Indy is dead. Long live Indy.

Did Hasbro kill the Indiana Jones line?

  • Yes, they mishandled the license and blamed the fans.

    Votes: 55 64.0%
  • I'm just happy we got anything.

    Votes: 27 31.4%
  • No, they did a great job all around.

    Votes: 4 4.7%

  • Total voters
    86

Deckard

New member
Did Hasbro screw themselves and fans?


Hasbro says the movie has to be good and current in order to sell figures.


Yet Hasbro releases the Raiders wave figures b4 Crystal Skull.


Everyone is anticipating this line, but when we get to our Walmarts, the paint jobs are AWFUL. Everyone passes on crap.


Next Crystal Skull waves comes out, still crap paint, no ones interested.


Hasbro realises mistake, fixes paint apps, Indy starts to sell well.


Crystal Skull Film comes out.


Turns out Hasbro jumped the gun, things they released have no part in the film or just don't exist. (Jacketless Mutt, Jungle Chopper Vehicle crap thing...)


Instead of new figures Hasbro continues to give us the exact same stuff already sitting on pegs, the Pegs are flooded and nothing sells. Turns out people don't need 6 of Mutt with no Jacket since he isnt even in the film.


Last Crusade wave comes out, Finally these figures sell like hot cakes. Hasbro can't keep the shelves stocked their so popular and cool.


Hasbro still can't keep the pegs stocked.


Hasbro still can't keep the pegs stocked?


Hasbro still can't keep the pegs stocked?! WTF?!


Hasbro is stocking the pegs with more Raiders figures and more Crystal Skull figures even tho the pegs are still flooded with them. We don't see any new Last Crusade even tho thats what is selling...Umm what?


No one can find Last Crusade figures and continue to ask WTF Hasbro?


Retail Stores can't sell 120 Jacketless Mutts (According to Hasbro a top 3 popular figure)


Retail stores stop ordering Indiana Jones bcuz Hasbro won't send the stuff that actually sells.


Hasbro says the line is dying bcuz no one will buy it. NO **** IDIOTS. They say it's our fault not theirs'.


Weekly questions point out Hasbro screwed the paint apps up, Hasbro can't stock Last Crusade which is selling well, and Hasbro is flooding pegs with Crap like Mutt.


Hasbro responds, We corrected the paint almost right away (took 2 months of fan *****ing) We couldn't predict the Jungle Cutter wouldn't be in the film(Idiots) And they tell us Jacketless Mutt is one of the best selling most popular figures(clueless ass holes and/or liars)


Hasbro can't keep their own website stocked with Last Crusade figures, yet Collectors according to them, aren't a big enough market to sell to. You mean like big enough to make your own stock sell out? Hmmm.


Indiana Jones will be cancled if we don't start buying more during the holidays.


Temple of Doom line starts to show up. They sell on ebay for $30-40. and are the most wildly popular wave thus far.


Again Hasbro can't keep Temple or Crusade stocked on their website. A seemingly good sign.


The Temple wave goes up on their site and sells out completely in under 2 minutes on 3 differant occasions. Not even Sideshow Collectibles exclusives sell out this fast.


Hasbro again tells us these collectors aren't a big enough target to sell to, even though Hasbro didn't have enough of there products to sell to said collectors. They bought everything Hasbro made 3 times yet that wasn't enough.


The line is canceled.
 

Mike D

New member
I haven't put this much thought into the demise of Indy, but I think your timeline is slightly skewed. From what I remember, the line was cancelled prior to the TOD wave hitting shelves. Therefore, the issues with selling out so fast have to do with speculators and collecters buying up product that is limited due to the fact that Hasbro has cancelled the line- meaning that when the current supply is exhausted there will be no further runs. Also, the fact that these are showing up in supermarkets as opposed the the 3 largest toy retailers in the country is evidence that Hasbro was right in cancelling the line from a business standpoint- the retailers just don't want the product anymore.
Also, you have to keep in mind that conventional wisdom dictates that the current movie is going to be the hottest property, so it became the logical thing to include those KOTCS figures in every new assortment which limited our access to LC figures because their assortments were cut with KOTCS figs. And from what I remember, the jungle cutter vehicle (though silly) did appear in the film.
I'm just as disapointed as everyone else in the cancelation of Indy, but it seems to me that Hasbro followed a normally successful marketing format with this line, and it just didn't work out. The truth of the matter (in my opinion) is that kids just don't want figures of guys in suits, nazi and russian soldiers in drab uniforms, and Arabs with swords. The Indy movies (except for TOD) just don't have outrageous enough visual styling to make exciting toys for kids. That's why the line was so unsuccessful even in the early 80's, which was Indy's hayday. I think if a kid has a choice between a figure of a guy in a fedora, or an old man with an umbrella and a book, or a kid in a leather jacket and a brightly colored, vac metalized ninja trooper from space with power action whatever and light up what not the latter is going to win out most every time.

Just my opinion.
 

Lambonius

New member
Mike D said:
I haven't put this much thought into the demise of Indy, but I think your timeline is slightly skewed. From what I remember, the line was cancelled prior to the TOD wave hitting shelves. Therefore, the issues with selling out so fast have to do with speculators and collecters buying up product that is limited due to the fact that Hasbro has cancelled the line- meaning that when the current supply is exhausted there will be no further runs. Also, the fact that these are showing up in supermarkets as opposed the the 3 largest toy retailers in the country is evidence that Hasbro was right in cancelling the line from a business standpoint- the retailers just don't want the product anymore.
Also, you have to keep in mind that conventional wisdom dictates that the current movie is going to be the hottest property, so it became the logical thing to include those KOTCS figures in every new assortment which limited our access to LC figures because their assortments were cut with KOTCS figs. And from what I remember, the jungle cutter vehicle (though silly) did appear in the film.
I'm just as disapointed as everyone else in the cancelation of Indy, but it seems to me that Hasbro followed a normally successful marketing format with this line, and it just didn't work out. The truth of the matter (in my opinion) is that kids just don't want figures of guys in suits, nazi and russian soldiers in drab uniforms, and Arabs with swords. The Indy movies (except for TOD) just don't have outrageous enough visual styling to make exciting toys for kids. That's why the line was so unsuccessful even in the early 80's, which was Indy's hayday. I think if a kid has a choice between a figure of a guy in a fedora, or an old man with an umbrella and a book, or a kid in a leather jacket and a brightly colored, vac metalized ninja trooper from space with power action whatever and light up what not the latter is going to win out most every time.

Just my opinion.

I hate to jump on the Hasbro-hater bandwagon, but this is just too forgiving a viewpoint when you look and consider all the really blatant mistakes Hasbro made. Sure they have a successful business model with Star Wars, but anyone could see way in advance that the Indy line was more of a collector-only property than Star Wars. They should have realized this (like all of us did from the start,) and adjusted their business model accordingly.

Additionally, I will never understand why, once the numbers started to come in and it became blatantly apparent that the the shelves were clogged and the old lower-quality figures weren't selling, why Hasbro wouldn't adjust their case assortments to compensate for this. This, really, was the murder weapon when it came to the Indy line. If it only took a month or so to correct paint apps on a botched first two waves, then why the heck couldn't they have had the time to correct case assortments which were choking the life out of what had started out as a thriving line?? There just isn't a good explanation for this, and there certainly is no excuse on their part.
 

Deckard

New member
And it wasn't until the very last Q&A session they said that it was indeed over, up until then they kept saying that they were going to watch and see how well they sold through the holiday season. So the timeline isn't off.

My guess is that was just BS to keep people interested, and they already canned it by then.

If you look at the sales of ToD, had they stayed open minded and actually gave it the chance they claimed to, there would be no way they would have stopped.

We were led on by the Q&As, teased with Raiders wave 2, and then neglected and told we were'nt even good enough for some sort of collector's set or exclusive.

That's just not right.
 

sandiegojones

New member
Indy, especially now that Harrison's 66 years old, doesn't exactly appeal to little boys like Transformers and Star Wars The Clone Wars (which are Hasbro's two biggest products).

Fanboys don't make up a large enough percentage of the market.

I think the LEGO Indy is actually far more popular. My son loves them, but he has no Indy action figures.

If there's another movie (or animated show) then the Indy figures will be back.
 

Billy Ray

Well-known member
I've got to agree with Lambonius, the biggest contributor to the death of this line was the crappy case assortments. TLC and TOD cases had one each of the new figures and mulitples of the same figures that were already clogging the shelves. If a new case of TLC or TOD even made it to the shelves, the new figures were quickly snatched up and even more shirtless Mutts and RPG Indys were added to the rest of the peg warmers. Where is the sense in that? They don't do this with Star Wars, why do it with Indy?

Even if the movie were awesome, the Mutt character was every child's dream, and the Jungle Cutter was driven by Hannah Montana and in every scene it still doesn't make sense to overload the shelves with the same figures. How many of one figure do you need (unless you are tnswman)? Especially if you are a kid. It's not like were talking Clone Troopers or something.
 

phantom train

New member
Billy Ray said:
I've got to agree with Lambonius, the biggest contributor to the death of this line was the crappy case assortments. TLC and TOD cases had one each of the new figures and mulitples of the same figures that were already clogging the shelves. If a new case of TLC or TOD even made it to the shelves, the new figures were quickly snatched up and even more shirtless Mutts and RPG Indys were added to the rest of the peg warmers. Where is the sense in that? They don't do this with Star Wars, why do it with Indy?

Even if the movie were awesome, the Mutt character was every child's dream, and the Jungle Cutter was driven by Hannah Montana and in every scene it still doesn't make sense to overload the shelves with the same figures. How many of one figure do you need (unless you are tnswman)? Especially if you are a kid. It's not like were talking Clone Troopers or something.

I concur completely. The Big H. has been producing the new SW figures
(POTF2 - on) since 1995 and those have been hugely successful, so you would think that by 2008 they would have gotten wise as to which case assortments work and which ones don't. This is just speculation on my part, but I think a lot of it had to do with indifference - I just don't think that they were commited to the IJ line, and figured (pun intended) that if it didn't do well, it was no real skin off their noses.

As I've said on other related IJ Collecting threads (on this site), I feel this line was handled improperly from the beginning. The main focus for these figures should have been collectors, not kids. A good parallel was the very sucessful new "G.I. Joe - ARAH" line (which I also collect) - when that line first premiered in Summer 2007, the quantities were limited and hard to find, and these toys were obviously specifically aimed at collectors. The IJ line should have been handled the same way.
 

Trennas

New member
WHen the Hasbro Indy figures started to appear in stores here in the Netherlands, my first reaction was pretty much like: o, my gawd, these have to be some of the ugliest action figures I've ever seen. Blotchy paint, horribly visible joints, not to even mention the fact that they didnt even remotely resembled the actual movie cast.. So I completely skipped them and haven't looked back at them since.. I don't even think that Crusade figures were ever released here, though I could check..

The Indy Lego's however, are spot on! I had a lot of fun getting my hands on those and building away like I was 10 years old again. Though the Raiders sets actually appealed a whole lot more to me then the Crystal Skull sets; but that could just be nostalgia :)
 

thelaw

New member
I agree with the crappy case assortments as far as far as TLC goes, but I think there is more to it than that with TOD. I find it interesting that even the TOD Indy is only one-per-case in the one and only case assortment of TOD. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that this line was cancelled MUCH earlier than we think.

One of the most telling statements comes from the EE listing for the Wave 4 case: "Assortment changed by the manufacturer June 27, 2008." (see http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=HND40070D )I can't imagine how this could have been changed from something WORSE, so it must have been at least sa little better.

My conclusion is that something changed before that, something along the lines of Hasbro telling their factories to stop production at the infamous "minimum profitable number" and redistribute the case breakdowns so they could maximize remaining case sales.

On a possibly related topic, I got my ToD cases from EE yesterday and the box said "IJ 3.75inch figure assortment." There was no indication anywhere on the box that this was a wave 4 case.
 

Errex

New member
Well, I am thankful for what we got, but I think ultimatley what killed the line was that the new movie wasn't really as well received, and had to go against really tough summer blockbuster competition.

I do think Hasbro over extended their production over too many toy lines this summer. The had the Marvel licenses, Indy and Clone Wars. They decided to produce as much of everything as they could, thus neglecting variety on specific toy lines. I envision them having to choose between churning out 10,000 jacketless Mutt's against having to halt production, however briefly that might be, to fit the factories for a more balanced case assortment.

Oh, well, maybe if there ever is an Indy V (I think I'd like it in the animated style(y) ) we will get more Indy merch.
 

phantom train

New member
Errex said:
Well, I am thankful for what we got, but I think ultimatley what killed the line was that the new movie wasn't really as well received, and had to go against really tough summer blockbuster competition.

I do think Hasbro over extended their production over too many toy lines this summer. The had the Marvel licenses, Indy and Clone Wars. They decided to produce as much of everything as they could, thus neglecting variety on specific toy lines. I envision them having to choose between churning out 10,000 jacketless Mutt's against having to halt production, however briefly that might be, to fit the factories for a more balanced case assortment.

Oh, well, maybe if there ever is an Indy V (I think I'd like it in the animated style(y) ) we will get more Indy merch.

Good point - there were an unusally large amount of other licensed movie-related toys by Hasbro out this summer, i.e. "Iron Man", "Hulk", and "Clone Wars" (not to mention the regular SW line).
For example, if the KOTCS had come out in Summer 2007, the IJ figures would probably have had less competition (though there was huge push that summer for the "Transformers" film, so who knows....)
 

Kevin

Member
Deckard said:
Turns out Hasbro jumped the gun, things they released have no part in the film or just don't exist. (Jacketless Mutt, Jungle Chopper Vehicle crap thing...)

I don't think this is quite fair. Hasbro had to start production long before the movie was finished, and were thus forced to make decisions based on what they were told by Paramount. I'm sure Hasbro was not too happy when they realized that the one KOTCS vehicle they produced is destroyed within mere minutes of its appearance in the film.


Deckard said:
[T]hey kept saying that they were going to watch and see how well they sold through the holiday season ... My guess is that was just BS to keep people interested, and they already canned it by then.

Agree completely. And really, we should have seen through the BS. After all, with the amount of time it takes to produce and ship a wave of figures, how could they possibly have waited until after the holiday season sales figures to come in to decide whether to keep producton going, yet still have the ROTLA wave 2 on shelves by January or February of '09? If they really had adopted a "wait-and-see" appraoch, ROTLA wave 2 probably wouldn't have hit shelves until mid-spring, leaving a gap of around five months between waves. Not very likely. Ah well, what's the saying about hindsight?


With regard to your poll, I chose the second option, because I have a huge collection of Indy figures that I didn't have this time last year, and I'm pretty happy about that.
 

bonoferox

Active member
As much as Ive said it before, I have to say how happy I am with what we got. I would have loved more, and I would have bought whatever Hasbro threw at us, but I never throught we would get a new Indy movie again let alone a whole new line of toys and collectibles.
 

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
Billy Ray said:
I've got to agree with Lambonius, the biggest contributor to the death of this line was the crappy case assortments. TLC and TOD cases had one each of the new figures and mulitples of the same figures that were already clogging the shelves. If a new case of TLC or TOD even made it to the shelves, the new figures were quickly snatched up and even more shirtless Mutts and RPG Indys were added to the rest of the peg warmers. Where is the sense in that? They don't do this with Star Wars, why do it with Indy?

Even if the movie were awesome, the Mutt character was every child's dream, and the Jungle Cutter was driven by Hannah Montana and in every scene it still doesn't make sense to overload the shelves with the same figures. How many of one figure do you need (unless you are tnswman)? Especially if you are a kid. It's not like were talking Clone Troopers or something.

I completely agree. The case assortments were unforgivably dumb, a major tactical error which played a major part in the death of the line.

Re-releasing the same pegwarming figures in the new cases while hundreds if not thousands of fans will never see ToD figures and, in some cases, haven't even see the LC wave was just ridiculous.



sandiegojones said:
Indy, especially now that Harrison's 66 years old, doesn't exactly appeal to little boys like Transformers and Star Wars The Clone Wars (which are Hasbro's two biggest products).

Fanboys don't make up a large enough percentage of the market.

Great point.

The fact is, the Indy toys were never going to be a big property. Even back in 81, when Raiders of the Lost Ark was a phenomenon, the biggest thing in the world, the toys didn't sell. I was a kid at the time and an avid "raiders" fan and SW toy collector and I didn't even know these existed.

I did have a 12" Indy, but that's all I thought there was.

The property just doesn't lend itself to the same kind of kid-friendly interest that SW, Transformers and many other toy lines do. For whatever reason, kids generally don't wan to "play" Indiana Jones.

I think they were unwise to not recognize that the collectors would really drive the line and they should have tried to position the line to maximize that market, while enjoying some kid spillover.

But the fact is the toys DID make money for Hasbro. They aren't losing money on this, the decision to end the line is a little cowardly based on their projections. I definitely agree that interest is waning and would be impossible to sustain, but I think they could have shifted the focus to collectors and given us another 1 to 3 waves and could have still turned a profit.

For as much as they ***** about not being able to lean on internet sales, the ToD figures vanished in less than 30 minutes each of the painfully few times they actually showed up on HTS.

I can't accept that there weren't some viable options for at least getting the 2nd raiders wave and I'll always be frustrated by that.

That said, I have pretty much accepted the death of the line at this point and, despite my frustrations, I am looking back on the experience with fondness and an appreciation for the really good toys that we did get.

I enjoyed the last 6 months enormously and am having a lot of fun with my Indy collection, incomplete though it may forever be.

It also might have permanently killed (or at least seriously curtailed) my interest in SW toys, oddly enough.
 

Marty Jones

Member
Huge blunder on part of Hasbro. If we see an Indy V and they get another shot at it, I hope they've learned their lesson. I used to be an avid Star Wars collector and have ceased all Hasbro purchases because of what happened. I still haven't even found half of the Last Crusade wave or any of the Temple of Doom wave.
 

Lambonius

New member
Lance Quazar said:
For as much as they ***** about not being able to lean on internet sales, the ToD figures vanished in less than 30 minutes each of the painfully few times they actually showed up on HTS.

I can't accept that there weren't some viable options for at least getting the 2nd raiders wave and I'll always be frustrated by that.

That said, I have pretty much accepted the death of the line at this point and, despite my frustrations, I am looking back on the experience with fondness and an appreciation for the really good toys that we did get.

I enjoyed the last 6 months enormously and am having a lot of fun with my Indy collection, incomplete though it may forever be.

It also might have permanently killed (or at least seriously curtailed) my interest in SW toys, oddly enough.

30 minutes? Try less than 5! :rolleyes: Oh well. I love the collection I have and I always will. I very much hope that sometime in the near future we may be able to build it up even bigger with an Indy 5 restart of the line, but I'm happy with what I've got, even without the second Raiders wave.

As for collecting SW, I haven't collected any of the Hasbro figures EVER (I had the main characters from the original mid-90s Kenner line when I was younger, but nothing since then.) The single-carded figures are mostly too obscure to interest me these days, but some of the new Original Trilogy Battle Packs are quite nice and have piqued my interest. I've picked up the Hoth one and have been eying the Endor one, and I'm looking forward to picking up the Falcon training pack when it becomes more widely available as well. Can't beat cool characters in a nice boxed diorama scene, even if they are a bit more pricey than the Indy ones. :) Before the Indy figures, I would never have conceived of buying any new SW toys, so I guess in my case it had the opposite effect!
 

Crusade>Raiders

New member
The failure of the line is for a multitude of reasons, although its mostly Hasbro's fault.

1. New movie kinda sucked. This is a generation of kids that think the best adventuere on the movie screen is Rick O'Connel, and after Kingdom I can't blame them.

2.Other movies DIDN'T suck. Oh sure we had crap like Love Guru and Don't Mess With the Zohan, but we also had The Dark Knight, Wall-E, Iron Man, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Kung-Fu Panda, Tropic Thunder that were pretty awesome, actually. A lot of movie audiences were preoucupied with superior films to focus on overly CGI monkey armies swinging with Shia LeBeouf.

3.Raiders/Crystal Skull pain jobs were gabarge. Nobody is going to buy crappy looking figures.

4.TOO MANY MUTT WILLIAMS FIGURES! I wnet to Target, they had one LC Indy, one Henry Sr. and SEVEN shirtless Mutts. Nobody wants to buy that crap Hasbro!

5. LC/ToD line had poor distbrition. People nationwide have been searching for these little bastards in all kinds of stores, and unless you get lucky at Krogers, you just aint fine them. Be prepared to pay up the nose on eBay for 20 bucks a pop for a Short Round action figure.

Even Koto is cancelling its line...people just aint buying Indy stuff. Oh well...as long as Gentle Giant gets around to that Indy/Henry Sr. motorcycle statue, I'll be ok.

http://www.actionfigureinsider.com/gallery2/album/Gentle-Giant/1217044721-8.php

^That is incredible, ME WANT!
 

michael

Well-known member
I wanted to vote for both the mismanaging and the happy with, but in the end I chose the happy with what we got option. I mean, Temple of Doom action figures, that are sick, hard to complain about that.
But just to echo what has already been said, the case assortment was terrible. Regardless of whether not the film was good or not, or Indy just wasn't selling to anyone, quality case assortments would have helped the line out so much more. And people could actually, you know...find the figures that they released without being the lucky person who snagged the hard to find ones because that case was just put up on the pegs. That is ridiculous. But they put all of their marbles in the KOTCS and Raiders it seems.
Would've been to nice to have a mixed Temple and Crusade assortment huh?
 
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