How rare can a production toy really be?

[enyawd72]

I was reading the old thread started about the Amico Hulk Stunt Cycle, and it mentions only 50 of them were produced. I've heard similar stories about other toys too, such as the FunStuf Rock Trap Thing, etc.
These were not prototypes, but actual produced items.

My question is...how could production numbers that low even be possible? When you factor in the licensing fees, cost of development, paying sculptors, box artists, tooling costs, printing costs, etc. it just isn't feasible. When these toys were produced, there was no digital printing, advanced molding techniques, etc. Large orders would have to be placed with outside vendors.

My wife worked for years for a small printing company, and she said they wouldn't even take a 50 piece order for something as elaborate as that Amico Hulk box. They would have to order a minimum of 500-1000, and even THAT would be considered a relatively small order.

Same for tooling costs. No factory would even consider taking an order for just 50 of something. It just isn't worth their time. There had to be a least several hundred or maybe even thousand produced. So where are they? If retailer orders were low, I can see only 50 or so actually being shipped to stores, but then there should be a huge lot of unsold stock sitting somewhere unless it was destroyed.

Thoughts?

[Gorn Captain]

Is it possible that something was found to be wrong with the product, causing it to be withdrawn, like the Galactica ship that fired (dangerous) darts?

It seems impossible that just 50 pieces would be made of anything, except something handcrafted, maybe a piece of art like a limited print.

[Earth 2 Chris]

I think a lot of the time "produced" is mixed up with "in existence". In other words, 50 copies of something survived into the present, although many, many more were produced.

Chris

[palitoy]

I think a lot of the time "produced" is mixed up with "in existence". In other words, 50 copies of something survived into the present, although many, many more were produced.

Chris

Exactly, there are no production runs of 50. Total hyperbole to make a better story. less than 50 known to exist? I find that plausible.

[tay666]

I don't know.
I worked injection molding for 17 years making stuff for Little Tikes.
I can see a 50 piece run happening. Not often or the company would go out of business pretty quick. But it is entirely possible.
We used to get stuff in, in anticipation of a new product taking off, then have it completely fizzle out after the pilot run of parts.
I can think of a couple that got killed early due to safety issues.
One was a 2 seater ride-on car that we were going to do the hardware packs for, as well as handle the replacement parts.
Only problem is, after everything was tooled up and production was ready to ramp up, the discovered a problem. It was fine, with 2 kids in it, but if there were only one kid in it, it would tip over.
Same thing happened to some new baby swing. Just as production was starting off, they discovered there was a chance the swing could flip over and drop the kids.

There was another small toy (can't remember what it was). We were having trouble getting one of the molds to work properly. We manage to nurse something like a 100 parts out of the mold, but it took over 8 hours to get them.
We had to get them to make up the toys, and package them because they had to be at a toy show by the end of the week.
After that, the mold went to the tool shop, and that was the last we saw of it.
The mold was junk and would need to be completely re-done.
I guess interest at the toy show was minimal, so they decided to cut their losses and completely scrap the project.

And the OP is correct about the packaging. We had 30,000 boxes in inventory, as well as 5,000 master cartons for them.
Plus probably 20,000 decal sheets and 10,000 instruction sheets. (just guessing on those, but that was our usual minimum order quantities).
All of which got thrown out about a year later.
And about 3 years after that, the other 4 molds for the project finally got scrapped out.

[mark_mco]

Just joined this forum and saw this old post. I actually worked for Funstuf back in the late 70's. I had just graduated high school and was working as the 2nd shift supervisor for the facility in Maitland Florida, just north of Orlando. It's biggest success came with the Incredible Hulk Aniform. They initially had a purchase order from Toys 'R' Us for somewhere around 50,000 units, with several follow-up orders. The Thing with his rock trap was also shipped to all of the Toys 'R' Us stores, but it much smaller numbers - less than 5,000 units if I remember correctly. The Frankenstein and Dracula never made it to mass production, probably less that 500 of each were produced and shipped. The location in Florida closed around 1980, so I'm not sure if these were produced elsewhere as I've seen a catalog sheet from the UK elsewhere on this site. I actually have a catalog from 1979 that shows the entire line with the price list. Not sure how to upload to this site though.
Mark

[Starroid Raiders Dagon]

Very cool info. I dont think I read through this thread before. Love to hear history of toys from those that sold them!