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This fandom has the weirdest sense of entitlement. Hasbro doesn't owe anyone anything. They're not going to make show-accurate figures just to please you people. If they make show accurate figures, it will be in response to cold hard stats and profit forecasts, not because you're "the biggest fans ever". Besides all that, how is a portion of the fanbase that mostly pirated the episodes and actively produces knockoff merchandise a group of people they want to retain?
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@ceruleanspark You make good points, but it would be smart for them to make accurate figures and the like, because logic denotes that these would sell better. Hell, if they wanted, they could probably go the full nine yards and sell the shirts and other things the bronies are having to make themselves because the things they sell are, quite honestly, not that good. It's a shame when you find knockoff merch that is higher quality than the actual merch. Just sayin'.
Friday, 05-Aug-11 09:46:00 UTC from web-
@nightlight I agree with you 100%.
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@nightlight I say give Hasbro some time and they might start selling more merch pointed towards the bronies. Hot Topic already has MLP shirts, but they're for woman sadly.
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@nightlight Logic doesn't dictate that they'd necessarily sell better. What about collectors, or (yes, they exist) fans of the old style designs? Pleasing one group of people might easily alienate another, more profitable one. I'm guessing Hasbro has already DONE that groundwork, otherwise they probably would have changed up the designs to be more show like. That's probably the reason between their schizophrenic adherence to the old designs whilst producing the blind-bag non-brushables in the new style. That just happens to be the compromise that leads to maximised profits. I don't think Hasbro cares about the knockoff stuff because they don't intend to operate in that market. It would probably cost them more to buy store space and produce, test and market stuff for the brony audience than their stats say that they'd make.
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@ceruleanspark I suppose you're right. It just seemed to me that there would be more of their target audience of MLP:FiM that would buy the product as opposed to collectors and such. I'm not so sure that the older fans who watched the original series and whatnot would be very numerous. Plus, the collectors would swipe anything that Hasbro flings at them anyway, if they're true collectors. Or they'd be constantly bidding for the original Firefly or some other early generation pony. I think they may eventually release product for the new audiences at some point in the future. Perhaps when the bronies are comfortable enough to buy MLP stuff out in the open.
Friday, 05-Aug-11 10:02:00 UTC from web-
@nightlight From what I can tell, most fans of the original show/s actually hate FiM because it's nothing like them. (I for one think this is why I love FiM, but I digress)
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@leonkfox The older generations have nothing whatsoever that appeals to me.
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@flutterguy41 Same. The characters are all carbon clones of one another and they aren't well rounded or able to cared about in the slightest, and the voice acting and dialogue are almost always deplorable. Lauren Faust has to be commended for taking a franchise like My Little Pony and turning it into a quality show. (and yet Pixar of all people failed to make an engaging series about talking Cars, but again I digress)
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@leonkfox It's what happens when you give a 90's cartoonist something to work with. Magic! Damn i miss the 90's.
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@flutterguy41 Same :(
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@leonkfox I'm really not one for the merch, although I would love to have at least a couple show accurate ponies sitting in my room. Preferably Twilight and Fluttershy. I wouldn't go get, let's say, the canterlot play set or the bed spreads. A little overkill for me.
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@flutterguy41 Exactly, just a set of show accurate characters is all I need! But that's too much to ask for, especially when I'm willing to pay for it in relitavley big sums as well.
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@leonkfox I've saw some of the prices they were going for on Ebay. I'll never pay near that much for a toy.
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@flutterguy41 Same here. Sure good quality Hasbro ones would be pricy, but you wouldn't have rarity (no pun intended) bumping up the price even higher.
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@abigpony Wait. A brassier? For men? How does this even work?
Friday, 05-Aug-11 09:52:12 UTC from web-
@nightlight That's what i wanna know!
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@ceruleanspark But making show accurate merchandise would make sense from a financial perspective, how many of the numerous adult fans don't buy the merchandise because of how terrible it looks? A lot ,let's just put it that way. So if a large portion of their market (even if it is an unintended demographic) want something, would it not be financially wise to provide that?
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@leonkfox A lot of the cost of producing new stuff is a sunk cost. Safety certifications, retooling factories, even stuff like having to redesign the packaging cost a lot of money, and if their core demographic is hitting the sales targets, why would they bother just to appease a (globally speaking) insignificant market.
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@ceruleanspark Because they could make even more money then they already are? Why not make the merchandise that already sells to people who (with all due respect) don't really care about its quality and the stuff that the many adults will buy as well? Why intentionally alienate a large portion of the market? Again it makes no sense from a financial perspective.
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@leonkfox Because Bronies aren't a large portion of the market. Hasbro's overriding concern at all times, is making as much money as possible. If bronies were a good way to do that long term, they would be all over us. There may be big-corporate inertia involved to an extent here, but when you talk to them and they come off as dismissive, it's because they genuinely don't care. Little girls are where the real money is. The margins are better. A little girl that buys a brushable Fluttershy makes them way more cash than a brony who's demanded they set up a new factory and buy more shelf-space for show accurate Celestia.
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@ceruleanspark But once again, why not make that little bit extra? You can not tell me bronies don't make up a large amount of the audience, not all of or even most of it, but a large portion regardless.
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@leonkfox I don't need to tell you that. That's the message Hasbro is sending. They've shown they can use the internet. They've shown that they know we're out here. The fact that they know we're here, and they know how to communicate with us, but choose not to do so says all that needs to be said about their estimation of the value of this community.
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@ceruleanspark But even if that is the case, do you not WANT to see better merchandise be made? I don't get why Hasbro would intentionally alienate us, again making extra money off of high quality merchandise that has a clear as day market...a cooperation like Hasbro should be all over it, there are a lot of bronies on the internet. Cooperations like that normally do all they can to make the extra dime so I find it baffling that Hasbo aren't.
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@leonkfox On the contrary, I'd love to see stuff I wouldn't be ashamed to purchase being made. I just don't think it's going to happen. You keep saying they'd make extra money, but my point is that Hasbro has almost certainly checked and determined that they won't do. Bronies might be an extra market, but producing stuff from scratch for us is ludicrously expensive and probably has a very long ROI period. For all we know, after Season 2, they might want to switch up the designs again. Then what? They're stuck with factories tooled to produce the wrong ponies that still haven't paid off their costs, so Hasbro find themselves in the same position as before, only now they're several million dollars in the hole for it.
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@ceruleanspark They don't have to produce millions of show accurate figures ,just enough for all of the bronies that are willing to spend extra for decent merchandise and there you go, bob's your uncle. I don't want to see show accurate sets of everything, just the main characters (maybe Spike as an added bonus, but not neccesary) how expensive and hard could that possibly be for a big company like Hasbro, especially when there is undeniably a market for them (and I iterate my point of them not having to produce bucket tons of them)
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@leonkfox Small runs of toys aren't profitable. Regardless of how many they make, they still have to go through the routine I've mentioned before, and that's pure cost, and a lot of the costs are fixed, regardless of how many ponies you actually make at the end. If they can't dump a Xmillion of them into the market to cover the cost of making sure that eating the hair of 10 fluttershy brushables doesn't destroy a child's intestinal tract, then it's not worth bearing it in the first place.
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@ceruleanspark Well, if you want to look at it like that, why not take the cheap kiwi they make now and shape them so they look like they come from FiM in terms of proportions? Even that would be good enough for me, and that would not be too expensive or difficult.
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@leonkfox They can't change the physical shape of the current designs /at all/ without having to restart everything. That's why they didn't bother in the first place. By not having to bear the cost of redesigning them, they can make more profit at the same price. That's why the Fluttershy non-brushable is a repainted Rainbow Dash. It's probably why Applejack has no hat. On the other hand, "Flutterby" and Luna being the wrong color are inexcusable.
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@ceruleanspark Restart? Why not do what all companies do, make a "Series 2" of figures and make the neccesary changes then?
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@leonkfox I guess it depends on their long term plan, which we certainly aren't privy too. If they're gonna drop the FiM designs after S2 to distance themselves from Faust and her style, then there's no point. If they're sticking with it, or something close enough to it, they might well be doing the groundwork now to launch it all just after S2 airs/finishes airing.
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@ceruleanspark The show is incredibly popular, I do not see them changing styles so quickly. Gen 3.5 was an exception (less than a year or two's lifespan) but that was an abomination anyway, I don't think it even caught on with the intended demographic of MLP for it to have faded away so quickly)
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@leonkfox Unless the reason Faust left was because they wanted changes to the style she was unwilling to make. She's always said it was due to creative differences.
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@ceruleanspark Well she hasn't left really, she's just stepped down as head writer hasn't she?
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@leonkfox I thought she was just consulting whilst they finished up S2, and then she was totally out.
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@leonkfox I could be wrong of course (I frequently am). Something about the way she talks about it makes me think her stepping down wasn't entirely amicable, It's very...filtered. The same way politicians and people taking legal advice talk when they're trying to avoid compromising a case. If you read her answers to questions on the subject, they're all basically "No comment" wrapped in fancy language.
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@abigpony Huh. Didn't know they had bras like that. As much as i've been there you'd think i would've noticed by now.
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@abigpony I think if it was profitable to go through the horrendous rigmarole of redesigning the toys, going through the global safety routines, redesigning all the packaging and replanning your logistics to deal with the new stuff, they'd probably have done it, but contrary to what the community seems to think of itself, they're not a big enough market.
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@ceruleanspark Eh, I gripe halfheartedly about some of the merch, and I would like to see something more directed at us, but I don't feel "entitled" to anything. I still understand my liking the show was basically an accident.
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@scribus I wouldn't really call it an accident, Lauren has stated before she intended the show for family audiences, it's no surprise that a good family show or film can appeal to adults without children ,look at a lot of great Disney films for example.
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@leonkfox If we still had great cartoonist like her working today, tv wouldn't be so unbearable. I wonder if she's moving on to anything else or just taking it easy now?
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@flutterguy41 I hope she makes at least one more show. We know FiM will still be in good hands as she's laid the foundations down for the show, but I would like just one more taste of the 90's ,before cartoons became too dumb for me to even really want my own kids watching if I ever had any.
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@scribus But Hasbro made a point of hiring Lauren to do the job, surley they knew what directions she was taking the show in whilst she was making it, and what her goals were? They must have been at least somewhat concious of what was going to happen.
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@leonkfox They may have anticipated a better quality, and that adults wouldn't dislike it, but I think if they'd expected bronies they would be working that angle more. Just seems like it was a side effect to me.
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Friday, 05-Aug-11 21:09:50 UTC from web
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