[Tokumonkey]

We can only speculate on why this year's toys haven't sold well. The toys used the same concept as ToQger, with the individual mecha being the transformation widget. Were the sales for that show horrible?

My own guess as to why sales have been low hinges on a couple of things. The first is how the show presents the teams. LupinRanger got the best designs and concept. "Hey, kids! You can play as the super-cool phantom thieves, or as the relatively dorky police who fight the other heroes for no good reason?" (Seriously, the thing were the LupinRangers don't actually commit crimes makes the PatRangers look pretty bad.) Half the heroes just aren't appealing in terms of the toys.

The other thought I had is that the toys just aren't cool-looking. The Dial Fighters might not be bad if they didn't have little hats. The Trigger Machines... I mean, Patren3's Trigger Machine is just astonishingly goofy-looking, and Patren2's isn't much better. GoodStriker doesn't look good in either of its vehicle modes. The VS Changers are unwieldy with the VS Vehicles attached. The less said about the baton/megaphones the better. The Lupin swords' gimmick is a claw that never gets used in the show.

I dunno whether any of those things were actually major contributing factors, of course. One other thing did change; Sentai is airing later in the morning. I wonder whether that had a sales impact.

Regardless, Sentai has been experimenting with structure for a couple of years, and Kyuranger seemed to do pretty well, so I don't think Bandai will be scared completely off the idea of continuing to try new things if VS sales don't recover.