Our
latest Q&A
session directly from Hasbro has
arrived. See below for full details...
Don't
forget, you can submit
questions in our forums and we'll try to get as many as possible submitted to
Hasbro. We can send only three questions per week, so make sure they are good ones! Now,
on to this weeks Questions and Answers directly from Hasbro.
Q.
Would you consider the mail-away premium George Lucas figure a successful campaign?
What are the plans (if any) for future mail-away exclusive items? Any plans on venturing
outside the action figure arena and maybe offering something like display stands
or other unique accessories like we saw during the vintage days?
A. We like the idea of continuing to do promotions. The GWL Stormtrooper promo
was certainly a success in showing retailers that we have ideas that get collectors
excited and drive traffic to retail, and sell-through was very good overall. Retailers
look forward to the next wave next year. There were two key learnings, though, that
can inform our future plans:
1) What did not succeed, and this is something we have to constantly work on, was
the requirements for the redemption. We should have anticipated that Scout Troopers
(and to a lesser extent Lukes and Tuskens) would be heavily picked regionally and
disrupt the redemption model;
2) It was something of a surprise, but the number of actual redemptions
was smaller than we thought compared to the number of sets sold through. A lot of
collectors have apparently chosen to keep their clamshells sealed, which means the
number of GWL figures in circulation is going to be less than we originally anticipated
and built for. This, though, is an
unfortunate byproduct of having to heat-seal the clamshell to prevent theft of the
stickers. So...despite all of that, we do plan another promotion next year and hopefully
it will be smooth with tweaks from our learnings.
Q. Will the distribution
of the Caucasian and African American Endor Rebel Trooper be a running change and
have they been produced in equal numbers?
A. They will be produced in equel numbers, and it will be as a running change.
Q. We saw some images of the
Han Solo / Chewbacca Transformer with gold Titanium pack-ins a while back. Can you
give us information on when and where that will be sold?
A. This is a Wal-Mart exclusive product available in limited numbers (compared
to the main run). It will be on shelf Nov. 1.
Check back next week and we'll post the
next round of Questions (and answers) as soon as Hasbro offers them.
