1/6 NEXT Hot Toys STAR WARS Figure...?

[DarkChocobi]

its fake, don't see it in SS page.

 

[SOU7567]

It can't be true...no way we'd get Revan, Starkiller AND Grievous in one week?

 

[Wor-Gar]

its fake, don't see it in SS page.

Death Star Trooper is still up there though.

 

[RandomHero]

Death Star Trooper is still up there though.

And that 212th Clone Trooper we never got. Although the airborne one seems to be gone.

Sure would be a nice swerve if either of those troopers magically appeared.

 

[EdViler]

If that Grievous is true AND he can hunch over, then my disappointment in the Commando is replaced (and my pre-order!)

 

[Hologram AI]

Their Cosbabies are never indications of what they're doing in 1/6 but they do have him as one for the Dark Side line.

 

[Wor-Gar]

Grievous would have been perfect for May the 4th... if only it wasn't Saturday.

 

[Mondragon]

Their Cosbabies are never indications of what they're doing in 1/6 but they do have him as one for the Dark Side line.

?

 

[jaztermareal]

Kinda off topic but while in ChangChun city I stopped by the 2 remaining HT carrying stores I know of to see if they had any bargains and while there my mrs spoke to the owner of one store who shared that the market for HT figures in mainland China is not doing great. We kinda knew already that physical stores selling HT were doing badly (pre 2020 used to be several stores near Guilin road, several stores in the underground market near HongQi street, a couple more in 2 shopping malls and those were just the ones I knew of, now all but 2 gone) but he said even online things are slowing. He said the biggest issue they could put finger on was that while the figures during HT overproduction phase (stores didn't know they would be overproduced) were cheap to buy from supplier (he said 700 yuan per figure when buying 10 or so units) they ended up struggling to sell even half of the stock they bought. So even when selling for 1,000-1,800 yuan per figure in the end they were making a loss. He said that because stores were struggling to shift the stock as soon as one discounted they all had to rush to be the cheapest to bring customers and avoid being stuck with unshiftable goods.


It doesn't help that Marvel is now struggling to get distribution in China and the audiences have moved on. Marvel figures in the mainland are not really doing well. Now all those 1:6 carrying stores are long gone there are now Popmarts and grabbing game arcades everywhere. The hobby is shrinking and is now almost solely catered to by online retail. Heck, while in Shanghai Hot Toys store not long ago there were plenty Umbra ARC troopers available at RRP when sold out everywhere else. Store was quiet too. In fact, it was the most stocked HT shop I went to (HK stores had less available in general suggesting more was selling). Not a great sign.


This isn't exactly news here (we all know that retailers the world over got stuck with overproduced figures from the Endgame era till last year when HT finally overcorrected) but with mainland China now not the strong customer base it was for HT, with Marvel now mostly dead and Star Wars not being popular in the mainland, HT may be looking back to the West/Japan/HK for their figure choices. We are seeing that with the EU characters like Revan, Starkiller and Dark Luke while we have also seen that ugly what if Iron Man cancelled (would have been a hit in China but a stinker in the West) so perhaps we may being witnessing a return to form for HT and our voices may start to be heard more as we become primary target audience again. That, or maybe HT collapses slowly from losing much of their big China market. I prefer to stay positive for now. Just thought I would share

 

[darth dennis]

Kinda off topic but while in ChangChun city I stopped by the 2 remaining HT carrying stores I know of to see if they had any bargains and while there my mrs spoke to the owner of one store who shared that the market for HT figures in mainland China is not doing great. We kinda knew already that physical stores selling HT were doing badly (pre 2020 used to be several stores near Guilin road, several stores in the underground market near HongQi street, a couple more in 2 shopping malls and those were just the ones I new of, now all but 2 gone) but he said even online things are slowing. He said the biggest issue they could put finger on was that while the figures during HT overproduction phase (stores didn't know they would be overproduced) were cheap to buy (he said 700 yuan per figure when buying 10 or so units) they ended up struggling to sell even half of the stock they bought. So even when selling for 1,000-1,800 yuan per figure in the end they were making a loss. He said that because stores were struggling to shift the stock as soon as one discounted they all had to rush to be the cheapest to bring customers and avoid being stuck with unshiftable goods.


It doesn't help that Marvel is now struggling to get distribution in China and the audiences have moved on. Marvel figures in the mainland are not really doing well. Now all those 1:6 carrying stores are long gone there are now Popmarts and grabbing game arcades everywhere. The hobby is shrinking and is now almost solely catered to by online retail. Heck, while in Shanghai not long ago there were plenty Umbra ARC troopers available when sold out everywhere else. Store was quiet too. In fact, it was the most stocked HT shop I went to (HK stores had less available in general suggesting more was selling). Not a great sign.


This isn't exactly news here (we all know that retailers the world over got stuck with overproduced figures from the Endgame era till last year when HT finally overcorrected) but with mainland China now not the strong customer base it was for HT, with Marvel now mostly dead and Star Wars not being popular in the mainland, HT may be looking back to the West/Japan/HK for their figure choices. We are seeing that with the EU characters like Revan, Starkiller and Dark Luke while we have also seen that ugly what if Iron Man cancelled (would have been a hit in China but a stinker in the West) so perhaps we may being witnessing a return to form for HT and pur voices may start to be heard more as we become primary target audience again. That, or maybe HT collapses slowly from losing much of their big China market. I prefer to stay positive for now. Just thought I would share

Interesting perspective and thanks for sharing. I've not thought much about the repercussions of the overproduction of all those Marvel and Star Wars figures beyond seeing them repeatedly discounted on Sideshow. Sideshow is big enough to absorb the kind of loss they're probably experiencing, these smaller brick and mortar or online retailers likely are not...

 

[jaztermareal]

Interesting perspective and thanks for sharing. I've not thought much about the repercussions of the overproduction of all those Marvel and Star Wars figures beyond seeing them repeatedly discounted on Sideshow. Sideshow is big enough to absorb the kind of loss they're probably experiencing, these smaller brick and mortar or online retailers likely are not...

Exactly. Add to that that in mainland China a lot of collectors were collecting as a status symbol. Once the figures seemed common and discounted those fad chasing collectors left for other things. The true size ofbthe dedicated 1:6 collector base in China is not as big as one might imagine. As you say, a lot of brick and mortar (especially) plus many small online retailers went the way of the Dodo. While the whole world is facing economjc issues we often think of China as a huge, absolutely massive potential market for such things as HT figures but truth is kinda the opposite it seems.


I think companies are smart enough not to dump all their eggs in one basket but there has been a tendency to lean on China at the expense of the Western markets even when it came to movies, but things have started to shift away from that in the last couple years. This might be great for the West and smaller Asian nations/markets like Japan and HK since Star Wars is popular in such areas so HT jumping hard into EU lately could be a sign of things to come. God help our wallets.

 

[fantasticfrog]

Kinda off topic but while in ChangChun city I stopped by the 2 remaining HT carrying stores I know of to see if they had any bargains and while there my mrs spoke to the owner of one store who shared that the market for HT figures in mainland China is not doing great. We kinda knew already that physical stores selling HT were doing badly (pre 2020 used to be several stores near Guilin road, several stores in the underground market near HongQi street, a couple more in 2 shopping malls and those were just the ones I new of, now all but 2 gone) but he said even online things are slowing. He said the biggest issue they could put finger on was that while the figures during HT overproduction phase (stores didn't know they would be overproduced) were cheap to buy (he said 700 yuan per figure when buying 10 or so units) they ended up struggling to sell even half of the stock they bought. So even when selling for 1,000-1,800 yuan per figure in the end they were making a loss. He said that because stores were struggling to shift the stock as soon as one discounted they all had to rush to be the cheapest to bring customers and avoid being stuck with unshiftable goods.


It doesn't help that Marvel is now struggling to get distribution in China and the audiences have moved on. Marvel figures in the mainland are not really doing well. Now all those 1:6 carrying stores are long gone there are now Popmarts and grabbing game arcades everywhere. The hobby is shrinking and is now almost solely catered to by online retail. Heck, while in Shanghai not long ago there were plenty Umbra ARC troopers available when sold out everywhere else. Store was quiet too. In fact, it was the most stocked HT shop I went to (HK stores had less available in general suggesting more was selling). Not a great sign.


This isn't exactly news here (we all know that retailers the world over got stuck with overproduced figures from the Endgame era till last year when HT finally overcorrected) but with mainland China now not the strong customer base it was for HT, with Marvel now mostly dead and Star Wars not being popular in the mainland, HT may be looking back to the West/Japan/HK for their figure choices. We are seeing that with the EU characters like Revan, Starkiller and Dark Luke while we have also seen that ugly what if Iron Man cancelled (would have been a hit in China but a stinker in the West) so perhaps we may being witnessing a return to form for HT and pur voices may start to be heard more as we become primary target audience again. That, or maybe HT collapses slowly from losing much of their big China market. I prefer to stay positive for now. Just thought I would share

That might explain all of recent reissues. Easy money because the molds are already there. Without big movies coming this year, it might be the year of reissues. Hopefully they don’t redo anything I want. I need a break.

 

[Johnny Utah]

Just reissue Raiders Indy. Anything after that is a plus.

 

[rayeknor]

China is facing slow economic growth, maybe even a recession. Hot Toys are pure luxury/useless products, this affects sales too.

Best move they can make is to lower numbers and increase quality of products and materials, not just the headsculpt but costumes, accessories, stands etc. or Inart/JND and others will cannibalize big portions of their markets within a few years.

In short, we're looking at better and more expensive figures in the future. Probably more artisan/exclusives then before.

 

[Wor-Gar]

Lots of reissues too will save costs.

 

[Raleig.h]

Could be why there's such a large amount of SW figures being pushed right now? They could be trying to tap inot the western market a bit more heavily, I know Star Wars isn't as popular in Asia as something like Marvel.

 

[Mondragon]

Andor, Ro[gu]e One, .....The good stuff tend to come around when they don't get their hands involved at every level.

Yeah pretty sure Gilroy was hands off, I'm telling a story here first.

Ironically (in a sad way) the only one here with no figures.

 

[SwedishHeat]

This thread has been cleaned of off topic posts. Please stay on topic.

 

[RandomHero]

Could be why there's such a large amount of SW figures being pushed right now? They could be trying to tap inot the western market a bit more heavily, I know Star Wars isn't as popular in Asia as something like Marvel.

I think that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Marvel and DC are immensely popular in Asia. Or, they were. The MCU has really killed itself in China. DC doesn’t have much going on. I think the majority of their Marvel sales came from China, especially on Iron Man and such. Now that that’s dried up, it’s onto Star Wars - which isn’t popular at all in Asia outside of Japan.

I think this shift to Star Wars is absolutely Hot Toys trying to capitalize on people who still can spend on these things these days. And that’s the western Star Wars fan.

 

[Johnny Utah]

Sunday week is the exact 25th anniversary of Episode 1.

Next week! Padawan Obi-Wan and Artisan Qui-Gon!