What do you believe are Hasbro’s biggest accomplishments?

Agreed. Keeping the line going this long is not something that I ever anticipated happening when I started collecting at the very beginning 25ish years ago.

Continuing to get deep cut characters that have never been made before in the line is my #1 favorite thing. I don't ever need another Spider-Man, Wolverine or Captain America but still have a lot of modern X-Men and general civilian wants especially.

I've become quite the pinless joints snob and have begun to really dislike pinned joints in any line. Many figures it doesn't matter for, but there a lot that it does.

The face printing technology can be a real hit at times and then at others you're wondering what the hell happened.

Super articulation has always been one of the key selling points of this line to me. Toy Biz probably overdid it, but I'd like to see Hasbro keep up with the very best that other companies (and even other Hasbro lines) are doing.

In general, I'm not a fan of soft goods so I'm glad they haven't gone overboard in that regard but there are times when it has made sense.

I'd like to see a requirement to include one never before made character in every wave. I'd also like to see a limit of 1 figure per particular character per calendar year. I'd also like to see a commitment to completely moving away from pinned joints.
 
I'll echo everything said above (face printing, pinless joints, wide character selection) and I'll also give them credit for expanding release options. In the ToyBiz days it was pretty much just BaF waves and boxsets. Hasbro now has BaF waves, retro cards, MTO, 2 and 3 packs, deluxe releases, etc. This gives us way more releases per year but has also cut down on the number of unwanted figures. There are still the occasional "held for ransom in a 2 pack" figures but it seems easier than ever to get figures I want while bypassing those I don't. I rarely feel "forced" to buy figures these days.
 
Xavion2025 said:
In my book, Hasbro’s most noteworthy accomplishment was what I’ve always referred to as the “Trojan Horse” strategy…selling the Marvel Legends line to big box retailers as part of the merchandising for the latest Marvel Studios film. This was at the beginning of 2014 when the line was on life support (for the second time) and big box retailers wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole as a stand alone proposition. If not for that brilliant bit of marketing, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

I’ll give the face printing tech an honorable mention. That was a game changer, and I still think they do it better than anyone else in the 1/12 (ish) scale.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this was the key. Mattel also tried this with their DC Multiverse line around the same time, and it didn’t work. Part of it was the DCEU movies themselves not doing as well, but a lot of it was how Mattel didn’t compliment the movie figures with classic comic figures very well. They did movie figures and toward the end did figures from the then-current comic looks.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I don't know that there's any one, seismic, move they made that stands out. I see Hasbro's time with the property as an achievement in incremental upgrades and refinements. They took what Toy Biz gave them (quite literally in the early going) and slowly figured out what worked and what did not. They got rid of the overdone paint washes, ditched the horrible knuckle hinge, and mostly found a setup that works well enough and can be applied to many characters. It's not perfect and we all have changes we'd like to see implemented (ball-jointed waists!) and one could also argue they went too far in the paint wash department to a place with almost no paint. Still, it's always been a line that's put out a large volume at a competitive price relative to the rest of the industry and that's why it's still going. Oh, and getting rid of the stupid chase variants is also pretty damn nice.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top