Is The Iron Hot Enough? Marvel????

[Heelz2315]

Count me in for Marvel!!!

Thor
Iron Man
FF
Falcon
Captain America

He!! Yeah...just tell me where/when to buy em!

[MIB41]

I have all of the Hasbro 9 inch Marvel figures and I can tell you what got that line in trouble right off the bat - duplicating Spiderman and changing price points in mid-stream. If you recall, there were two variations of the standard red/blue Spiderman figure (and we're not even going to get into the black one or the Iron-Spider). One had just the figure, at $14.99, then they released another one with the slightly altered chest emblem (tipping the hat to the Mego circle Spidey, I think) and a reprint of the comic origin. Oh yeah, and he had webbing on his costume as well. Anyway, even though both looked similar at first glance, the comic version sold for $19.99 and immediately sales fell off. Then some stores confused the mark up on the comic version and started pricing all of the regular figures the same way. By the time this was corrected, alot of the interest had deflated, which didn't seem to sit well with Target. The company appeared to panic and began marking the line down quickly. I can't tell you how many figures I got for $6.00 and $7.00 (even less). The biggest flub came with Sandman. That figure had ZERO self life in Louisville. It literally came out on the discount end caps. No kidding. I picked up several for $4.99 right out of the stock room to mark down! I asked about it and they said that was the instruction given. The line was not selling. Is it any wonder KB Toys picked up Mr. Fantastic before they went under?

That's why I always disliked the price points for the Mattel lineup, because I knew that would never work on a grand scale at Targets or even Walmarts. Just like Jason said, there is a viable market for the little figures right now. And putting up any kind of superhero figure in the same isle with a $20.00 price tag is just begging for failure. Forget how cool they may be to us, the collectors. On a mass marketing scale, they would have to fire on all cylinders and these Retro figures just wouldn't work at those price points. TRU stores keep stock forever. Targets and Walmarts push them through. I think Mattel did the right thing to make these exclusives. Far more likely to succeed with a smaller production volume.