General Hawk wrote:
There are countless possibilities here, considering the spring release schedule and the impending movie stuff. We know they've done the tooling, we've seen pictures on the Club site, so obviously they've already invested significant funds into this.
There is still a ton of product hanging on store shelves, so I could see that impacting some retailer outlook during the holidays. Heck, maybe things are actually pushed back a bit. But with tooling already done, I would expect to see these released, it just may not be when we think (or hope) it is...
From where I work now, I may actually *gasp* have insight to this. Back in the summer, oil was $140/barrel, and all derivatives of oil, including the plastic for our Joes, were priced based on $140/barrel oil. Now, with the economy the way it is, folks have less spending cash (or, no credit to buy), current product isn't moving, and oil's between $45 and $50/barrel (at least as of yesterday).
Anyhow, in late October, I heard in the lunch room that over half of the Chinese toy factories have shut down completely. Everybody is overstocked with product -- product whose costs were based on that $140/barrel oil. Last week, the feeling that the market research folk at the company have is, that no matter the industry, the first thing that they have to do is sell off all that high-cost product. Then and ONLY then will they make more, based on the current cost of production.
By the time we get that turnaround, (now we come to my pure speculation), Hasbro may well package these up in movie format as a way to scream "new and different" to the general public.
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I'm assuming that you didn't grow up in the "Bay Area, CA".
