You’re assuming that retailers want Ghostbusters items in their store. If stores were clamoring to fill their shelves with Ghostbusters figures, Mattel would be more than happy to oblige. They sell their product directly to retailers, so if they want to order them, then they would fill that order.
But there’s no real retailer interest for them. Mattel can’t force stores to carry their product. They tried offering MOTUC figures at TRU, but that failed pretty miserably.
I’m sure they would sell at places like fye, hot topic, spencers and comic shops. And smaller runs at Toys R Us and other toy stores would have been appropriate.
I don’t see why Pumpkinhead or Exorcist action figures would be more successful than Ghostbusters. Except that those figures are bigger, far more detailed and cost about the same.
Toys R Us had no problem carrying the Diamond Select minimates and banks. They also had no problem carrying the retro action Real Ghostbusters, which would be significantly less desirable to the general public than any of the movie stuff. It was Matty’s decision to make these available online only. Why? Who the hell knows, nothing they do makes any sense.
From my understanding, the shelves in the “boys toys” isles of the store is X footage. Obviously toys that are on tv and the movies are making up the significant space along with the timless toys like hotwheels and the like. This leaves only a small amount of space for everything else. Kids growing up nowadays are not exposed to Ghostbusters like we were. Stores are going to carry what is going to sell to the most amount of people.
If Toys R Us carried the Retro Action Real Ghostbusters, they’d have carried the standard movie line. RGB hasn’t been on television in ages, whereas the movies are timeless classics. That’s not taking into consideration the limited appeal of the mego style versus fully sculpted figures.
Yeah and I absolutely agree it wouldn’t make any sense to have an entire endcap of Ghostbusters stuff or a Star Wars sized section in the toy aisle, but a small selection of the 6" GB toys would have been nice to see.
There are things to consider like the cost of the GB brand itself, which was supposedly enormous. This is probably why we didn’t get larger and more detailed figures like the ones NECA had planned. And there are a lot of risks involved with manufacturing large quantities of these figures, which is why they weren’t available in stores (and why they apparently had such small stock in their online store).
And I see that they staggered the release of the figures to gauge the sales so they can better predict how much they needed to produce.
But I don’t see how that story is much different than that of any other specialty toy.
What else did neca plan on ? I think you guts make great points about these figures.
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It sounds like some of you may have forgotten that Toys R Us did carry the GB2 four-packs. It’s only anecdotal, but in my area they did seem to vanish quick…at first. No idea how they did everywhere else. TRU did carry something from the movie line. But again, no idea how well they actually did for them; I’d suspect that if they were a huge blockbuster seller, there would have been more follow-up (though there was a re-issue of the GB2 pack)
From My understanding the GB2 4 pack initally sold very well alongside the Diamond select Stay puft bank and the slimer Bank, it was the Retro action RGB figures that really sat on the pegs.
The Matty 4 pack sat for awhile at my TRU … I want to say it was the price, it was too high for simple re releases with diff paint apps
They vanished quickly… at first.
But they’re still collecting dust at the Toys R Us out here in our neighborhood last time I was there. And it’s what, how many years later? Again, Ghostbusters II four pack with guys wearing Santa hats? Easy sell to a niche market like those of us who are currently at this website. Harder sell for Joe Collector (and even harder sell for regular mom and dad buying toys for their kids).
If there were another movie or TV show on right now where broader audiences were demanding more - different story.
I’ve never been able to find those in either of my local stores.
The price was reasonable when you consider how much they are individually but it’s still a lot of money to drop at once on toys.
I passed on them while they were in stock online because 1) the expense, 2) i wasn’t a fan of the GBII suit, 3) I couldn’t tell if the stupid Santa hats came off or not and 4) they looked cheap. They looked like 4 of the same toy with different, poorly painted heads.
I’ve seen tons of these 3 and 4 packs from very successful toy lines (especially star wars & DCUC) turn into peg warmers so I don’t think its any way to gauge a lines success.
Now see, if you’d found this place back in the day, we could have told you that they do. :lol: In fact, many were packaged with the hats off; that’s the way mine was, and I never bothered to remove the hats from the package.
I dunno…I didn’t really care much about the movie line, and I though the set was pretty damn good. Like you said, Lando, it was actually a decent deal compared to the price of four seperate figures.
Not having to fight Matty’s server helped a ton too.