Blood for the Baron!

I've just read that the P.O.C.line will not be released in the Uk.To be honest I'm not really surprised by this as the Rise Of Cobra stuff released over here was sparse & the file cards on the figures & vehicles was short.
I get most of my Joe stuff online but then I'm lucky enough to be earning good money to pay for it.
I feel angry that yet again the British fan is kicked in the balls regarding GIJoe.

No wonder. If I was product manager for Hasbro in Europe I would have done the same. Hasbro is a commercial company, bottom line it is just a question of supply and demand. In Europe there is hardly any demand.

For decades now GI Joe has been part of American childhood. Every kid knows GI Joe. Despite video games and other stuff GI Joe remains popular. Even without the movie GI Joe was still selling pretty OK. GI Joe is one of Hasbro's core toys in the US. A very large collector base, nothing compared to Star Wars, but still.

In the eighties when everything American was considered to be cool, GI Joe flourished in Europe. GI Joe has been aways for a long time, it has hardly any legacy, nowadays America is not all that cool no more, so popularity of GI Joe is less and less. In Europe the toys really needed the movie to get any sales momentum, but the movie didn't do much really. In Holland the toys were on sale rather quickly. So it is a logical step that new waves of toys were cancelled.

Same as the 60's really, G.I.joe was considered too American sounding...I like & prefer the idea of being an international force rapid reaction force. Even the movie tried to be more like that, I guess Hollywood thought that idea would appeal & sell better to the rest of the world too...did this approach put off any U.S. fans?

not surprised.

tbh I'm not surprised. Especially at £8+ a figure RRP, that's an awful lot of pocket money. I know it's a fairly standard price at the moment but that's why the racks are full of half price or less figures. If they're too expensive to buy when they're "hot" they'll just become peg warmers as the adult collectors complete their sets and the kids will have moved on to something else by the time the figures are on sale.

they need to rename and rebrand the line

as jaye put it, very well, GI JOE is a very american thing. they need to release these figures under the ACTION MAN brand, make some new figures of course for Action Man and Friends but have them fight these guys instead of GI JOE fighting them

Again you would need maybe a new figure or something for Action Man and some of his friends but you could frankenjoe several figures for him from the current line.


have him fight cobra, slowly introduce the GI JOE fantasy to kids by taking a well known brit character fighting a US bad guy ( cobra )

then slowly add people from the GI JOE team

but still always have the line called ACTION MAN

thats my 2 cents

This could put me back in the import business. Still, I had a nice break with the ROC stuff

The lack of success is nothing to do with the brand perception, but more the price positioning and marketing.

The UK had no hype or build up for the film, so there was no anticipation and demand. When the toys were released Hasbro done the worst possible thing - discount the toys from launch. This was done with the Indy line and lessons should have been learned The perception becomes that £8 is too expensive, even though that is what is paid for a Star Wars figure (and they still fell within the top 10 toys sold in volume last year).

New toy launches should never be discounted at launch. The money is better invested in point of sale and advertising for awareness and mail away promotions for repeat purchases.
Another failing with distribution in the UK as a whole is to focus too much stock order for first one or two waves and not release further waves. The knock on effect is for those that do pick up interest in the line, soon run out of things to buy as no new product is introduced, whilst as *cough* adults we can easily turn to specialists and the web for more products, most kids or parents don't know, and they are the lifeblood. The UK has actually missed out on a lot of new product waves.

There were no GI Joe in the line up at Toy Fair back in January, but that does not mean it will never come back to the UK again.

I hope.

Dave, very well spoken!

To a certain extend it's a joint venture, but bottom down Paramount promotes the movie and Hasbro takes care of toy promotion. The problem with movie related toys is that the moment the movie doesn't do so well, the toys won't either. Of course you can put in a lot of extra marketing money/effort, but the effect will be pretty limited.

GI Joe the movie lost momentum pretty soon. For a toy manufacturer it is key to clear the warehouse quickly. It's better to sell with small or no margin than being stuck with stock.

Well, I'm sure the Pursuit Of won't come to Chile either. Why? Because, as with a lot of collections, Hasbro brought only ONE wave here and then they went to sleep under a tree. No Cover Girl, no Paris Pursuit , and obviously no Pursuit of in the future