Re: New Doctor Who Figures?
I certainly think the Classics line has never been given proper support,marketing them mainly to kids,the vast majority of which likely weren't aware that the show existed prior to 2005 is one of the more ridiculous strategies I've known in all the time I've been collecting.
I don't think that's true at all. Even if we pretend kids had no knowledge of Doctor Who as an institution there's still the repeated exposure to the original through DWA, DWM, SJA, DVDs, Totally, Confidential,
School Reunion and
Time Crash. But more to the point, the classic line didn't pegwarm compared to the new series line, which suggest kids were buying them at retail. Let's not forget they did well enough to prompt a faux Wave 2 in the form of Cybermen, which again virtually vanished from the shelves. All indications are the classic line
outperformed CO's expectations. I understand the reasoning for shifting the first three Doctors to retail exclusives but they probably would have sold just fine on shelves anyway.
Doing a Classic line and not including ANY companions but especially Sarah Jane & The Brig who are also known to modern viewers is completely f'ing stupid as is the lack of a Classic Davros or Master ,not to mention all the other possible characters from a show that lasted 26 FREAKING YEARS!!!
On the other hand, monsters outsell human characters and CO is in the business of shifting toys. They got it right. I can see classic companions as retailer exclusives but kids are going to see a Zygon and a boy in a kilt and pick the Zygon every time, even if they don't know what story it's from. At the time of Wave 1 the Brig was an unknown quantity and Sarah Jane already had five figures made of her.
All in all I think people are being absurdly blind to reality here. We've had 17 classic figures already and we're guaranteed nine more.
And it looks certain the proposed Wave 2 is coming out in one form or another. That's astonishing.
Then there's the 5th Doctor's celery and 7th Doctor's hat/umbrella debacles and the equally moronic cancellation of the Classic TARDIS and Bessie,both of which would be guaranteed to sell well amongst all age groups.
I don't think that's true, actually. Kids have never seen Bessie and it's difficult to imagine an old yellow car flying off anything but specialist shelves. The classic TARDIS is also a specialist item; most normal people aren't going to see any difference between it and the Flight Control TARDIS and let's face it, parents would almost certainly have just said, "No, you already have a TARDIS."
The 5th/7th examples are annoying but hardly debacles. At least we did get a proper 5th Doctor and while I think we should have a brolly/hatted head for Sylvester, it's hardly going to stop people buying the figures.
