toys being released before a pr series
 

i dont understand, why are stores selling toys before a pr series airs anyway when kids dont know what the show is about? i mean if they buy toys and kids wont like the series wouldnt that be a waste of money?

Well, the main reason is so that there are new Power Rangers toys on shelves for Christmas.

Because there are people like us, who know about it beforehand, and can buy them before the kids start scrambling. I think they're actually trying appeal to the collector's market also.

As a kid, I think it would be cool to have Power Ranger toys in advance.

It's purely a merchandising standpoint for retail stores. The items are shipped early on in time 1-2 months before the Spring or Fall Waves so that the stores have the items ready to be merchandised for those seasons. The stores do their resets to new planograms/mods on a semi-annual basis, Target/Wal-Mart doing them in January, so receiving new items in November and December allows them to get a healthy stock of items to be merchandised into the new planograms.

The other reason for the Spring wave is the obvious, to have items out for Christmas shopping to maximize profit.

You clearly haven't been collecting American toys very long because most toylines get stocked about 2 or 3 months before the fiction it goes with starts.

The reason is simple: The USA is a lot of land. The shipments start early so that every store gets the toys in stock before the fiction begins. The more rural areas will get the toys last and many times they won't even get those toys before the fiction is out and people are looking for them. The end result is that many places get toys much earlier then other and have a huge running go ahead of the fiction.

There are exceptions, most notable Star Wars' strict street dates from time to time. In that case, the store's shipping schedule stays the same, but they can't put the toys out until the date given.

Would you rather have it be like this or like the last two Transformers shows where the toys didn't hit the shelves until the show had been on for months?

God No. I'd much rather PR keep doing what they're doing. Also not do Hasbro's First Edition BS.

the FE stuff is still bs, I mean I have seen ONE FE Starscream, Arcee, and Vehicon at my local TRU about two months ago, went the next week, GONE, haven't seen sny since, or the FE voyagers, none of those

But I have a question for Bandai, Why U No Release Gosei Morpher Early With Everything Else?? That is one my to wants right now!

The Gosei Morpher has been released. Raz has one, and so do a few others.

Did you see what happened with Thundercats? Bandai released the Thundercats stuff 3 months after the show premiered and they sat on the shelves until the line was canceled back in April. That is why toys should be out in advanced or at the exact same time a show premiers.

Hey. Thanks to that kind of marketing I picked up Lion-O, Mumm-Ra, Tigra, and the Tank for under 25 bucks.

The ThunderCats toyline did not fail because it was out to early, it failed because Cartoon Network didn't even try to find a child audience for this. Cartoon Network, being the morons that they are, only consider a show sucessful if it sales a shit ton of toys. For that they need a strong child audience, not an adult audience.

For more evidence that the timing doesn't matter, look at Ninja Turtles. TMNT and ThunderCats have the same toy to show time frame (3 months, give or take). ThunderCats is still shelfwarming. Ninja Turtles is currently sold out almost everywhere I go. The difference is that Nickelodeon marketed the hell out of TMNT. Cartoon Network gave on ThunderCats before it even started.

Basically the bottomline is that Cartoon Network is why we can't have nice things.

makes sense, it's better to have something on the shelves before a pr season airs, because after they watch it, they go to the stores and buy them and replay the episode with them or whatever.

i do have a question though, this is a long time ago, were the thunderzords for mmpr2 released before they aired on the show?

It's not like MegaForce's early launch was anything new, to be honest. Not including the Super Samurai season of toys (Which... I dunno. I don't think count as a separate toyline anyway) my Walmart has consistantly put out the next show's toys for Power Rangers out around the week of Black Friday since... I wanna say Lightspeed Rescue.

I think his point is just that.With the first edition Prime toys,you dont see them cause of collectors.With the Megaforce line being out early,i think their afraid that collectors will snatch up all the good stuff before the kids who dont know about it get to see it.

Most kids go buy the toys after seeing the show so they know they like it,but if collectors know about it already then the kids might not have a chance.

I should know,it happened with my nephew.We had the new Lego City Mine set on layaway at Walmart for his christmas present.A day before his birthday we went to get it and it mysteriously vanished.They also said there were none in stock,so his christmas was almost ruined.Had we intended to use that for his birthday,it would've been ruined.

And I by no mean am hiding behind a curtain.I like the early release of toys that i collect and know about.It gives me a chance to actually get them.But just look at whats happened with the FE Prime line.Their impossible to find and its cause of collectors.There's two kinds of collectors to me.Those that collect cause they like a series,and those that collect for money.The ones that do it for money I can't stand.

I think people are giving way too much credit to the collectors here. There's a massive difference in the amount of Transformers collectors vs. Power Rangers collectors, which is pretty evident seeing as PR items aimed at collectors and with a lot less appeal to kids and parents, like the TRU releases of the SHF Shinkengers, or the 4-inch Rita Repulsa, have a tendency to end up shelfwarming a lot more than the stuff that kids are usually wonted to buy. Transformers collector's items, on the other hand, generally remain understocked until they sell out, like the big name Masterpiece figures (barring Walmart catastrophes like Skywarp). That's because Transformers has had longer to establish itself as a brand, gain fans, and it didn't have this really awkward phase of getting thrown around between fame and obscurity like PR did. I don't know if Power Rangers will ever get to the point of Transformers in terms of the fanbase and the amount of affordable toys aimed at collectors, but it seems to be trying to head there. However, for now, it's apples and oranges.

that's the frustration with that when i was a kid with getting the thunderzords, i was desperate in getting the thunderzords because i saw it on tv and it was awesome and i could only get them by ordering them because no stores had them and 2 months later my dad called about thunderzord assault team and they said there's no way they are getting them in and he had to cancel and i was so heartbroken until christmas when my dad found them at tru and i was so happy and it was 4 months later i had to wait just to get them.

before that, this one store was collecting pr toys and wanted $64 for the thunderzord assault team, i was so freaking mad.

GI Joe Renegades got it the worst. I mean the toys didn't even hit the shelves till long after the show ended.

It's true that it'll be a while before they are the same,but there's still that fear in the air of not getting the Megazord or figure you want cause they might be out.Trust me,PR has alot more affordable toys then Transformers.Most collectors nowadays lean towards the third party Transformer stuff cause it's just that much better.But most of that stuff is add-ons,which pretty much makes whatever its adding on to go through the roof rarity and price wise.I remember when Energon Bruticus was going for 15 bucks maybe,now your lucky to even find it.And when you do find it,hope you have an arm and a leg.

But thats why I like Bandai.Take the new Megaforce Gosei Great.In some ways it's better then the original to some.I do like that they took the need for Datas out so you didnt have to pay an arm and a leg for him and the headers needed.Now you just have to buy the header bikes and your good to go.That and they are upping their game paint apps wise.Megaforce Gosei Great looks and feels alot better then the Samurai Megazord.They are improving slowly,so they dont need third party items.Which means most of the newer megazords and items released wont be as expensive or hard to find.Which is a good thing.:)

Looking purely at retail here, how many stores that carry Megaforce items could you not find a Megazord or a Zord set in before Christmas? I don't know about you, but I saw them practically everywhere I went. Third-party add-on companies don't dictate when, which or how many Hasbro toys get put on shelves by retailers. When I'm talking about affordable toys that cater to collectors, I'm talking about their entire Generations line, and the Universe lines before that, and so on and so forth. That whole CHUGURTSUTHULHU line, or whatever ridiculous acronym is flying around nowadays. The secondary market, which you're referring to with stuff like Bruticus, is a whole other beast. Bruticus wasn't expensive at all until the third-party add-ons were announced or release, one of the two. In fact, I remember Target being so overstocked that they had to clearance both him and Superion, down to something like $5. I know that's what I got mine for. At any rate, there's no fear that collectors will snatch up Power Rangers toys when Transformers toys, which are far more sought after by more collectors, end up shelfwarming. It's just the fact of the matter that collectors don't make up that much of the sales. They're a vocal minority, and as such, no real threat to stock.

And the reason Power Rangers toys don't have third party add-ons isn't that the figures are getting so good you can't possibly think of ways to improve them; it's that's there's not enough demand for someone to start producing add-ons for a reasonable price. That, and PR designs tend to adhere so strictly to on-show designs that collectors don't really see a need for original designs. I don't see anyone with their Megazords displayed in some wacky Zordbuilder combination, and with good reason. BoA is all about cutting whatever corners possible to go from the individual zord modes to the robot mode.

I meant in stores, I know amazon has had a few, (sold out what 5 times this week already). and I don't want to order online, because I know the minute I do, ill see it at my local tru or walmart :p

That's what I'm saying about Hasbro and third party companies.They don't effect them directly on how many they put out,but they do effect them.Like you said,Superion was 5 bucks till the add ons came out.

As for Power Rangers not being snatched up by collectors,I just came back from toys'r'us,which on the east coast is the best chance to find Power Rangers toys....Not a single Gosei Great to be found.Only thing they had was the header vehicles and the 4 inch Gosei/Megaforce Red.

I think we can say that gosei/megaforce red is a shelfwarmer already, my local walmart had one of the other four each and about 6 reds

I wouldn't make that assumption so quickly.

Exactly. Right now, the target demographic has very little reason to care about Megaforce. If I were 11 again and Turbo was ending, and there were Astro Megaships on the shelf and Red Space Rangers, I wouldn't give a damn about them. I would notice new stuff was coming out, meaning old stuff was going to be leaving soon. I would be making sure I had what I wanted of the Turbo stuff. This is exactly what the kids are doing with Samurai. They are buying up the toys that they care about and are leaving soon.

Kids aren't blind. They see the Megaforce stuff. They just barely know what it is, and Samurai is the freshest thing in their mind. Zords were my biggest toys as a kid. I had very little interest in zords of seasons that either just released or hadn't aired yet.

It was the same thing for me as the MMPR S3 toys were coming out. All I knew were Thunder Zords and Tiger Zords. I didn't give a damn about a Ninja Megazord until I went to a movie theater.

good point, but if MF Red ends up a shelfwarmer, I called it. :lol

but hey releasing early and kids buying up samurai helps collectors trying to get the new stuff before all the kids in febuary :lol

But Bandai's attitude toward the line did not help either. They do an 8inch series, then decide to change it to 6inch, pretty much telling everyone who bought their $20 8inchers to **** off. Then when they were asked about the different color joints, they said there was no way to fix that. When Pixel Dan interviewed Bandai and asked about Thundercats, the guy rolled his eyes and started to talk about the new Ben 10 crap. And then they revealed nothing for 6 months. A toyline that is geared towards children needs to have new product coming out every quarter.

And where are you shopping to see Ninja Turtles is sold out everywhere? My Targets, TRUs, and Walmarts are littered with as much Turtles as they have WWF figures, and their stock has not needed to be replenished at all. No one has even bothered to stock those Classics versions yet either due to how poorly the line is selling by me.

You must be an exception. I agree, TMNT are uniformly flying off shelves in New England with most pegs being totally barren around the holidays. I keep hoping I'd be able to get a set on discount, but these are seriously selling through.

In 90% of the targets and TRU's I go into, the TMNT shelves and pegs are nearly empty, with PR's areas being spread out to take over where the TMNT were. Wal-Mart, you can't say the same since they don't put the TMNT next to PR like TRU and Target. TMNT stuff just disappeared over the holidays, but Samurai stuff kept going and going also.

Wow, really? I'm going to have to try and remember to take pictures the next time I go to these stores to show you how much stock my stores have of them. The Target I used to live across the street from filled their shelves up back in June of the new turtles stuff and I don't think a single one had been sold when I moved away from that Target last month. I personally find them to be ugly and too small for their price point. Just give me some fully posseable Turtles and Shredder from the original comic, and not something as fragile as what NECA pooped out.