>>10262148>TPM still underperformed with respect to their expectations.>TPM sold very well *for that year.* This did not persist. I'm going to call you a stupid fuckwit, because you're proving you have no idea what you're talking about.
TPM sold so much that Hasbro's revenue grew 25% in a single year. It was gigantic. There hasn't been as big of an increase ever since. Not with Marvel. Not with the sequels.
They knew TPM wouldn't carry them the next year, hence changing the packaging to something more generic for 2000. This is practically routine since the 70s.
And no, you can't claim they changed the packaging because retailers were stuck holding unsold stock, because products in develoment is decided almost a year before release. By the time retailers knew they were stuck with a bunch of shit, it'd be near to Christmas time, and by then, no company can really respond until the following summer (usually later). See GI Joe movie line -> Pursuit of Cobra as an example for that.
So for Hasbro, TPM was beyond their wildest dreams. For retailers? It obviously didn't sour them as much as you're implying it did, because there was still a hell of a ton of merch still being produced every single year. Star Wars maintained its shelf presense as a premiere toyline on off years, when there were no movies or cartoons to push Star Wars products.
We only saw an actual retraction in their shelf presense starting with Solo in 2018, because two years after TFA, there were still TFA shit still sitting on shelves, along with rogue one and the last jedi. Even into 2019, you could still find TFA shit sitting next to Rise of Skywalker shit. Everyone was commenting on how small the Star Wars section was by the time Solo came, because stores were no longer putting in as many orders.