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Black Panther Movie Minimates


JeffBohn

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5 hours ago, DSTZach said:

I do not know why Walgreens does not list all of the MM lines on their site, and I have not checked if they include our action figures. I was happy just to get our listing language corrected so we appear above the vibrators, but you are right, I should push for the movie lines to be on the site, even if it is just a general movie listing. The animated code may not have even been updated since Series 1, which is now (I assume) sold out. Another thing I should check. MY FAULT. Hopefully the movie sets at your stores were purchased and not pulled.

Thanks for the response! I agree, getting Minimates listed above/away from the vibrators was a step in the right direction. I believe BP and Infinity War were pulled in two of the three stores in my immediate area. No BP at the third, but a lone Spidey/Hulk (Spidey's face was messed up so I passed) so I assume they at least had them out at some point.

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12 hours ago, Mattallica said:

Why?  by now it should be obvious that Marvel likes to change or sneak things in at the  last cut,  like an eye patch, new Hammer or costume change. wouldn't it be smart( i may have just answered my own question here) to hold off on producing them so early, to just sit in a warehouse, and then release product that is wrong?

Retailers like WG and, yes, TRU, like to have the product in advance, so when they are carrying a line, we need to get it to them early to move it through their supply chain. We could have solicited the specialty set months ago, with no pics or character identification, but we opted to hold off until the embargo lifted, for obvious reasons. Now WG and TRU can put them out close to the embargo date, and we can ship to comic shops right away.

So you can blame timeliness for any late reference being missed, or just say we're not smart. And nothing is "wrong," people are simply unhappy that some accessories and alternate costumes are not included. No one has seen the movie, so the amount of time they spend with these elements is not known, to us anyway. Usually missing accessories are criticized after the movie comes out, once people have judged their necessity.

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Part of the story of Infinity War, based on just the released Lego set alone, is Thor crafting a new weapon.  The set is literally called "Thor's Weapon Quest".

LEGO-76102-Thors-Weapon-Quest-Box.jpg

 

Sure, Lego is off the mark from time to time, <insert Mandarin's flamethrowing zamboni from IM3> but it's a pretty safe assumption that this is integral to the plot of the movie.

 

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16 minutes ago, youbastards said:

Part of the story of Infinity War, based on just the released Lego set alone, is Thor crafting a new weapon.  The set is literally called "Thor's Weapon Quest".

Sure, Lego is off the mark from time to time, <insert Mandarin's flamethrowing zamboni from IM3> but it's a pretty safe assumption that this is integral to the plot of the movie.

As I said, when it happens in the movie and when we were told we could reveal the hammer may have made it less relevant/less feasible, but I certainly see how bad it looks. 

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it' confuses me how people think they know how to run a company as complex as diamond with dealing with lots of licenses , and likeness rights , also working with concept designs all while rushing to meet the shortened time between movies now, it's not like when super hero movies came out every few years and took longer to create/film these movies.

i think diamond is doing their best, i wouldn't assume they want to put out incorrect stuff on purpose. what business sense is that. 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, DSTZach said:

As I said, when it happens in the movie and when we were told we could reveal the hammer may have made it less relevant/less feasible, but I certainly see how bad it looks. 

So sell me a con exclusive Thor with eyepatch head, armored arms, cape, Stormbreaker, and blue lighting effects, and we'll call it even.  :thumbsup:

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14 hours ago, arnim zola said:

Mistakes. Let's see, character selection and placement gets lazy sometimes, even super retarded. 5 iron legion in a movie but a blind box full of them versus an unending army of Ultron drones with 6 out of 18 blind box characters helping build those characters and no one was dying for two war machines of an already used mold for a new design with two navy seals. 4 turtles per wave, every wave, blind and more expensive at specialty shops than Tru. Same with a few other lines. Nightmare, Beetlejuice, watchmen, movie waves, who's going to buy a more expensive box plus shipping from Luke when Tru will get them the exclusive set and the box set for the same price or lower?

Luke is not the only Minimates retailer. Diamond sells to a couple of thousand retailers worldwide, and customers may use an online retailer or a brick and mortar retailer if they have no Walgreens or MM-carrying TRU near them. The blind TMNT, the Nightmare 2-packs and the movie box sets all have exclusive characters, but obviously it depends on how bad you want them. NBX only had ONE shared two-pack in each series last year. 

I think a Turtle in every TRU pack was a no-brainer, especially as different as we made each release, and I've explained how blind bags were meant to work -- an experiment that is pretty much dead. I'm not thrilled with how we handled them, and regret not pushing for a different formula. The Age of Ultron blind boxes had to have their lineup changed midway through, and I think there was a miscalculation somewhere, but I think it was also influenced by how we thought casual customers would approach the product. 

Watchmen and Beetlejuice are the only two sets I know that released the exact same characters as were in the 2-packs, and again, there are those who do not have an MM-stocking TRU near them. But box sets were how we decided to go, and I think there was concern about not putting four all-stars at either location.

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Plus all those waves of turtles prevented more core characters, unlike playmates approach which was successful and got to stay in stores. By the time dst learn their lesson and split the 4 turtles over two waves all retailers were sick of the loss in sales and wrote it off.

We made a lot of characters. And there was a general decline in TMNT sales across the board that probably kick-started Nick revamping the series. 

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The constant shared characters costing specialty to lose customers to Tru and now walgreens is causing specialty in my area to straight up write off minimates. The last shop I had locally that carried mates just told me this week they aren't ordering anymore when I asked about Thor and black panther, a billion dollar movie. So no avengers product either, a 10 year hype train that going to do insane merchandise business. 

We're trying to cater more to independent retailers with exclusive Marvel comic waves, more NBX exclusives and the numerous MM sets we've made that were not even available at mass retailers, but if the orders are not there, it is difficult to make the production budgets work. With mass market orders, the production numbers work, and that actually makes a lot of specialty-exclusive items possible. We semi-regularly cancel specialty-exclusive items -- not just Minimates -- that, without mass support, are not ordered in sufficient quantities to produce. But we are looking at new licenses that may speak more to specialty retailers.

And I'm sure our sales team tells comic shops that they should be carrying product for three of the best-received/most highly anticipated Marvel movies of all time, and we always hype the exclusive characters in press and on socials, but your store clearly decided not to carry the Thor set before Walgreens had ANY Movie Minimates in their stores. And everyone should keep in mind, since comic shops only get box sets now, you should be able to order a box set for yourself through them, as should any customer. 

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For fwoosheyman's comments, yeah it's a small cylinder, and it's a small dot, but this is your art style. Comic art in 3d surface. No one does block figures like this. There's going to be quality issues just like bigger companies but across the board issues aren't acceptable for your specialty product.

The key word there is comic art. Interpreting a CGI raccoon leaves some room for interpretation. And that is a sculpted head, not a tampo'd cylinder, so the placement of two tiny dots is prone to some inaccuracy. Cylinders are problematic enough -- think about how people feel when a Spider-Man eye is off-center, and remember we stopped making double-sided heads due to the problems making those. Thor's eyepatch, I don't know what to say. I don't know how long he has it in the film. Obviously it would have been a cool inclusion. 

Some may be mad I chose to respond to individual points with quotes, but I want people to see my responses to specific concerns. 

Edited by DSTZach
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10 minutes ago, youbastards said:

So sell me a con exclusive Thor with eyepatch head, armored arms, cape, Stormbreaker, and blue lighting effects, and we'll call it even.  :thumbsup:

At MM quantities, Sales gets involved, and previous MM exclusives, including Homecoming and Scarlet Witch/Vision, were not strong sellers. 

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2 hours ago, Roccothegreat said:

it' confuses me how people think they know how to run a company as complex as diamond with dealing with lots of licenses , and likeness rights , also working with concept designs all while rushing to meet the shortened time between movies now, it's not like when super hero movies came out every few years and took longer to create/film these movies.

i think diamond is doing their best, i wouldn't assume they want to put out incorrect stuff on purpose. what business sense is that. 

 

 

 

giphy.gif

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1 hour ago, DSTZach said:

At MM quantities, Sales gets involved, and previous MM exclusives, including Homecoming and Scarlet Witch/Vision, were not strong sellers. 

Maybe because half of each pack was civilian's we don't need? :/ 

I get DST's reasoning, but it is a little annoying.

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16 minutes ago, Gmonkey2k said:

Maybe because half of each pack was civilian's we don't need? :/ 

I get DST's reasoning, but it is a little annoying.

It can be frustrating but from their perspective they are in a tough position. They have to pick characters and  * hope * they are hits based off of limited information. In the instance you sighted yeah Civilian Vision isn’t that sexy on his own but at the time they knew that Viz and Wanda are a popular pairing, he has an infinity stone, he didn’t change his costume. Let’s pair him with Wanda (a focal point and lead of this movie who has a new costume) and let’s sell it at SDCC to leverage that shipper audience. It didn’t work, but based off of what they had it should have worked. By that token Alpha Flight should have worked but didn’t. The TRU Okoye and Nakia shouldn’t have done well but anecdotally they have been. But again I don’t have sales data sooo... 

Usually my pet hate is the licenses that DST doesn’t have only because I love mates and want more. 

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(Zach's really earning his salary here this week.)

"Need" is a subjective term. I'd argue that the Spider-Man in that Homecoming set was more superfluous but I ordered a couple anyway (as did others) just to get Keaton's likeness. Ironically it might have sold better had Spider-Man looked more civilian by including his decathlon jacket.

But yeah, no one needed Vision in that suit. B)

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1 hour ago, buttheadsmate said:

The thing I recall the most about the Vision set was how hard it was to buy !  Do I also recall that inventory went missing at the warehouse or something ?

 

 

What I recall about that set was, upon opening I pulled off the Vision head and hands and tossed the suit body into my parts bin. B)

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21 hours ago, Zylek said:

What I recall about that set was, upon opening I pulled off the Vision head and hands and tossed the suit body into my parts bin. B)

That’s very She Hulk Of you!

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On 3/12/2018 at 10:43 AM, DSTZach said:

a:) Luke is not the only Minimates retailer. Diamond sells to a couple of thousand retailers worldwide, and customers may use an online retailer or a brick and mortar retailer if they have no Walgreens or MM-carrying TRU near them. The blind TMNT, the Nightmare 2-packs and the movie box sets all have exclusive characters, but obviously it depends on how bad you want them. NBX only had ONE shared two-pack in each series last year. 

b:) I think a Turtle in every TRU pack was a no-brainer, especially as different as we made each release, and I've explained how blind bags were meant to work -- an experiment that is pretty much dead. I'm not thrilled with how we handled them, and regret not pushing for a different formula. The Age of Ultron blind boxes had to have their lineup changed midway through, and c:) I think there was a miscalculation somewhere, but I think it was also influenced by how we thought casual customers would approach the product. 

d:) Watchmen and Beetlejuice are the only two sets I know that released the exact same characters as were in the 2-packs, and again, there are those who do not have an MM-stocking TRU near them. But box sets were how we decided to go, and I think there was concern about not putting four all-stars at either location.

e:) We made a lot of characters. And there was a general decline in TMNT sales across the board that probably kick-started Nick revamping the series. 

f:) We're trying to cater more to independent retailers with exclusive Marvel comic waves, more NBX exclusives and the numerous MM sets we've made that were not even available at mass retailers, but if the orders are not there, it is difficult to make the production budgets work. With mass market orders, the production numbers work, and that actually makes a lot of specialty-exclusive items possible. We semi-regularly cancel specialty-exclusive items -- not just Minimates -- that, without mass support, are not ordered in sufficient quantities to produce. But we are looking at new licenses that may speak more to specialty retailers.

g:) And I'm sure our sales team tells comic shops that they should be carrying product for three of the best-received/most highly anticipated Marvel movies of all time, and we always hype the exclusive characters in press and on socials, but your store clearly decided not to carry the Thor set before Walgreens had ANY Movie Minimates in their stores. And everyone should keep in mind, since comic shops only get box sets now, you should be able to order a box set for yourself through them, as should any customer. 

h:) The key word there is comic art. Interpreting a CGI raccoon leaves some room for interpretation. And that is a sculpted head, not a tampo'd cylinder, so the placement of two tiny dots is prone to some inaccuracy. Cylinders are problematic enough -- think about how people feel when a Spider-Man eye is off-center, and remember we stopped making double-sided heads due to the problems making those. Thor's eyepatch, I don't know what to say. I don't know how long he has it in the film. Obviously it would have been a cool inclusion. 

Some may be mad I chose to respond to individual points with quotes, but I want people to see my responses to specific concerns. 

a:) Bullshit Argument. No one said or implied this, but if that's where you want to start then it could be said that as a neutral voice in the community whose business' primary product is your product, he has (and please correct me if I'm remembering this wrong) acknowledged that blind bags and sharing packs with TRU have loaded him up with product he cant sell. Mates are his store, BBTS and Entertainment earth can afford to have items sit on a warehouse after ordering in bulk then jettison stock that doesn't work out, because they can function like a micro online version of a bulk purchase "toys R us." Specialty sites like Luke or others without supportive communities like this, or word of mouth, or advertising, cant afford that and take a financial hit. The minute DST/specialty knew that TRU was going to charge way less than specialty,  I'm surprised more retailers didn't drop the line here and there. That's the trend Iv'e seen with anything shared. 

b:) These two comments to me at least seem to immediately contradict each other. With all the characters turtles have had to offer over the last 30 years, you start with four turtles and some human shapes, then, repeat the exact same formula? With the exact same looking turtles? Parents and casual buyers dont rebuy what looks like the same figure to them a few months after the first. That's why hasbro makes changes to optimus prime every couple of months, so billy can justify his explanation for why he wants the new one. I saw the technical differences, and the new heads and accessories should have been standard practice in every wave after, maybe every line in which repeats were that necessary (necessary by DST hunches, not sales data) The same basic Jack Skellington through 5 sets of blind bags and two carded waves across 3 retailers. No alt heads or anything different. I had (didnt have to) to buy doubles of the other costumes just to throw the different  heads on all the extra bodies I had. 

c:) I guess this shouldn't be too overblown, its reasonable to think that a customer might take the chance to grab an Iron Man figure from a hype movie that everyone and their mother is about to see. I'd like the ratios to have been different, and I don't remember the specifics of the adjustment but yeah that's reasonable.

d:) Spongebob too. Some peeps don't have MM carry shops, and some don't have TRU's, and some don't have either.  So this is fairly reasonable in terms of the boxsets, but its unreasonable to pick that out of my comment as this has been a problem for a long time aside from boxsets that are more recent. Secret wars leftovers, civil war leftovers, jack and sally, turtles, turtles, turtles. If it was shared with TRU it stayed on a shelf until it was clearanced out, or its still warming that cold dead peg.

e:) No, DST made a lot of civilians and ignored the wild characters that have always been the exciting parts of TMNT and the reason kids have bought those crazy toys for so long. You guys (possibly Zach) said once for the walking dead that Shiva couldn't happen because when the budget plan was set up during licensing that Shiva was left out, so no budget to do her (tell me I'm wrong please because business plans can always change as far as I'm concerned, unless its part of the license agreement?). So reading that and seeing all the civilians in the first two waves, I told my wife, I bet they cancel this line after only making a few mutants. and what happened? You made history by being the only toy company to ever make a TMNT line with more humans than mutants. So is that what happened there? A license agreement signed and it was known in advance "we can only afford to make turtles and a few mutants but we can do humans so it will work out." 

And, there is always a drop in product sales on licensed merchandise of any media for the longer it goes on regardless of what it is, and with kid cartoons they reboot every couple of years to reinvigorate those sales, ex: Transformers.

f:) That's good news, and I really hope it goes well. The NBX waves most definitely swung around in a positive way and gave me confidence that DST had some confidence and was willing to take risks with this property, which the first 3 waves suggested otherwise. I want to see more confidence in DST products. Kids and parents do not want a toyline loaded with civilians. In today's market with how people have their money in a kung-fu grip, they want that excitement and detachment from reality they get from going to a movie. A wave of civilian toys, suits and dresses is boring and we have beaten that to death here. They want exciting toys to catch their eyes and fuel imaginations because reality sucks. The max carnage wave is nice and fits this exactly, I hope I'm right and it sells well.

g:) Hmmm, thats all true though.

h:) Even painting larger that 2 white dots on a cylinder that small is hard AF. controlling that across those numbers of figures would be very difficult so Ill backpedal on this quite a bit. I wish I had the tampo tech or at least a video of how it works because I only have half an understanding of what happens there. But the friends and foes boxset is the worst example of tampo QC still. My guess on Thor is like Thanos' armor, he's just not going to have it long enough for them to have pushed in as something to include with the control art.

The quotes do help respond to specific points here. They almost always do. 

 

On 3/12/2018 at 10:52 AM, DSTZach said:

At MM quantities, Sales gets involved, and previous MM exclusives, including Homecoming and Scarlet Witch/Vision, were not strong sellers. 

Not a fair statement. Con exclusive civilians and slightly dirty heroes are not any more enticing than civilians warming the pegs at a store. The age of ultron movie con box set did have civilians but that box sold out. It was a good box and a good example to follow. A 2 pack of a guy in a suit that had just had 3 identical minimates releases over a very short period (4 including the animated one) where the only new part is the suit and a side character that didn't do well in her own tru 2 pack for he first release, not a good example. Spidey and civilian Michael keaton, awesome to me but its just a home made spidey outfit with dirt on it and nothing new. No awesome new vulture stuff. The hall of armors 10 pack was catered to what, Iron Man fans that only wanted a shit ton of almost the same iron man in a row?

The Ultron Box tried new things. The comic related box sets tried new things and except for alpha flight (niche fandom) they did well. The all villains thunderbolts sets did well. Its not con exclusives, its character and content selection. An infinity war box could do really well, especially with new characters, or characters that might not make it into the store they should make it into.

 

On 3/12/2018 at 1:29 PM, Roccothegreat said:

zach in this thread 

 

Image result for matrix bullet dodge gif

More like 

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1 hour ago, arnim zola said:

Ebay and Amazon stores are secondary market and don't count, and when they do have them they are expensive which is what aftermarket turns into. So yeah, by being aftermarket, it counts as being sold out. 

So by that logic, since TRU 25 isn't at my store and I can see people are selling them on eBay, then TRU 25 is "sold out", got it.

This seller is selling at least 30 of them for almost 1/2 the price of the original MSRP at SDCC, and just a few weeks ago this set was being sold for $7.99 on Amazon Prime.  These were liquidated by the case in large volume to the after market when AFX "closed for remodeling".  It did not sell out in any sense of the term.

https://www.amazon.com/Exclusive-Avengers-Ultron-Marvel-Minimates/dp/B010JAWJXG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521144629&sr=8-1&keywords=age+of+ultron+minimates

 

 

Edited by youbastards
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Well, if AFX had them then as far as DST is concerned it did sell out. I wouldn't call it a good box set by any means but from DST's perspective it could still be considered successful. The same would go for TRU 25, it's not in DST's hands anymore.

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9 hours ago, youbastards said:

So by that logic, since TRU 25 isn't at my store and I can see people are selling them on eBay, then TRU 25 is "sold out", got it.

This seller is selling at least 30 of them for almost 1/2 the price of the original MSRP at SDCC, and just a few weeks ago this set was being sold for $7.99 on Amazon Prime.  These were liquidated by the case in large volume to the after market when AFX "closed for remodeling".  It did not sell out in any sense of the term.

https://www.amazon.com/Exclusive-Avengers-Ultron-Marvel-Minimates/dp/B010JAWJXG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521144629&sr=8-1&keywords=age+of+ultron+minimates

 

 

No sir, thats not how logic works. Your store not having them doesn't count if its in a chain. If the chain of stores doesn't have them listed online, or in the majority of their stores with maybe a handful floating around the inventory across the chain, then that would constitute a sell out. 

Sounds like AFX offloaded a good chunk of stock of that set to another seller. It was AFX's SDCC exclusive right? DST doesn't have it in stock, AFX doesnt have it in stock, no one related to its MSRP/creation has it, I think that counts well enough to be called sold out. Whatever the status now, It did not stay available for too long when it came out unlike alpha flight. That would be an example of an item that is technically sold out by definition, but leaves a bad taste in the mouth to actually say that sentence. 

And Thank you for the link good sir, I did not pick up that mostly meh set but I did really like that ultron. Just not $26 like him. Is AFX still closed? I never heard about that.

7 hours ago, stack32 said:

Well, if AFX had them then as far as DST is concerned it did sell out. I wouldn't call it a good box set by any means but from DST's perspective it could still be considered successful. The same would go for TRU 25, it's not in DST's hands anymore.

You know Ive heard a lot of retailers talk about when certain merchandise doesn't perform well they actually ship it back to the vendor and get their money back to some degree. I dont hear that it happens often, but its a thing. I believe I heard (or read) Luke say once that his spiderman boxset exclusive was out of stock because sales had slowed/stopped and the remainder got shipped back to DST. 

It's interesting because with all the problems with Alpha Flight, it stayed with them. Maybe it was part of their exclusive set agreement? If I haven't ran Zach off yet maybe he can shed some light on this part of the business?

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