OPINION:  Hasbro Has Their Fan Channel And Brick And Mortar Figures Crossed

The bifurcation of the line into two channels, one strictly for "fan channel" retailers, and one for all retailers, is a good thing in my opinion. It's a very good thing. The two channels serve different types of fans as their core customer base. People who shop Fan Channel seek out the product. They are tuned into the hobby. They are the hard core collectors. If Hasbro made a bizarre decision to release a figure as a breakfast cereal mail away, those fans would be aware of that, and hunt it down. In general (but clearly not always) the customer who shops brick and mortar is the type of fan whom the product must find, and in more ways than one. Their purchases are more incidental, and the characters on the shelves must find purchase with those fans.

The latter is why I feel that Hasbro has things bass ackwards with their decision to ship certain figures to Fan Channel and others to Walmart and Target. I fully acknowledge that Hasbro probably isn't making this decision in a vacuum, and the brick and mortar behemoths are probably weighing in. If so, they need better counsel as to what figures their foot traffic will want. One thing I think the vocal online Vintage Collection community sometimes loses track of is that we are a small and somewhat closed ecosystem. I'm willing to bet that there are less than two thousand of us worldwide, and within that group we tend to break down into cliques. It tends to become an echo chamber. So we say things like "everybody wants", what that really translates to is that a few hundred people in our clique want a figure that requires tens of thousands of sales to be considered successful. The long history of peg warmers is littered with figures that "everybody wants".

I feel that most figures from the Disney+ shows are better suited to Fan Channel. Just because we all talk about these shows, doesn't mean that they are highly watched in the grand scheme of things. I have friends that I came up with in this hobby. They still collect to this day, but no longer as the completists they once were. They make more targeted, judicious pick ups. These collectors wouldn't be able to tell Luthen Rael from Daffy Duck, yet they would recognize Count Dooku as rapidly as their immediate family. I feel strongly that these type of collectors represent the average brick and mortar Vintage Collection customer. Conversely, anyone who would want a Luthen Rael figure, and I consider myself among those ranks, mostly like shops Entertainment Earth, Big Bad Toy Store, and Hasbro Pulse as a first option.

In addition to the difference in the average customer, brick and mortar faces another challenge that online Fan Channel retailers are not concerned with: the showroom. There are only so many figures that a traditional retail establishment can stock at a given time. If figures start to back up on the pegs, the retail inventory pipeline grinds to a halt. Orders drop as a result. As I mentioned last week, I still feel that the deep pockets of Walmart and Target will play a roll if TVC is ever to return to its former glory. It's in all of our collective interest to see figures move into and out of these establishments as quickly as possible to encourage then to buy more Vintage Collection. That is why I think that anything that qualifies for #MakeTheMains (i.e. core characters and key army builders) should be the domain of the brick and mortar channel. It's the type of product that needs to find their customers.

I think it's a sin that the recent basic grunt Clone Trooper (Phase I) will never hit Walmart or Target. That figure would sell as quickly as the Stormtrooper at traditional retail. Jango Fett, Count Dooku and that Phase I Clone Trooper were the top three figures in our Attack of the Clones #MakeTheMains article, and they will never find the more casual customers, who would devour them, because they are locked behind Fan Channel. Those figures should be the ones in stores, and the Acolyte figures should be heading to the specialty online retailers who don't have the "showroom" constraint if they don't sell quickly.

Of course this can't be a hard and fast rule. It's a case by case basis that is more art than science (which typically dooms ideas such as this). Mando and Grogu are perhaps the two most sensible brick and mortar figures there are.

---

comments powered by Disqus