>>11312404>it's kind of incomparable to this situationIt really isn't, unless you're some really small time vendor that only orders a single case and need to make a profit from every single figure sold.
Even then, a toy company can do without those small time vendors if they never order again and still do decent amount of sales to keep the line going.
Basically, that sales model does scale downward.... up to a certain point, and that point is basically when a store will only order in the single digits. ~10k overall sales. NECA generally deals in the 50k range and upward
>And one of the reasons stores would reorder the next year is because it was a different line then. Orders were done by people back then, not by the shitty computer, and anyone with a brain knew the Star Wars brand back then. And since they had brains, they could look at the profits they made from ordering stock to decide whether it was worth ordering more... hence stores actually ordering fewer Attack of the Clone toys than TPM and then ordering more Revenge of the Sith toys than AotC. After that, stores kept asking for more toys, which made Lucas cash on Attack of the Clones spin offs to keep the gravy train rolling.
It wasn't until the 2010s that computers took over and even then, it didn't matter if a toyline had a different SKU or not, because (like you pointed out) Disney's Star Wars shit sold like shit and they pulled back heavily after The Force Awakens. Then they pulled back after Rogue One. Then they pulled back even more after The Last Jedi. The Solo toys had to share shelf space with TFA, RO, TLJ, figures and then Rise of Skywalker did too in 1/4th of the area the Clone Wars cartoon's action figures by Hasbro used to take up.
ANYWAY, fact remains that NECA did the main cast, based on the success of each figure they produced. Right? I don't remember them releasing them two or three at a time, so each figure's sales had to fund the next one. So will the last one fund the next?