G.I. Joe, Seriously Suffering at Wal-Mart
The G.I. Joe toy series has really fallen over the last few years. In 2007 and 2008 the line was awesome, with lots of great releases and excellent distribution.
In 2009 the movie line came out and did as poorly as we could expect when the movie turned out to suck. 2010 was okay . . . but now in 2011 we have hit the point that there are more of The Corps! series at Wal-Mart than there are G.I. Joe toys.
These pics at an Austin Wal-Mart show how far the line has fallen. A total of seven figures — all arctic Destro — are all that remain of a once awesome line.
Damn, that movie really damaged G.I. Joe.
This is depressing. That dumb movie… What should have been a huge boost for the property has instead killed it both creatively and from a business stance.
There’s a lot of cool stuff coming later this year. I hope I’m able to find it all easily and not have to resort to eBay.
One Walmart near me has stopped carrying Joes all together. I’ve also read of others doing the same.
Then again, there are two Walmarts just 30 minutes either side of that one and they always have a good six or so pegs dedicated to the toys and they’re always well-stocked.
I know it’s depressing when you see an empty Joe space, but seems it’s purely a store-by-store thing.
@Iok – Here in the Austin area you can forget finding G.I. Joe at Wal-Mart. The pics above are a decent representation of the other stores in the area. Target has a better selection, but even there it’s not great.
Most of the Walmarts around Dallas look like that, but I found one over a month ago completely stocked, including Low Light, Shadow Tracker, Skydive, and the newer Destro. I’ve read somewhere that Walmart is going to carry the new products this year, and that they’ve just been clearing out all of the old stuff. So hopefully in a few months all the Walmarts will be well stocked with great figures.
The reason why it’s failing around me is that they never have new figures! And there are empty pegs all the time. It’s aggravating.
I think it’s more that people (at least in Minnesota) who have a choice choose Wal-Mart on price alone. The non-name-brand toys are going to do well when they’re around half the price. Especially when G.I. Joe doesn’t have a cartoon on right now to make kids demand the real deal.
The wal-mart here hardly has toys for boys at all most the aisle is iron man, wrestling and star wars, GI-Joe went away after the movie.
Hasbro is well aware of the Wal-Mart situation and is working with Wally to bring the Joe brand back to it’s prominence according to the panel at Joe-Con last week.
The movie did NOT kill the line, and sales of movie related product were extremely brisk. Just because you see a plethora of product still on pegs doesn’t mean that sales were bad, in this situation Hasbro overproduced and overestimated demand for certain toys.
@WildWill – “Hasbro is well aware of the Wal-Mart situation and is working with Wally to bring the Joe brand back to it’s prominence according to the panel at Joe-Con last week.”
Good news. I know that distribution can be a headache, but it has been a few months now that Austin area Wal-Marts have been Joe light.
That’s good to hear about the new push at retail.
And John Maddening – there IS a GI Joe cartoon on at the moment – GI Joe: Renegades. Sadly the toys for that aren’t out until later this year, after it goes off the air. So yeah, smart move there!
It’s not the movie that kills Joe.
What is Gi Joe? It’s a line about war that can’t be about war. An anti-terrorism squad in a world that doesn’t want the horrors of real life to be put onto the fantasy play of children. That’s why Joe just doesn’t get the push of other lines – you could see this dichotomy in the Joe movie itself.
We needed funky nanotech and superheroic Vipers and acceleration suits because War Is Hell. They can’t sell war play to the majority of America. And people just didn’t want those characters in the amount Hasbro thought after the movie was out in the marketplace.
Distribution-wise, every line is suffering currently. It seems like the first quarter every year is when NOTHING ships. I haven’t seen the new Transformers more than once. Or the current Marvel assortments, or Iron Man or anything.
The only section I see changing over and over is Star Wars.
I expect an onslaught of new product around next week – three waves in one month again for the third year running on every Hasbro line.
What gets me is that is the fact that the big 4 (kmart, tru, walmart and target) haven’t gotten anything new. I found Skydive but it was at a Walgreens!!!