>>10262054I don't think you understand the difference.
in 2000, there was nothing to push Star Wars sales, as in no cross marketing. TPM was a 1999 release and they would have nothing until 2002. Maybe they thought that hype would extend into 2000 or maybe they didn't. They expected a certain % of sales and they missed that mark. They still made a tidy profit that year anyway.
They wouldn't get another push for STar WArs sales until 2002, because that's when Attack of the Clones came out. Then there was another push when Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005. Three big pushes.
Whereas TFA gave Star Wars merch a giant push in 2015 that hadn't been seen since TPM. Like the TPM, TFA toys lingered on shelves the following year, when Rogue One came out in 2016. So Rogue One didn't get as big of a push, despite being one of hte biggest movies that year. The Last Jedi came out in 2017, but because there were STILL TFA (plus Rogue One) on the shelves, sales weren't that great either. We saw a noticeable decline in shelf presense, as there was no area just for Star Wars anymore. in 2018 Solo came out and it had almost no shelf presense, because now there were 3 years worth of movie toys that weren't moving. By the time 2019 hit with Rise of Skywalker, there were no Han Solo toys on the shelves, because stores didn't order a lot, but people were still finding TFA, Rogue One, and TLJ toys.
tl;dr: prequels movies all gave pushes to star wars toys sales. sequels only had a single push for the first movie, while the rest were choked out by tfa merch, because of how horrible sales were.
You can't say that the sequels being released so close together affected sales, because Marvel movie shit is released on an even faster time frame, and almost always sells out. When it doesn't, we all laugh because we know why, but even Eternals shit didn't linger in stores like TFA shit lingerd. Not even TPM lingered on shelves as long as TFA shit did.
