Does anyone know exactly how many units Tamashii needs to sell of Broly in order to reconsider Nappa? I mean, do we even know which characters are selling more than others, or is it all just guesstimations? There should be like a chart of each individual released thus far, which was the highest grossing. Like was Android 18 considered a success thus far?
This would be a good question for people attending OTAKON next week to ask Bluefin/Tamashii in person at their booth.
I think all you're going to get is guesses and estimations, but the clear answer is...duh...Broly needs to turn a strong profit to put Nappa back on the table.
He is perhaps one of the most popular DBZ villains and is extremely popular in the West. Even in Japan where he's popular (and a slight gag) since he's constantly promoted and has shown up across DBZ promotions. He usually also stands out because he's the ONLY opposite, truly evil
Super Saiyan to the Z-Fighters' good Saiyans. A raging, hulking Legendary Super Saiyan (he's got "the title" too) who really shows how brutal a SSJ can be when their powers are used for evil intent. He's the ONLY movie villain other than Cooler to show up in a sequel (and he topped Cooler by showing up in two sequels...though he's technically a clone in Bio-Broly). Broly's figure can carry heavy sales because well...all the reasons I mentioned, he's Broly.
Nappa on the other hand gives Bandai/Tamashii some pause. Big figure who is NOT Broly-popular requires a lot of tooling parts, molds, etc. They obviously already have some since they have a Nappa prototype but perhaps they feel that the potential sales just can't justify the costs. If I was to do it, I would want to make sure I could re-use some of Nappa's parts for future figure releases. Nappa isn't as marketable as Broly and that can hurt his sales.
Also, Bandai/Tamashii might want to focus their costs on guaranteed profitable characters...which has been the entire line direction so far..they haven't "hit" the minor characters just yet and the most obscure release is a strange variation on one of the most popular characters (anime first appearance Vegeta). They even have yet to hit variations on the major saga heroes and villains as well...which are almost guaranteed profits.