Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2016-06-03 06:07 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2016-06-03 06:07 pm
[ SECRET POST #3439 ]
⌈ Secret Post #3439 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
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02.
[lupin sansei/lupin the third]
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03.
[Pokemon]
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04.
[Lord of the Rings]
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05.
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06.
[Animorphs]
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07.
[Dark Tower]
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08. [SPOILERS for Shin Megami Tensei IV]
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09. [WARNING for discussion of rape]
[Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist"]
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10. [WARNING for discussion of rape]
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #491.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2016-06-05 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)If Disney had a "a pile of unsaleable merch" for Kylo Ren--and I think we can agree that he is the TFA character with the most merchandise--then this would really hurt their bottom line. But in fact Q1 2016 was hugely profitable for Disney because of Star Wars' Consumer Products & Interactive Media.
Q2 numbers bear this out even further. From the earnings report: "Increased licensing revenues were driven by higher revenue from Star Wars merchandise, partially offset by an adverse impact from the timing of minimum guarantee shortfall recognition and a decrease in revenue from merchandise based on Frozen." And remember: that's with the loses from Disney Infinity (which is majorly Star Wars in the current 3.0 version).
Q1 2016 earnings report here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160209006737/en/Walt-Disney-Company-Reports-Record-Quarterly-Earnings
Q2 2016 earnings repotrt: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160510006839/en/Walt-Disney-Company-Reports-Quarter-Months-Earnings
tl;dr The profits for Star Wars merchandise disprove that quote.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2016-06-05 10:29 pm (UTC)(link)Certainly there's no denying there's tons of Kylo Ren overstock hanging around the shelves even now, when usually that stuff is all snapped up already.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2016-06-06 06:21 am (UTC)(link)CP & IM includes things like the physical goods we're discussing. It also includes video games. There are many Disney-licensed games, but the Q1 report mentions two of them specifically. Star Wars: Battlefront is singled out as performing well, and on the other side Disney Infinity's problems are laid out. It's true that the earnings reports do not separate Kylo Ren merchandise from other characters' goods, but like I wrote above (and maybe you didn't agree with?): he is the TFA character whose likeness is on the most merchandise. If there is a problem with sales there, it's going to be a loss big enough to possibly be mentioned in the report.
Kylo Ren stuff not selling would also make licensees want to avoid the character. To take it down to a micro level, Funko would have stopped making Kylo Ren Pops after the first one. If it didn't sell, why would they release a maskless version? Or the upcoming scarred version? (As a side note, talk about a company doing it right in regards to giving the hungry public the Rey we crave! There are three variations of Rey, too.)
And John Marcotte is not an industry insider. He runs heroicgirls.com.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2016-06-06 05:01 pm (UTC)(link)Again, it's impossible to separate the fact that Disney itself pushed Kylo on everyone regardless of whether they liked him or not (he was their main marketing push and they didn't change their strategy) from the fact that TFA was extremely popular, so claiming that TFA sales in general were successful and Kylo was on all their materials doesn't really forward your argument. But you understand, right, that Rey was absent and not the primary on merch, because of sexism, not because Kylo was popular according to focus groups or something. When giant crowds of people rose up saying where the heck is our Rey merch, she's the one we want, and Disney came back with a weak, um, well, an insider spoke up and said, we pushed Kylo on you because we thought no one would want a girl.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/star-wars-the-force-awakens/toys-wheresrey-monopoly-hasbro/
So say what you want, but your data is all skewed. Disney pushed Kylo six ways from Sunday, in every piece of licensing, in every series of merch, in the video games, what have you, and people still demanded Rey, and Kylo merch still languished on the shelves. I'm not saying that he didn't sell at all; what I'm saying is: he is not the most popular character. That's all. Rey is. Probably followed by Finn, then Kylo. It's just that fandom would have it otherwise, because fandom is a very strange place.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2016-06-07 03:24 am (UTC)(link)As can be seen by visiting his site, John Marcotte is an advocate. He has a reason to throw hyperbole around.
"Again, it's impossible to separate the fact that Disney itself pushed Kylo on everyone regardless of whether they liked him or not (he was their main marketing push and they didn't change their strategy) from the fact that TFA was extremely popular, so claiming that TFA sales in general were successful and Kylo was on all their materials doesn't really forward your argument."
I kinda feel we're talking past each other a bit. Let me try to restate my argument:
1. TFA merchandise sales were profitable. (This can be seen in the Consumer Products & Interactive Media part of the earnings reports.) I'm not including profits from the movie itself (the theatrical release and DVD/Blu-ray/digital/streaming that are under Studio Entertainment in the earnings reports).
2. People can spend their money however they choose.
3. Kylo Ren was on the majority of the TFA merchandise.
4. Therefore, enough people chose to buy Kylo Ren merchandise to make TFA merchandise profitable for Disney.
This brings me to a point I should have explained better the last time I replied. Disney has a legal duty to the shareholders to tell them what is going on. So when they singled out Disney Infinity among all video games in the Q1 report as performing poorly, Disney told shareholders exactly what the problem was: "higher inventory reserves and lower unit sales volume" which translated from business-speak is "we have too many Disney Infinity figures on store shelves and they aren't selling." If there was a similar problem with Kylo Ren, this would impact all Star Wars merchandise because of the prevalence of his products and I can't imagine the earnings report would ignore it.
I think we've mostly been in agreement here vis-a-vis Rey, although I think along with sexism was the precedent that villains were the "faces" of the franchise. Darth Vader has, by far, the most character goods of any character from Star Wars. He's the one on the cover of my Blu-ray of A New Hope, not Luke. So maybe the sexism was bolstered by the belief that Kylo Ren would be the next Vader.
"I'm not saying that he didn't sell at all"
But you did...? "Kylo Ren dolls did not sell at all" is what I originally objected to. (Unless you aren't the anon I thought I've been replying to this whole thread.) But I'm glad we both agree that Kylo Ren merchandise sells.