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TMNT Minimates - it's official!


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25 minutes ago, MisterMiracle said:

There are 3 FULL PEGS (that's a lot of 2-packs) of TMNT Series 4 & 5 not moving at my local TRU.  AND that's at a price point of $3.98, not even $7.49.  The Space episodes weren't nearly as good as the episodes from the other seasons but they were a lot of cool looking characters that played huge roles that we never got (Mona Lisa, Lord Dragg, Armaggon, etc.)

 

I'm just throwing this out there, but they might move sets to casual collectors/current fans if you could get all four Turtles in only two sets instead of having to buy all four sets.  Also, they would probably move more sets to hardcore collectors if army builders like Kraang or Foot Soldiers were paired together.  I

 

know they probably have their own way that they like to do it but here's how I would've done the pairings for Retro Series 1 & 2

 

Leonardo & Donatello

Shredder & Splinter

Foot Soldier & Foot Soldier

Casey Jones & April O'Neil

 

Michelangelo & Raphael

Bebop & Rocksteady

Baxter & Krang

Foot Soldier & Foot Soldier

Wow, I wish my TRU had that much. When I got back into this line there were only 3 figures left.

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13 hours ago, DSTZach said:

It's not as simple as good ideas/bad ideas.....

and i never said it was, only that the good ideas shared here go disregarded  most of the time that is a shame.

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...... So keeping things current for a younger, presumably more current audience was the way we chose to go. Obviously, most of the older TMNT fans here are not current on the new cartoon,

 Catering towards the younger is DSTs default response, how has that panned out? how are those PvZ sets selling?  dont forget with young and current comes fickle whats hot  today is lame and boring tomorrow, also who has the money to buy the things they want or support a full line usually its us older fans , and who says MOST of the older fans here are not current on the new cartoon? im not sure that is true.

Quote

 

...... a series of suggestions and comments and wish lists is not always actionable market research, as older collectors who are part of an online trading community are not our only customers. We need to take casual fans' interests and retailers' preferences into account. Even polls here do not necessarily represent the larger pie, and they are not always heavily voted in.

I'd be interested in what kind of market research you do then, that tells  you " ...turtles in space suits seemed like a very smart way to go, because turtles in space suits. "

And again We all know that "older collectors who are part of an online trading community are not our only customers" You tell us how unimportant we are every chance you get.

the problem is most of the licenses that DST deals in are only interesting to older collectors or fans, how man young uns are clamoring or would even look twice at Aliens, Muppets, or Iron giant "toys" to say nothing about  properties like Gotham,  Munsters, lost in space, or Caddy shack?

You're dealing in Nostalgia but dont want to hear the Nostalgic

 

Edited by Mattallica
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Nick is done because sales have dropped and TRU is out. You can blame the characters, the episodes, whatever, but blind bags AND 2-packs aren't selling as well. Rather than going with more obscure characters from the Nick toon, we went to a new, popular, unmade iteration of the Turtles we felt would appeal more to comic shop customers.

Pairing the Turtles would perhaps make it easier for customers who only want the four, but it it would also discourage collecting beyond the four. Also, it could lead to more peg warmers, as the main (or secondary) characters disappear.

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8 minutes ago, DSTZach said:

Pairing the Turtles would perhaps make it easier for customers who only want the four, but it it would also discourage collecting beyond the four. Also, it could lead to more peg warmers, as the main (or secondary) characters disappear.

I disagree with you on that.  I'd rather sell 2 sets versus 0 sets (because they didn't want to have to buy the whole wave to get all 4 turtles).  If anything, at least if people buy 1 set, they may really like them and go back to buy more.  I hate to say it but EVERY 2-pack from Series 4 & 5 has been a peg warmer from what I've seen.  Also, people have been complaining about the blind bag breakdown for a while.  There were a lot of people that wanted the TMNT blind bag figures but just gave up because the figures they wanted were pretty much unavailable unless you resort to the crazy eBay prices.

This was one of my favorite Minimates lines so it's frustrating to see how it was just hit a brick wall after Series 3 and won't be continuing anymore due to what happened with Series 4 & 5.  I just hope that you guys can apply what you've learned from past mistakes (failure might be too much in this particular scenario) to future lines.  

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Wouldn't having the Mirage or IDW style turtles at comic shops be cooler?

I think the reason why TRU sales have dropped, at least at mine, is because at my TRU, they put Series 4 & 5 in the adult collector aisle with the other minimates. Instead of putting them in TMNT aisle, which is a very large aisle, so kids and parents could see them. The other series sold quickly when they were in the correct aisle.

I agree with the peg warmers, we had non space turtles mixed with space turtles, so you had to wait for the next wave to complete the space team. The regular turtles came with stellar accessories but we're still the same figures from the first two series. The turtles have multiple looks in the show, so face swaps probably turned some people away.

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1 hour ago, DSTZach said:

Nick is done because sales have dropped and TRU is out. .........we went to a new, popular, unmade iteration of the Turtles we felt would appeal more to comic shop customers.

Wait, What?  Sales are down because you claim to market towards younger, new customers, but you intend them to sell in Comic shops to what has always tended to be an older clientele that according to you dont know/care about these new iterations or characters, and when hey dont sell there,  TRU drops out because again you intended them to sell at comic shops not necessarily TRU? no wonder they failed.

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Matallica, I never said people here were unimportant, just that they are not the only people in the world who buy our products. I think most people here would agree with that. And my point was that a good idea here may not necessarily be a good idea that can be easily implemented at retail, or even have appeal beyond a few hardcore collectors. But if you have an example of an ignored good idea, I can tell you where we are on it, or why it may not happen.

Not sure what the performance of PVZ has to do with us targeting kids. I don't have the data on the average player's age in front of me, but regardless, those sets have done fantastic, as far as I know. The first TRU set sold out and was hard to find. We would not have made more otherwise. 

And yes, we make product that is not for kids. We have different sales strategies and expectations for those, including non-Minimates product. We still focus on familiar characters at TRU, and lesser characters at specialty.

And research could not really predict kids' reactions to the New episodes, or space suits, but c'mon -- space suits.

Edited by DSTZach
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Again i know we are not privy to all the ins and outs but some very basic concepts are pretty easy to see.

Older collector type buyers - like older more familiar characters and costumes, sprinkle in new characters and new versions of older characters,

 we tend to frequent or buy from comic shops and specialty online retailers like Lukes, but also travel to or browse TRU type stores to get exclusives etc., we are extremely loyal and often will buy comics or toys from a line we collect that we dont necessarily want in hopes of completing teams or sets that may come in the future, we often stick with a title that is bad in hopes that it will get good again or because we like the character etc...

we tend to have and spend more money on the stuff we like, buying all and in some cases multiples of certain figures for customs or what have you.

 

Young/New buyers - usually like whatever the new flashy thing is that they might stumble across or have become interested in, in games movies or tv 

dont always know the history of a character or older versions of them or do but are not intersted in buying them.

they tend to shop at walmart, target and TRU and sometimes seek out a certain item but mostly its whatever the stumble upon at the time.

tend to be very fickle and quickly change their likes/dislikes ususally donot buy all of a line or wave just the one or two that they like.

tend to have less money or at least spend less on items over the long term,

May become a older type collector but not as likely as the old collector trying out the new stuff.

now this is my opinion, but i have been a long time collector of Toys, Comics games etc.. and spent  9 years working at /managing a comic shop that also sold toys and collectables.I frequent toys stores and have friends that work at some for what its worth.

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I feel like if all the space stuff was contained to one wave the line would've done better. We could've easily gotten a wave of All 4 space turtles, Fugitoid, Space April and Casey, Mozar, and Bishop for series 4 And then next wave could've been a more normal wave. The space waves probably didn't do as well as the space arc ended months before these mates were even released, while characters like Shredders henchmen were more prevalent than the space characters. And the space episodes weren't the best, even leading to me wanting to avoid them for a while.

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18 minutes ago, Mattallica said:

Wait, What?  Sales are down because you claim to market towards younger, new customers, but you intend them to sell in Comic shops to what has always tended to be an older clientele that according to you dont know/care about these new iterations or characters, and when hey dont sell there,  TRU drops out because again you intended them to sell at comic shops not necessarily TRU? no wonder they failed.

You misunderstand. 80s turtles iS the new, unmade version we are offering to comic shops. We always intended to market the kid-friendly Nick Turtles at TRU. Now that TRU is not involved, we are free to try something that may appeal to comic shop customers more. 

I do not think Mirage or IDW could be said to be more popular than the 1980s styles, even at comic shops.

 

And assuming that a casual fan would not buy ANY Turtles if they also have to buy four supporting characters/villains is certainly one way to think about it, and you may even have an example or two to back that up, but I could see that requiring uneven case packs at TRU, which would have made the characters fans wanted even harder to find. For the specialty assortments, the discussion does not apply, but we definitely made the Turtles a higher ratio, AND we released the Mirage Turtles box set.

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9 minutes ago, DSTZach said:

Matallica, I never said people here were unimportant, just that they are not the only people in the world who buy our products. I think most people here would agree with that.

on several occasions you have pointed out to us,  that we here on the multiverse are a very small minority of the folks that buy your products, thats pretty close to saying unimportant,

Toe may toe / Tow maw Tow

9 minutes ago, DSTZach said:

Not sure what the performance of PVZ has to do with us targeting kids. I don't have the data on the average player's age in front of me, but regardless, those sets have done fantastic, as far as I know. The first TRU set sold out and was hard to find. We would not have made more otherwise. 

 PvZ was just a quick example(maybe not the best admittedly) of a License that i would say appeals appealed to new/younger buyers who, with the help of older buyers  im sure, made the first wave sell out. but the new wave is just sitting on the pegs at the TRUs i frequent, and as i see in my two young sons who were both big fans of it when it first came out no longer care about PvZ

9 minutes ago, DSTZach said:

 

And research could not really predict kids' reactions to the New episodes, or space suits, but c'mon -- space suits.

I disagree i think as many of the big toy companies prove, some play testing or feedback from kids(if thats your intended market as claimed) WOULD help predict their reactions, and just because YOU a (no insult intended) not so young man like space suits or think they are cool,  does not necessarily me kids give a rats ass about them.  in fact thats what you keep telling us, just because some here have good ideas, t that doesnt mean the rest of the world will like them, isnt it?

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8 minutes ago, DSTZach said:

You misunderstand. 80s turtles iS the new, unmade version we are offering to comic shops. We always intended to market the kid-friendly Nick Turtles at TRU. Now that TRU is not involved, we are free to try something that may appeal to comic shop customers more.

Fair enough, my bad.

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14 minutes ago, Mattallica said:

Again i know we are not privy to all the ins and outs but some very basic concepts are pretty easy to see.

Older collector type buyers - like older more familiar characters and costumes, sprinkle in new characters and new versions of older characters....

...now this is my opinion, but i have been a long time collector of Toys, Comics games etc.. and spent  9 years working at /managing a comic shop that also sold toys and collectables.I frequent toys stores and have friends that work at some for what its worth.

Matallica, those are definitely your opinions. Not all collectors are the same, and kids and parents buy and complete all kinds of stuff. 

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This is my final post on this, Ive said what i needed to.

I just want to point out that despite what some here think, I not trying to cause trouble, im not an Asshole(maybe I am), I have no personal beef with Zach (ive told him that before i hope he believes me) I am Passionate about the things i like/collect and voicing these things i hope would only make them better or at least hang around longer.

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It doesn't appear the poll itself still exists, but if I remember correctly the Marvel most wanted villains poll winner had a grand total of... 21 votes. I think here used to be around 2500-3000 total users signed up at the MMMV, or not enough to support a boxset for any property by ourselves. So, if we're talking about product with wider distribution like something at TRU, we ARE pretty unimportant. That's just math. We spend money out of proportion to our numbers; it's just not enough to make anything a success without help from other sources.

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On 2/25/2017 at 9:59 AM, DSTZach said:

Nick is done because sales have dropped and TRU is out. You can blame the characters, the episodes, whatever, but blind bags AND 2-packs aren't selling as well. Rather than going with more obscure characters from the Nick toon, we went to a new, popular, unmade iteration of the Turtles we felt would appeal more to comic shop customers.

Pairing the Turtles would perhaps make it easier for customers who only want the four, but it it would also discourage collecting beyond the four. Also, it could lead to more peg warmers, as the main (or secondary) characters disappear.

Would it be possible to get 'mates made out of the SNES TMNT IV Turtles in Time game? I'd love to get a Super Shredder.

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As usual, DST's logic is baffling.

 

They offer Nick TMNT to TRU – a retailer already saturated with Nick TMNT product – because it's "current."

 

When that fails, do they offer TMNT product based on the "current" comic books to comic book shops? No. They offer product based on the 80's cartoon.

 

tumblr_inline_nycmwsakbO1tqa6k4_500.gif

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2 hours ago, MisterPL said:

As usual, DST's logic is baffling.

They offer Nick TMNT to TRU – a retailer already saturated with Nick TMNT product – because it's "current."

When that fails, do they offer TMNT product based on the "current" comic books to comic book shops? No. They offer product based on the 80's cartoon.

Well, I think most people that frequent a comic shop would want the 80's Turtles over the Nick Turtles.  There's really not a whole lot of Nick Turtles merch from what I've seen.  I've been buying all of the Nick Turtles comics and comic stores don't order many copies of the Nick Turtles comics if any at all.  (The current Nick Turtles comic is on a hiatus because they're doing the animated Batman/Turtles crossover.)

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2 hours ago, MisterPL said:

As usual, DST's logic is baffling.

 

They offer Nick TMNT to TRU – a retailer already saturated with Nick TMNT product – because it's "current."

 

When that fails, do they offer TMNT product based on the "current" comic books to comic book shops? No. They offer product based on the 80's cartoon.

 

tumblr_inline_nycmwsakbO1tqa6k4_500.gif

You're Mikey in this gif, right? :D

We got TRU to TAKE TMNT Minimates BECAUSE they were based on the current, highly watched cartoon, which was already moving merchandise. I do not know how saturated they were with product when the first series of MM hit in 2014, but if they had a lot of it and still took more, it was because they had been selling it. Stores saturate themselves with good-selling product until it does not sell. I presume they took our Mates based on recent TMNT and MM sales numbers. 

Now, I do not know if they would have taken classic designs, but they would certainly have sales data on how the older-style figures (retro packaging, classic movie figures, etc.) have performed, so they could have made that decision easily.

As far as IDW goes, the IDW Turtle designs are not part of our current deal with Nickelodeon -- I do not know what additional approvals or licensing would be needed, but we are not looking to add more approvals or licensors at this time. So we went with a license we HAD that we thought would do at least as well, if not better -- the classic designs are universally recognized, very popular, and highly demanded here and elsewhere.

And while you could argue that IDW designs would do better at comic shops than at other retailers (of course), it does not automatically follow that they would do better at comic shops than classic styles would, or even the Nick styles. IDW also publishes a regular Nick-style book or two (Mutanimals was great), as well as reprinting all of the classic Mirage comics. I don't know how well they do relative to each other, but the only TMNT books in the Top 100 in the last three months were three issues of Batman/TMNT, which stars the Nickelodeon Turtles.

Edited by DSTZach
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On February 25, 2017 at 3:43 PM, stack32 said:

It doesn't appear the poll itself still exists, but if I remember correctly the Marvel most wanted villains poll winner had a grand total of... 21 votes. I think here used to be around 2500-3000 total users signed up at the MMMV, or not enough to support a boxset for any property by ourselves. So, if we're talking about product with wider distribution like something at TRU, we ARE pretty unimportant. That's just math. We spend money out of proportion to our numbers; it's just not enough to make anything a success without help from other sources.

You make a good point. My problem is that the strongest supporters of these were put it in a difficult position with the blind bags and character line up. For the first two waves I grabbed both blind bags and TRU wave because I was excited for these minimates but with the same characters in both the wave and blind bags and me becoming tired of having 3 to 4(lot of the time more)of the same minimate I had to choose to buy one set of TRU or blind bag box and hope to find the missing one for cheap. If TRU had totally different lines(more mutants) then the blind bags or no blind bags at all maybe we are talking about the new tv wave. I'm glad that we are still getting tmnt minimates and no blind bags and will be getting acouple of sets of the first wave.

I won't post anymore on this topic until the new minimates come out because I'm not trying to keep bring up. I just wanted to tell my point of view and let out some frustration and sadness of losing a great line. The new Tv show done and I'm hoping for a long run with this classic look.

Last thing- I want to thank mattalilica for being a great poster for this board. I don't post a lot but I keep up with most of the pages and Matt is always brings a great point of view. 

Also want to thank zach. It's amazing that we have someone that will give us answers(when he can?)and communicate with us  on all the different minimate topics and bring us his point of view.Thanks for helping with the minimate madness that we all have?.

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Sorry. I thought IDW published comics that weren't based on the Nickelodeon cartoon. My bad. If DST can't offer TMNT Minimates based on any of the IDW comics, that's a different story.

 

All I'm pointing out is that it's like offering Ultimate Spider-Man to TRU because it's current but then offering Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends to comic shops instead of 'mates based on comics. But if that's all DST has, that's all they can offer.

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7 minutes ago, MisterPL said:

Sorry. I thought IDW published comics that weren't based on the Nickelodeon cartoon. My bad. If DST can't offer TMNT Minimates based on any of the IDW comics, that's a different story.

It's not part of our current contract, as far as I know. And they do publish their own take on the characters, absolutely, but they ALSO have Nick and Mirage TMNT books in comic shops. So those may be equally well-known at comic shops, but the only one in the top 100 is a Nick/Batman crossover.

7 minutes ago, MisterPL said:

All I'm pointing out is that it's like offering Ultimate Spider-Man to TRU because it's current but then offering Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends to comic shops instead of 'mates based on comics. But if that's all DST has, that's all they can offer.

I think any Marvel comparison is going to be flawed, given our history and success with the line, and the richness of the universe. I would say it is more like offering the newest, most current Power Rangers TV series at TRU, then when it is canceled making original MMPR Mates for comic shops.

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Except Spider-Man and TMNT both started as comic books. Power Rangers did not. But it's obvious you get my point. :D 

 

And by the way, thanks for being an advocate for us. I know that if we ever get a tiger Minimate or a stand that looks like Ghost Rider's bike, it'll be because you championed it.

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It's great that we can voice our opinions. Some companies would of left us in the dark when canceling lines. I guess I'm just bummed that after the space stuff it gets really cool with lots of minimates potential. But it's great that the line is still going in some shape or form.

It's strange TRU wouldn't want classic TMNT since the Mirage Comics Mega Bloks line was exclusive to them. 

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