limits what can be done with it and makes it subject to the whims of toy market forces.
When I think about it, my interest in GI Joe as a brand only extends as far as it resonates with the characters of Snake-Eyes, Storm Shadow, Duke, Destro, Zartan, etc. as they were originally depicted in the associated media of the 1980s. In that sense, I care more for the themes and characters associated with GI Joe than the brand or the toys themselves. And I think a lot of non-fans can probably be made to care about those themes and characters without having to buy into the toy collecting or toy customizing hobby.
A good example of how cashing in on an IP's licensing and new media potential can revive a property's fortunes is what Marvel Comics did to bring itself out of bankruptcy in the earlier part of this decade. What the company's leadership realized was that they were no longer making money off of their primary revenue stream (the business of making and selling comic books) for whatever reason. In fact, nobody was making any significant money in the comic book publishing arena. So they decided to re-focus their energy into intellectual property licensing and development. Their characters may not have had any significant commercial value with their existence primarily restricted in the shrinking world of direct market comic book shops, but there was a huge untapped market out there of people who were uninterested in comics, but were potentially interested in the characters that populated them.
So instead of focusing on the traditional role of publishing comics and hoping that comics sales would keep the company salient, Marvel started an independent unit (called Marvel Characters, if I recall correctly) in charge of licensing and media development and it's been an unmitigated success. It's interesting how a company that most still think of as a "comic book company" makes the bulk of its money in licensing:
Marvel Entertainment/Marvel Enterprises segment revenue share, 2005 to 2007
I don't see why Hasbro can't do the same, at least in terms of a widely recognized property like GI Joe. Like Marvel, they can probably gain some measure of success by thinking out of the box and not just viewing their characters as static "comic book characters" (or in Hasbro's case, "toy characters") that live or die by the sales of their traditional associated product (comics in the case of Marvel, toys in the case of Hasbro).
__________________
Last edited by zuludelta; 05-18-2009 at
02:31 PM
.. Reason: edited for clarity
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