so what happened to Palisades??

[rche]

Brians thread on the Micronauts got me wondering about the Palisades relaunch a little while ago.

They had an awesome go at the Micros and were a great company with a fantastic relationship with their consumer base. Poised to release Sesame Street action figures, they folded... bankrupt and the only SS item to hit retail shelves was the Super Grover.

According to the wiki writeup on the company. Lack of preorders and interest were major culprits in the downfall of the company. That and high cost figures selling at low price-points.

All this went down before the supertank in the global economy. But I still cannot figure out why. There is a rabid following for the Muppet figures and the Micros still hold their own a bit on ebay. What happened? Why was nobody buying? There could still be micronauts today and an entire new Sesame Street playset if the consumers had backed this awesome company.

and then Mutt Williams hangs on the pegs for a year... makes you really wonder sometimes

[B-Lister]

It's simple.

they achieved Perfection, and God smote them for pride.

that's the only plausible explanation for a company that had everything going for it.

[Captain]

It wasnt consumers that didnt buy from them, it was the buyers for retailers. For whatever reason (price, shipping costs, distribution problems?) they gave up on Palisades. Wish James Brady came around more...He was friends with some of the Palisades gang, and could probably shed more light on the issue.

[The Toyroom]

I really wanted that Guy Smiley figure......

[B-Lister]

I wanted Oscar the Grouch, dammit.

again, the only thing that could have stopped these guys was an act from God.

[BlackKnight]

They did some real Nice Joe and Transformer Busts too ...

[GreenLantern9999]

I still want the Super Grover and Jim Henson figures, I loved the Palisades toys lines. One and all I still have a very lonely Phil KenSebben and Bear figures fro Harvey Birdman waiting one day when ol Harv would join them.

[megoscott]

The Super Grover is amazing.

[Boris71]

The Jim Genson figure was awsome The best of the muppets in my opinion

[B-Lister]

I am lucky enough to own a few Palisades figures, and they blow everything else that came out at that time completely out of the water.

with the exception of SOTA, which while not better, is on the same level.

Palisades had some killer figures, I wish they had gone further.

[grayhank]

Personally, I think they folded because of one of the main killers of a toyline... too many exclusives and variants. I had collected the muppets line and had the vast majority of them only to give up in frustration because of the exclusives, eventually selling all of them on Ebay. Companies like Hasbro & Mattel can get away with doing the exclusive/variant thing... but a smaller company such as Palisades should never have attempted it. Just my opinion.

[Jason73]

You can probably blame people like me for them going out of business. I really liked them, really wanted them, but for some weird reason didn't buy them.

[B-Lister]

Personally, I think they folded because of one of the main killers of a toyline... too many exclusives and variants. I had collected the muppets line and had the vast majority of them only to give up in frustration because of the exclusives, eventually selling all of them on Ebay. Companies like Hasbro & Mattel can get away with doing the exclusive/variant thing... but a smaller company such as Palisades should never have attempted it. Just my opinion.

That's a very good point.

a FEW exclusives here and there aren't bad, but to have six different websites offering six different versions of the same character, all at different prices due to rarity was ridiculous.

and making CHARACTERS exclusive really made it worse. Sweetums is apparently one of the greatest figures in the last ten years, but I'll never know because I could only get my hands on a FEW of these. I even missed out on my favorite Muppet (Pepe the King Prawn).

they were GREAT figures. I'm glad to have the ones I do, but it could've been more.

[AcroRay]

They did some real Nice Joe and Transformer Busts too ...

Full figure Transformers, man, not lame-a55 partial-figure busts. (I worked on their Transformers line, too.)

[AcroRay]

Palisades was a victim of ambition and the hobby's economic downturn, I think.

Remember - at the time, action-figure and product lines were blooming for everything - from the aforementioned Transformers to HR Puff & Stuff, all competeing for a piece of collectors' wallets. The whole licensed-product toy hobby just exploded over the course of a couple of years... much like the comic industry did a decade or two prior. Lots of companies making a huge amount of stuff. Some good, some crap, but lots. Eventually, like the comic publishers before them, many collapsed. Palisades was like that. They made great stuff, but it was expensive to produce and could only be priced so high - limiting their profit margin. When sales were poor, that worked against them and limited their ability to re-invest in more product. Many outlets they sold through - like Tower Records, Suncoast Video and others - went out of business as well, increasing Palisades' troubles.

Eventually, they let staff go, and their owner sold the company to another company.

We never did find out what happened to the Micronauts tooling after they closed shop.