ATTENTION HASBRO: Please Stop With The Trickle Announcements

Posted by Chris on 01/12/21 at 07:05 AM Category: Hasbro, Vintage Collection

https://www.banthaskull.com/images/news/full_wave_announcements.jpg

Hasbro, the shotgun approach to announcing figures is not working for the Vintage Collection community. I have absolutely no problem with trying this approach. There is nothing wrong with trying something new even if it ultimately fails. Only cowards never try new things. It only becomes wrong if you keep doing it after it's determined that it doesn't work. Announcing the figures one at a time is not working.

Specifically, this is why:

It's hurting presales

We've received a lot of feedback that collectors are not ordering case assortments when they are first made available because they don't want to order only knowing one or two of the figures. If presales matter, then this approach is literally undermining the Vintage Collection because it's hurting presales.

It's punishing collectors who do not order by the case

This approach is really hurting collectors who prefer to order figures individually. Because the figure are made available for sale at different times, collectors are forced to place several small orders instead of one large order. This incurs unnecessary shipping costs. If all figures from an assortment were made available for pre-order at the same time, collectors could take advantage of shipping discounts.

We appreciate the thought behind this approach. It spreads out the news so it keeps the community engaged, but may we suggest a different way to accomplish the same thing. Instead of announcing a case assortment as individual figures, you could spread out the assortment announcements this way:

1. Announce the number of figures in the case and their source (i.e. ROTJ, Rogue One, etc.). This would become a major talking point in the community.

2. Reveal silhouettes of the figures. Sure, we might be able to sniff out some specifics from this, but it would be a buzzworthy moment as the community debated what the figures might be.

3. The final step is the actual reveal of the entire assortment at once while making everything available for pre-order at the same time.

We need to restate that the trickle announcements are not working for the community. The above suggestion allows Hasbro to "spread out the news" while mitigating the pain point of the individual announcements.