I was going to go with a "in these economic times, it's probably good that kids (and their parents) get to hear the you can't have everything" response. besides, yeah a lot of it is nice, but that doesn't mean i wanna buy it all just b/c it's there. There may be some kids who've gotten into this line who have a dad or relative who wasn't a collector, and they may want most/all of the stuff, but they're not gonna get it lol.

_________________

I think that this line is aimed at collectors and nostalgia oriented people far more than kids. And that has yet to work well for Hasbro when it comes to Joe. At least based on New Sculpt and the whole DTC thing.

Yeah collectors have far more money than kids to spend. Most parents are not going to buy their kid every single figure from a line. So if they are aiming at kids, they are not doing a good thing by flooding the shelves with wave after wave of figures. And yet oddly, by flooding the shelves with wave after wave of figures they are also going to end up alienating the collectors.

As someone said, they re-release Duke and Scarlett and SE and CC and certain others again and again. Some people will buy them no matter what, but some people are going to get turned off at seeing multiples of the same characters.

Another problem with this line is the re-use of parts. People complained that the ARAH figure parts were re-used way too much and already not even a year into the 25A line, there goes Hasbro re-using the parts again and again. The high numbers of figures per wave may not be so bad if they were all original, new molds and all, not figures that re-use the same parts again and again with a new paint job.

Just on a personal note I am not seeing many kids scoping out the Joes. At the 2 Wal Marts nearby the Joes are sandwiched between the WWE figures and the Corps figures. Not only have they both had the same handful of figure packs on the shevles, and yeah I am sure they are the same packs and not re-stocks, but kids pass them by. I swear it seems like they lump them together with the Corps stuff. And the Corps has 3 times as many hooks as Joe.

I think Hasbro has to go to fewer figures per wave and fewer waves per year as well as maybe hit the TV with some ads.

_________________

Hmmm think its where you live. They fly off the pegs around here so fast its not funny.

_________________

I've given up on being a devout completist. I still buy every figure, but I've given up on finding and dropping extra money on all of the variants.

There are something like 4 different versions of the 25A Stalker, right? Lime w/backpack hole, Lime w/out backpack hole, Green w/... you get the idea. I've got one and that will be good enough. Variants, true variants, were nice accidental easter eggs. But "running changes", for me at least, are still variants to which I'll have to pass.

i was about to point out that there's only been one repaint of snake eyes so far in the single packs, but then i keep forgetting about the comic pack versions of duke, snake eyes, scarlett & cobra commander. which thankfully they won't be doing going forward since it'll be different characters. even then, it kinda seemed like they had those figues in to help get the comic packs started up & on the shelves.

overall though, it kinda seems like they've been handling the line pretty well, esp. slipping in figures from earlier waves for people. now if they could just do that in a wave down the line with firefly, it would be most appreciated

_________________

Despite the fact that Hasbro will always say that they are a TOY company and that their products are first and foremost aimed at kids, I have to wonder myself if that's really the case with this 25th Anniversary G.I.Joe line.

They've created new incarnations of long-established figures and characters, placing their likenesses as closely as possible to the new format, and even using imagery from the original packaging. I'm not saying any of this is a bad thing. But how many kids, except possibly those who have been educated by their parents who collected the original line, are going to recognize the history behind all of this?

I have to believe that the current G.I.Joe line is targeted primarily at people who remember the original, who want something new, at least figure-wise, and I suspect Hasbro is hoping that those people can talk their kids into taking an interest in it.

As for too many figures? Possible. I wouldn't've thought so when the line first started, but then some of the 5-packs ended up on clearance at Target, and now you've got the comic sets, the TRU exclusive 3-packs and 5-packs, and the Target stuff. I almost started wondering about this myself when I considered the Crankcase figure that came with the AWE-Striker. Not that that's inappropriate. That's who the original AWE-Striker came with. But -- Crankcase? The only previous Crankcase figure WAS the original, we're not exactly talking a major player here, I don't think he ever put in an animated appearance, although his vehicle certainly did, and his most notable appearances in the comic book were his introduction alongside Heavy Metal, Airtight, and Bazooka in issue #44, and his grisly demise during the Battle of Benzheen.

Not exactly someone you'd expect to see in a line of the highlights of G.I.Joe, were it not for the vehicle's release.

I think its cool that they push the line.
The 3 packs, five packs, Target vehicles, its all cool, but what I'm really looking forward to is wave 7 or 2008 wave 2 or 3 or whatever. The next single card wave.

_________________

Well, it's the truth, why should you expect any less?

_________________

Do you think hasbro realized they could have made some money off collectors in the lead up to the transformers movie, so they decided to try it out with GI JOE? When the movie hits, i think we'll see a lot more kids buying/making their parents buy the Joes. Assuming the movie is any good, of course.


If it works, we'll probably see a resurgence of My Little Pony toys before the release of the My Little Pony live action movie.

That's a good question, one to which there is no easy answer, except some speculation. Technically, last year was the official 25th Anniversary of G.I.Joe. However, at the same time, one cannot help but wonder if Hasbro would've commemorated it to the level that they did -- a new toy format, retro style packaging, and so forth, if it hadn't been for the fact that a live-action movie was in the works.

Consider a few other factors involved, in all of this:

The toys, while an entirely new format, are clearly intended as tributes to the original versions of the figure-characters they represent. Conversely, the likenesses of the movie characters do not seem similarly bound. Additionally, Hasbro seems to have indicated that the 25th-style line and the movie line, however similar their formats will be, are likely to remain separate lines. This would tend to be in keeping as well with Transformers, which, while the movie-style line continues, does have plans for a line based on the Animated series, as well as the return of the Classics under the new Universe banner.

Consider also the fact that a lot of the promotion for the 25th Anniversary line took place in publications more geared towards collectors than kids -- ToyFare, Lee's Toy Review, Tomart's... Granted, I'm not sure what kids read these days, if anything...

Consider also that while Hasbro did a fair bit for the Real American Hero's 15th Anniversary in 1997, with the return of the product as a Toys "R" Us exclusive and much of it marked specifically as 15th Anniversary product, there was no such effort for the line's 20th Anniversary in 2002, which while it saw a resurgence of the line and the introduction of the newsculpt figures, didn't really do anything to specifically commemorate the anniversary.

I suspect any intention on Hasbro's part to target the G.I.Joe collectors' market with the 25th Anniversary line specifically as a precursor to the live-action movie or even to use it to raise interest in G.I.Joe FOR the movie with a product that was both new and retro at the same time (new in figure format, retro in its package design) rather than to just celebrate the 25th Anniversary, would have to be determined by a matter of timing on when the movie was finally given the go-ahead as opposed to when development on the 25th Anniversary line actually commenced.

And all of that is just pure speculation on my part. Bottom line, I think Hasbro would like to see G.I.Joe do well, in the toy aisles and on the big screen. Whether it does, especially in the case of the movie, we'll just have to wait and see. And if there happens to be some advantage to be gleaned from promoting a 25th Anniversary product WITH a movie and ITS concurrent product that close behind, I'm sure Hasbro won't object.


AAAAACCCCCKKKKKK!

Even if the movie is terrible by grown-up standards, I think kids will still want the figures. Children have that great quality of being into the concept of something, no matter how bad the cartoon/show/movie is. I can't even sit through 5 minutes of Power Rangers, but kids seem to dig it and the line has been a top seller for 15 years.

While I now have no interest in seeing the Joe movie, I'm hoping Cartoon Network will start showing the old cartoon again to cash in on the popularity... it made me want the toys as a kid, and I'm sure things aren't that different 20+ years later...

Ummm...Hasbro's been running around that pace since the first year of JvC back in 2002. To put it into perspective, there were about 527 figures in the vintage '82-94) line with about 665 in the modern (97-07) line not counting the anniversary figures. So far, we're around 81 Annivesary scult figures that have been released with many more announced and probably on the water. Star Wars has been the same way since '05. There is a TON of product being released and trying to keep up with it all will just make you mad if your only reason for buying it is to be a completist.


And this is a great point. Hasbro has learned from past mistakes and keeping these figures in circulation longer has helped maintain collector interest and also kept down the number of unnecessary repaints for many of the most common molds. If this was 2003, instead of getting refreshes of Snake Eyes, Flint, Cobra Officer and Trooper, we'd have seen a purple SE, green Flint and purple or white variants of the Cobras. In most cases, I think collectors are better off having the best figures at retail longer in lieu of constant, needless repaints that really aren't improvements over the original.


Absolutely. Why else do items like the single cards sell strongly while items in non-vintage packagine like the comic packs and boxed sets linger at retail? It's not because the comics are repaints because the single carded Joes that were straight rehashes sold strongly while their boxed set versions were still sitting in clearance racks around the country. This line isn't hot because of kids (I saw a kid walk up to a Target endcap with the Joe vehicles at his eye level and watched as he grabbed an Order 66 pack from the shelf above him and said "look, mommy...Anakin!") it's hot because adults are trying to buy cheap versions of the figures they remember seeing on shelves as kids. If they bring their kids or other kids into the fold, that's great. But, this line was made to appeal to nostalgia and you see it among the newer collectors when they outright state that they aren't going to buy the line once the packaging changes or the characters become something they don't recognize. You see it on all the boards that are frequented by the new collectors and that tells you who is really driving the collector oriented success of this line.

_________________