[Dragasses]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Hebime

What baffles me is why they didn't just go ahead and use the current red ninja mold? Money was spent to tool a new mold for less articulation?!?

agreed. realdonkulous.

[Kaboomskie]

Seeing a ninja in 5 poa is a sacrilege!

[TheLongestDay]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaboomskie

Seeing a ninja in 5 poa is a sacrilege!

Too true....even the fookin CORPS figures are better than this :/

[Shin-Gouki]

[figureware]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PFunk

So, are future waves of Joe figures going to be 5 POA now?

The club will kill GI Joe before poor articulation will, but The future of GI Joe will be no articulation...as in NO JOES! If popular figures like Iron Man, Bat Man and Star Wars are not better why should GI Joe be? Collectors have kept Joe alive but if were willing to pay $25 a pop for them from the club and they're not selling in the box stores why even waste the money releasing them? I even had high hopes of the DG Joes great figures,price point but even they have peg warmers.

[Steevy Maximus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Owner of a Lonely B.A.T.

I mean I understand that it supposedly costs less to produce, but when you consider the following....

-You have to make a new mold anyway for a 5POA and in the case of that Ninja that was a new mold...and they had to make another new mold from that one so where was the savings?

-Are you telling me reusing other existing molds with mix an matching repaints and toss some other also aready existing accessories in isn't more cost effective?

My presumption is that Hasbro is saving so much in other areas (less labor cost of painting and assembly, fewer molds in use (the 5 POA look to use one or two molds for their parts, an average Joe figure could have as much as 3-6 molds used to produce it), less maintenance/logistics cost associated with using fewer molds, etc), that combined with a presumed higher sale rate (retailers are probably more apt to buy a bunch of $6 figures of "guaranteed sellers" than a bunch of $10 figures which may have less desirable figures), helps justify any expense in producing a new mold(s) for their tie in lines.

Which might also explain why older tooling wasn't used: the cost of producing the figures (even without new parts) might have been high enough that it still made better sense to produce a newer, cheaper, figure design that could be produced in larger numbers, cheaply, and (perhaps most importantly) retailers probably being far more open to buying $6 figures than $10 figures (quantity over quality, so to speak).

And that makes sense in the tie in lines, which either have a narrow marketable timeframe (Wolverine will be DONE by New Year's) or are composed of "easy sellers" that Hasbro could reuse years down the line (I guarantee if next year's X-Men film has a toyline, Hasbro will reuse most of the Wolverine figures produced this year).

In the case of the red ninja 5 POA figure, if Joe gets a 5 POA range, Hasbro has a ready to go Storm Shadow. If another Marvel film (like maybe the Daredevil reboot) uses ninjas, they have a ready to go figure as a base.

Quote:

-And lastly these 5POA's are just clogging shelves and not moving. This on the heals of (in Joes case at least) poor sales performaces from a bad line of figures. So making an even worse line of figures is gonna help that?

I still think the "what I see at my store" isn't a valid line of reasoning. Using that reasoning, going by my store, Iron Man 3 was a solid hit with the 5 POA figures (the $10 figures have been effectively sold out for weeks) and Transformers Generations is the hottest line out there (because they haven't had any on shelves at all in weeks).

The reality is my store (which has no competition) is at the ass end of its distribution network and is a far lower priority in supporting compared to stores that compete with Target, Kmart and TRU in larger markets.

Empty shelves don't make money and if your consumer can go down the street to another store and buy stuff, it is important that you have stuff to sell them. But here, Walmart is all there is so there isn't a pressing need to keep my store well stocked.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stillagijoefan

But the DG basic line figures, which come with limited accessories, basic designs, but still are profitable at only $5-6 with articulation. If they need to reduce cost with Joes, IMO that is the way to go instead of turning to 5 POA.

But how profitable are they really? To get the price that low, Hasbro may be sacrificing profit margins (both to themselves and retailers) to get a "name brand item" carried by lower income venues like TJ Maxx and Dollar General.
Hasbro and Walmart are likely making more off a Retaliation figure, than Hasbro and Dollar General are on those DG Joes. But by getting GI Joe into Dollar General, Hasbro is expanding the brand's profile to consumers who might not have otherwise be exposed to.

It is also worth noting that the DG Joes aren't having to factor some of the cost associated with a "core line", like individual packaging (each card is unique, even if only on one side), support for subsequent waves, or the fact Hasbro could produce the figures in FAR greater numbers than a retail line, and be safely able to move that product without being burdened by "normal" retail needs.

A great addition I can think is the second wave of Valor vs Venom singles, which were produced and sold for the exact same reasons/needs/markets as the DG Joes. They were available for $2. Many of the EXACT same molds were readily available at normal retail in two packs for $7-8 (or twice the cost at Dollar General).
Inflation or not, I think that ratio probably still holds true today.

Quote:

Originally Posted by skinny

I bet that the kid just saw IRON MAN and wanted the character he saw in the movie just like we wanted Luke, Vader, Han and a stormtrooper when we saw Star Wars.
kids like characters and toys they don't necessarily care about articulation, or how many guns it comes with. If they saw it in a movie or cartoon or ads for it on tv (where are those toy ads anyway?) they want it. It has been that way for over 60 years

This.
For ALL of my childhood, articulation like GI Joe was the exception, not the rule (in fact, Super articulation was often used as a GIMMICK for select figures!). It didn't stop me from enjoying Kenner's Batman lines, or Toy Biz's Marvel lines, or the initial relaunch of Star Wars.

That said, there WERE limits to what my parents would spend, and that's the issue today:
to keep product up to "collector standards", Hasbro basically priced itself out of the kid demographic. That's also part of the reason we're seeing so many brands "divide the market" so to speak: Hasbro just can't satisfy both markets with one item while still maintaining their profit margins.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheLongestDay

Too true....even the fookin CORPS figures are better than this :/

Which is why I don't think Joe will ever go full bore 5 PoA. When the "knock off" is offering better bang for the buck, something is seriously wrong. At this point, the GI Joe brand just isn't strong enough to push sales the way STar Wars and Marvel can for their 5 POA products.


All that said...I still think GI Joe's current design isn't sustainable long term. Even assuming the price this year was related to movie licensing, we're still looking at about $8 for figures on par with what we're getting. Despite collector fuss, I can almost guarantee Hasbro ended up selling more Wolverine figures at $6, then they would have at $10.
I strongly believe we'll either see GI Joe split its line the way STar Wars and Marvel have ("kid stuff" and "collector stuff") or a new standard of design that's cheaper

(Sidebar: I really suspect the "Modern figure" construction wasn't really done for its benefits, which are mostly modularity by using a handful of base parts. It's that by 2007, retailers were against the "old" o-ring Joe design and Hasbro had to make a new style of figure to get retailers on board to carry it at all. To this day, I feel the 2004-2005 Joe figures were generally better TOYS than the GI Joe COLLECTIBLES we've been getting since 25th started, and I further postulate that had Hasbro produced 25th in classic o-ring style with new tooling and the same retro packaging, it would have been just as successful, if not moreso)

[Foreddyn]

Didn't Hasbro said that they wouldn't do 5-point vehicle drivers again in the future? There's still time, they might give additional articulation to these figures yet.

[CrimsonGuard101]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Foreddyn

Didn't Hasbro said that they wouldn't do 5-point vehicle drivers again in the future? There's still time, they might give additional articulation to these figures yet.

Hasbro is like the Club, right hand doesn't know what left hand is doing, and what they say one day is different the next. I would be nice for them just to start making 5POA the norm lol...then I can stop collecting....toys at the store have gotten so bad now its like not even fun to go look anymore cause its the same stuff that's been there for 2 years or new 5POA garbage...at 10.99+...

[HartAttack]

Welcome to the new and improved Hasbro... Prices go up, product quality goes down. I hate this as much as everyone else, but I will be picking up the blue/yellow Wolverine for the head and maybe a few others for static display. But if the entire Marvel Universe line goes 5POA, I'll be upset, but I got my Moon Knight, Archangels, and War Machine so I'm ok.

[Shipshape1983]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Hebime

That's a shame, because those are really nice sculpts. What baffles me is why they didn't just go ahead and use the current red ninja mold? Money was spent to tool a new mold for less articulation?!?

They do have the ninja mold, but how could they use an articulated ninja figure in a line with the rest of the figures being 5 points of articulation?
They'd have to make the rest of the figures just as possable as the ninja.