Did Slaughter’s Marauders Harm the G.I. Joe 50th Anniversary?
Exclusives can be awesome, wonderful things. Exclusives, whether a retailer or convention exclusive, give fans something special to chase down and generate some buzz and excitement for a brand, sometimes leading to troubles with scalpers and artificially-inflated prices, but often the good effects of an exclusive outweigh the bad.
Unfortunately, it looks as if one set of Big Bad Toy Store exclusives from early 2012 may have led in the troubles that the G.I. Joe 50th Anniversary sets are suffering through today.
Let me explain.
Going Back to 2012
Early in 2012 (January, as this theterrordrome.com post shows us), Big Bad Toy Store started shipping two fun G.I. Joe action figure sets to fans. Both 7-packs were great concepts that gave the more dedicated fans of the eighties A Real American Hero series some fan-favorite characters. Those sets were:
- Slaughter’s Marauders — available now at BBTS and Amazon.com*.
- Dreadnoks — available now at BBTS and Amazon.com*.
Wait. Available Now?
Over two years since the exclusive sets were released at Big Bad Toy Store and both box sets are available right now, and one of them is even listed at a clearance price. That’s over two years that Big Bad Toy Store has had money wrapped up in inventory, and in the 50th Anniversary thread at hisstank.com user JediJones suggests that there were initially 5,000 of each set:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Majua41 View Post
I agree, I was very impressed that BBTS had that type of juice. Those were some nice exclusives.
Problem is my research indicated they made 5,000 of each one, and they still haven’t sold out. So the fans need to put some extra juice in if we’re ever going to see them do an exclusive like that again.
Running some very simple math, and using the quite standard 50% discount retailers get when buying direct from a manufacturer, we can estimate that Big Bad Toy Store sunk $224,750 into getting both sets into their catalog. That’s a lot of cash to wrap up in toys, and if we could determine how many of each set BBTS still has in stock we could estimate how much of their money is still sitting on the shelves locked into these two slow-moving exclusives.
How Does that Affect the 50th Anniversary?
If BBTS brought in 5,000 of each of those two sets in 2012, and if they still have unsold stock in 2014, then it means that when Hasbro offered them the G.I. Joe 50th Anniversary sets that the buyers at BBTS would have ordered less than 5,000 units of each new release. Why take on a massive amount of product — a shared exclusive at that — when the last big G.I. Joe exclusive failed to perform as expected?
So all of this added up to BBTS having fewer of the 50th Anniversary sets available than they did the 2012 exclusive packs, and once the fear of being unable to get the toys set in with fans (see “Does Fear Drive Sales?”) that fear had a greater impact on the sales rate than BBTS expected.
Are Exclusives Bad?
Not at all, but exclusives these days need to be truly exclusive if they’re going to be meaningful. It’s clear that there aren’t 5,000 hardcore G.I. Joe fans today, because BBTS has been unable to sell their Slaughter’s Marauders and Dreadnoks sets in the last two+ years.
Exclusives are awesome, but exclusives that don’t sell through at a reasonable rate — a number that must be determined by each seller, but with Slaughter’s Marauders on clearance we know BBTS doesn’t think these sold fast enough — damage the brand. It’s extremely tough to get the exact number to order right, but I think between the 2012 exclusives and today’s 50th Anniversary exclusives BBTS is zeroing in on a realistic number.
What will that number mean to the future? Assuming it’s high enough to matter to both BBTS and Hasbro then it could mean more BBTS G.I. Joe exclusives, and with Hasbro basically closing down G.I. Joe due to poor mass market sales then any outlet for fans to secure new G.I. Joe toys will be a good thing.
Hopefully Hasbro and BBTS work together to bring us new exclusives in the near future . . .
As an toy outsider, I found this to be an interesting analysis. It’s funny how many industries I’ve been involved with that have had similar issues.
When I was helping guide such decisions at West End Games, one of the biggest troubles we had was that it was so difficult to determine the market size for certain products, and to get optimal profitability for them. (If one collector is willing to spend $100 but you only offer the $30 version, you’re leaving $70 on the table… but if you print up a thousand of the $100 version and only sell 100, you’ve wasted a LOT of money.)
One VERY workable solution to this has been Kickstarter. The video game Torment got 4,162 folks to shell out for the expensive physical copy ahead of time, so they have a bottom threshold for what the “upper-end” audience wants, and can print accordingly. It remains to be seen if something similar could be done with an intersection of a BBTS and manufacturer.
The comic and book industry has tried a number of aspects to get around this, all with their own difficulties. If you offer returnability, then a huge chunk of money is spent on shuffling items back and forth (and then the publisher/manufacturer needs to figure out what to do with the stuff when it comes back… that damn near killed TSR and White Wolf).
If you offer non-returnability but a higher discount, then any product line ends up with diminishing returns: X of the first item of the line, 90% X for the second item of the line, 80% for the third item, and so on. That’s not sustainable, and — in the comic world — leads to comic reboots every six months to force retailers back to that “X” level. (I believe I’ve seen similar line reboots in the toy world.)
It’s possible get cute with discount or returnability rates — “Order the same X level of the third item as you did the first, and you get a higher rate,” or “any you order above a certain threshold is returnable” — but that requires a motivated purchasing agency to keep up with. I suspect with the BBTSes, it’s not worth the hassle.
I believe the best possibility — which has the ease of simplicity and logic, but might have its own problems — is to push preorders, with the promise of Something Cool and Exclusive for that preorder window. Video games have done this with (it seems) considerable success in recent years: “Preorder DEATHBAT through Gamesorama and receive exclusive multiplayer levels” or the like. There’s even been light crossover into toys; Wal-Mart offered a free exclusive Iron Patriot LEGO Minifig for preorders of the LEGO Marvel videogame, which I jumped on even though I didn’t own a video game console.
I think if the “exclusive” offered was something cool and pushed to preorders, it might give BBTS buyers (and manufacturers) more numbers to make educated guesses for buying other lines and manufacturing ceilings. The trick would be to make the exclusive cool enough to get folks to jump, but not so cool that those who miss out dump the line in frustration because now they have an incomplete set.
As an toy outsider, I found this to be an interesting analysis. It’s funny how many industries I’ve been involved with that have had similar issues.
When I was helping guide such decisions at West End Games, one of the biggest troubles we had was that it was so difficult to determine the market size for certain products, and to get optimal profitability for them. (If one collector is willing to spend $100 but you only offer the $30 version, you’re leaving $70 on the table… but if you print up a thousand of the $100 version and only sell 100, you’ve wasted a LOT of money.)
One VERY workable solution to this has been Kickstarter. The video game Torment got 4,162 folks to shell out for the expensive physical copy ahead of time, so they have a bottom threshold for what the “upper-end” audience wants, and can print accordingly. It remains to be seen if something similar could be done with an intersection of a BBTS and manufacturer.
The comic and book industry has tried a number of aspects to get around this, all with their own difficulties. If you offer returnability, then a huge chunk of money is spent on shuffling items back and forth (and then the publisher/manufacturer needs to figure out what to do with the stuff when it comes back… that damn near killed TSR and White Wolf).
If you offer non-returnability but a higher discount, then any product line ends up with diminishing returns: X of the first item of the line, 90% X for the second item of the line, 80% for the third item, and so on. That’s not sustainable, and — in the comic world — leads to comic reboots every six months to force retailers back to that “X” level. (I believe I’ve seen similar line reboots in the toy world.)
It’s possible get cute with discount or returnability rates — “Order the same X level of the third item as you did the first, and you get a higher rate,” or “any you order above a certain threshold is returnable” — but that requires a motivated purchasing agency to keep up with. I suspect with the BBTSes, it’s not worth the hassle.
I believe the best possibility — which has the ease of simplicity and logic, but might have its own problems — is to push preorders, with the promise of Something Cool and Exclusive for that preorder window. Video games have done this with (it seems) considerable success in recent years: “Preorder DEATHBAT through Gamesorama and receive exclusive multiplayer levels” or the like. There’s even been light crossover into toys; Wal-Mart offered a free exclusive Iron Patriot LEGO Minifig for preorders of the LEGO Marvel videogame, which I jumped on even though I didn’t own a video game console.
I think if the “exclusive” offered was something cool and pushed to preorders, it might give BBTS buyers (and manufacturers) more numbers to make educated guesses for buying other lines and manufacturing ceilings. The trick would be to make the exclusive cool enough to get folks to jump, but not so cool that those who miss out dump the line in frustration because now they have an incomplete set.)
I’ve always bought BBTS Joe exclusives when they’ve come out, but it does seem that they end up on clearance some time later. The Resolute sets they had before the Marauders set also sat around for a while, though I think the Attack on Cobra Island ones did pretty well. It’s a shame as the Marauders/Dreadnok sets were a great deal at full price and have some great figures.
I think one of the big issues with this set is that Hasbro made Sgt. Slaughter an SDCC exclusive that many, many fans were not able to get. I bought this set on clearance eventually, because who wants to pay full price for a Slaughter’s Marauders set without the Sarge himself?
I think there are a ton of factors not being considered here. One of the major ones being collector frustration was at an all time high when these sets came out. Rise of Cobra (With over abundance of first waves and hard to find later waves), Pursuit of Cobra (Again later waves being near impossible to find) and most notably 30th Anniversary exasperated an already troubled market that had become infuriated with the terrible distribution issues of 25th Anniversary line. Many felt that their collections had huge holes from normal retail releases to begin with and abandoned the line altogether rather than deal with even more frustration.
In addition to Slaughter being an exclusive, this was hot on heals of Zaranna’s release. Zayana even used her mold almost rubbing it in the face of collectors who couldn’t get her (or were unwilling, understandably, to shell out $50+ for her). If Hasbro had kept the Punk version of Zaranna as the SDCC exclusive and included her more traditional deco in this set rather than Zayana (Not a popular character to many to begin with) I think we’d be having a different conversation now (Not saying they would have sold out, but fans would not have felt nearly as slighted). .
Then you have the sets themselves which, to be blunt, were not the best sets ever produced. There were some heavy recycling done for both sets. Granted there are some awesome figures here (Road Pig being one of the best) but there are some terrible ones too (Zanzabar looks like they ran out of money, Tarus, or rather Bull, is one of the weakest figures the line ever produced). Zayana is good but as mentioned before she almost is a smack in the face to a fan. The Slaughter’s set is worse with Low Light, Spirit, and BBQ being almost direct repaints (Granted LL fell into that Hard to Find category but with this exclusive he came with far inferior accessories which hurt his desirability as well as a less than desirable paint job). The only Marauder that works is Mercer and just barely. Keep in mind I actually like these sets but in truth I recognize the weaknesses.
There is more in my mind but those are the major points I think.
Have to agree with Robert above. A big part of the problem with the Sgt. Slaughter’s Marauders set, was that it featured some pretty poor figures.
The Dreadnoks set had some great figures like Road-Pig, Thrasher (who got re-named Thunder, of all things), Zandar, and Zanya, but the Marauders set featured mediocre repaints (granted, the original Marauders figures were also pretty crappy repaints all told) and some absolute head-scratchers when it came to the reused parts choices for Mercer (renamed as “Mercenary” for the set), Taurus (renamed as “Bull” for the set) and Red Dog. I’m all for new takes on old favorites, but Bull truly lived up to its new name. The choice of parts used to cobble together the figure were terrible: sculpted elements on the thighs prevent Bull’s legs from straightening out (placing him in a permanent, slightly bent-knee pose), the lean on the neck sculpt meant that the figure can’t truly look straight ahead, and the choice of revolver and chest holster resulted in the revolver’s grip pretty much obscuring part of the figure’s face. For an “exclusive” figure, it was pretty much a failure on all fronts and as with Robert, I feel like it is one of the weakest figures ever produced in the post-2007 GI Joe line in terms of how the design actually translated into a figure in-hand.
You hit the nail on the head. Those reasons are what stopped me from getting the set until last Christmas. I still don’t have Slaughter or Zarana. Making those 2 SDCC exclusive, knowing full well these set were coming, was a big “screw you ” to the fans