In my thread about The Corps! taking Joe space at WM, it was mentioned (somewhat jokingly) that this is in preparation for the new The Corps! (TC! because I'm too lazy to keep typing it) comic.
As soon as I heard about this comic when it was first announced, it made me wonder about the toy sales. Will they increase if the comic is successful? Almost assuredly. So then this makes me wonder: how important are characters to a toyline, versus 'just' figures? My actual question, then is, what lines should have done better, but simply did not have the character development to carry them?

As an example: Growing up, we all were exposed to Joes and TC!, and even the Remco offerings. Stylistically, there really wasn't much difference between Joes, TC!, or any of the others, yet Joe is the one everyone wanted. Sure, it had the 30-minute daily commercial and the comic book, but those can only create the want for the toys, they cannot create the passion for them. That requires compelling characters. Because of this, Remco's okay lines died off, TC! found its niche by being just cheap enough, and Joe prospered (with a few rough patches).

An even better example would be Transformers versus Gobots. Everyone wanted Transformers. Gobots were seen as the 'poor kid's Transformers'. But if you remove the characters and just look at the toys, on average, the Gobots were simply much better -- better construction, mostly in scale, etc. Yet the Gobots just never built the following or brand name that Transformers did.

Well with GoBots you had goofy characters Scooter for example with that horrible voice. You look around the net and you mostly find that scene people too where it looks like Leader 1 is getting raped. There's just no real love or respect for the line.

Transformers, each characters had the feel that they were each given at least a fair amount of thought. Each character was written in a better format than GoBots ever were. The GoBots cartoon felt about on par with Smurfs where Transformers had a somewhat "more mature" format. That's why I always say it's a bad marketing move to dumb things down for kids. You end up hanging yourself when you do that.

Take the Transformer movie for an example. No kid now can live without owning a Bumblebee toy. They made Bumblebee a new concept Camero instead of a VW, but kids didn't care. It was the way Bumblebee was presented in the movie that mattered to them.

So if the CORPS! comic is done fairly decently and it's accessible to kids, it may boost some figure sales. I think Devils Due would do well to try and get Lanard to do some comic pack editions as well. This would help both companies.

Presentation is a big part of sales. Lots of great ideas failed because there was nothing out there to "sell" the product. An example of recent, Storm Hawks wasn't a bad toy really, but the cartoon was bad. I tried 2 episodes of the cartoon but couldn't watch it. Xyber 9 I think didn't click with kids either but had a decent toy. To name a few others, Air Raiders, Mega Force, Sky Commanders, etc. It's a long list of many attempts really, but eithere there was no cartoon or the cartoon and/or comic was too poorly thought out to sell the toyline.

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I really want a realistic, kick ass military line that focuses on crazy, and bizarrely code named characters with cool weapons and camo

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21st Century Toys and BBI. How much better (meaning, better sellers) would these toys have been if they did some simple mini-comic as a pack-in? Even better, as Larry Hama has discussed before - where are the bad guys? Come up with a short story about one of the "teams" missions, with them hunting down some baddie in the jungle. Flesh out the characters' personalities, to give the kids something to get the imagination going.

And while they're at it, make the toys durable enough to take kids' abuse.

Ummm... Have you forgotten Barnyard Commandos?

If the Corps is to be sucessful, then they better do a revamp of their figures, they suck as far as articulation goes, most of their weapons are to big for use with Joes & SW, there is a big market out there, so they better do something great to compete. I do like their vehiceles, but even those need improvements to.

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...or Army Ants, or Food Fighters.

even with having a cool toy, its the characters that drive the line.

I think and only exception to that rule would be Power team elite. These toys seem to fly off shelves. (At least up here they do, there aernt any in Boston,.. which is stupid considering the U.S. office of MC toys is in Massachusets.) without any cartoon or enemies to fight. Same deal with The Corps back in the late 90's/ early 00's The Corps almost filled the gap that G.I.joe left before the re-launch.

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anyone remember GUTs or M.U.S.C.L.E.

I'd get behind a CORPs toyline that didn't suck, if nothing else than to force Hasbro to try a little harder.

I don't remember kids being crazy about bumblebee around here, most fights I saw in the toy aisle were over barricade or that tank,


But I have another though on cartoons, I think creativity is gone. I notice that when Hasbro was trying to create new cartoons and comics, it did nothing for sales, only by using toy necromancy and digging up the horrible characters and stories from the 80's, and thus those man children that salvate over them, have they been able to make the line viable again.

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Who can forget Mean Weiner and Fri Guy!

My favorite army ant was the guy who had that HUGE missle on his back....poor guy must have gotten heavy.

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I think character helps drive toy sells or how else do you explain why they can release Snake Eyes over and over and over again and he still manages to sell.

In many ways Tranformers and GI Joe both got lucky in some good voice actors that helped carry the line long after other 80's cartoons became obsure. It was hard as heck not to want a Jazz toy after you heard him on the cartoon, or voice actors still try to capture that Cobra Commander voice when doing the character.

Now as to if a comic book can really help Corps that's a tough question. Kids aren't big comic book readers anymore and to find a Devils Due comic book you've got to go to a comic book store and there ain't many of those left. So comic books would most effect the adult market. Plus Devils Due is going to have to pick it up a notch and produce some really good bad guys for comic book because lets face it any line you recall as great you can also recall the bad guys. Plus it's going to take a good bit of character to over come the figures looking bad when compared to other modern action figure lines.