2013 Was A Non-Movie Year?

You may recall this article we posted where the Hasbro CEO cited 2013 as a non-movie year for Hasbro’s slumping performance.  We have to seriously call that statement into question and say it’s more a question of decision making than subject matter.

If 2013 was a “non-movie year”, someone forgot to tell Hollywood.  Hasbro was the licensee for four of the top 25 grossing movies in 2013.  We will excuse The Wolverine (#22) and Thor: The Dark World (#12) because we acknowledge that one could argue those two movies have debatable toy merit.  We will even excuse Hasbro’s own G.I. Joe: Retaliation since it was kicked out of its planned 2012 release once the Avengers sank Battleship into icy fathoms of “flopdom”. 
But Hasbro was the licensee of another movie for which there is ample toy tie-ins and was the #2 in domestic box office in 2013.  Iron Man 3 raked in a massive $409 million domestically ($1.2 billion worldwide) and is the #6 grossing move of the last five years.  So in April of 2014 when I’m still seeing entire end-caps of unsold Iron Man 3 product, I have to laugh at the “non-movie year” excuse.  From the pic below it seems poor market analysis and not a lack of media support is to blame.

If the market really wants play-oriented limited articulation figures, then how can this much product from one of the biggest movies of the past five years be sitting unsold after eight months?

I know some will argue that the super articulated Iron Man 2 product became a peg warmer, but that was a product of Hasbro’s “wave-one-itis” and certainly wasn’t on this scale.  A few pegs of unsold IM2 product is a far cry from an entire end cap.