>>8017070Well there is a good example to be had with McFarlane and Halo. While Halo 4 and 5 did not flop, it was definitely very divisive, had a sharp decline in active player count and most importantly of all, created some really strong negative responses from the core fanbase who cares about collecting the merch during the peak of the craze with Reach.
Using the way back machine you can see how Todd REALLY dropped down on not only the number of Halo waves each year after 4 but also the number of figures in the waves. Then by the time 5 rolled around he even cut back on the quality of the engineering of the figures as well. Microsoft however seems to really want Halo to be as strong a brand as it was during Reach, and since McFarlane was no longer releasing a ton of figures as well as a lack of the side stuff like Micro Ops, they refused to renew the contract and gave it to Mattel.
Mattel immediately flies out of the gate with MASSIVE array of stuff, several different RCs, even more MegaBloks, even more focus on the Halo Boomco, two confirmed waves of figures, big figs, vehicles for both the figures and big figs, roleplay items, and more I can't remember. Well, it bombed, no one bought the stuff except for the Megabloks which they always were doing, and the boomco which actually kept the boomco line itself on life support. So Mattel COMPLETELY stopped putting out Halo stuff that wasn't the mentioned two lines, the Boomco also eventually dying out as well likely due to the blasters market rather then anything in regards to Halo.
Now Microsoft split up the licenses and gave them to different folks, Mattel keeps the Megabloks line, Hasbro gets to make Nerf blasters, and Wicked Cool does the the majority of the rest such as figures, roleplay stuff and probably some more. Now it's time to see how this attempt goes.
