>>7027286Toys are dying. I got to watch it all burn down from the inside while working at Toys R Us. You can boil it all down to these factors killing the industry:
1. Too many toys are dependent on media properties to sell them. If the property sucks then the toys suck, or at least in the mind of any child who they're targeted toward.
2. There's almost no advertisement for action figures or toys in general these days on tv. There's occasionally one or two on one of the kids networks, and when they come on I'm always shocked and surprised, because of how rare it is that I see one anymore. How the fuck is a child supposed to get hyped for a toy if they don't even know what it is? Companies are relying too much on social media and media properties that the toys are based on to draw in children to buy the figures instead of advertising.
3. There's very little competition in the market as there's only a few companies that either Hasbro or Mattel have purchased, and as such we have only whatever they decide to make and put on shelves at retail.
4. Hasbro has demonstrated that they can produce smaller action figures at reasonable prices, but refuses to, because of an interest in pushing more expensive and easily profitable toys like Marvel Legends or Star Wars Black Series, because they can afford to sell less of them and turn a greater profit, whereas if the toys are cheaper, they have to be able to sell a great deal more to make up a profit.
