Back in action

It is nothing short of superfluous to say, 'this is a big year for action figures.' Up 36 percent last year from 2000, the category welcomes back a lot of old faces to this year's assortments. G.I. Joe, He-Man and Micronauts are back (courtesy Hasbro, Mattel and Palisades, respectively) Toy Biz's Marvel Legends feature some of the best sculpts the company has yet produced. Art Asylum and Mezco are putting pop icons into Kubrick-style sculpts. Racing Champions' JoyRide Studios is getting into the act with a wide range of figures based on popular video games. And McFarlane has not only locked down the four major sports licenses but also shipped his own take of Eddie (Iron Maiden's iconographic mascot) and Viking Age Spawn.

The shear numbers of SKUs this year will keep retailers on their toes. Such a wide range of license-based figures—be they Twilight Zone by Sideshow Toy, Star Trek: Enterprise by Art Asylum or Battle of the Planets by Diamond Comics— may provide cross-merchandising opportunities for retailers that don't normally stock them. But variety requires merchandizing savvy. It's a tricky proposition to prevent an item's shelf life from turning into a half-life.

Like the three rules of real estate (location, location, location), Midtown Comic's three for action figures are all about rotation. It keeps the eye fresh. If you don't keep things moving, warns the store's toy buyer, Rob Mileta, customers "become blind to the whole section."

The Manhattan-based retailer deals heavily in comic books, but most of the second floor is devoted to action figures, statues and busts. Mileta even stocks Simpsons by Playmates and Star Wars by Hasbro, lines carried by mass. Pre-orders are key. "We can pre-order entire sets for a customer; that's a service you only get at comic stores," he says. It's a trade-off. Toys R Us, for example, can keep its price point lower because it buys in quantities of scale. "They always beat the street date," says Mileta, "but they'll never be able to carry the rated stuff."

There are other problems, too. He wasn't able to get the full width of Hasbro's Transformers "because we didn't order enough." He also wishes Hasbro would inform retailers of the characters in the assortments. "We had to order blind, so the order was conservative."

North Hollywood, Calif.-based e-tailer Entertainment Earth doesn't worry too much about anonymous assortments. It sells everything by the set.

With such breadth in the action figure market this year, what becomes of precious shelf real estate? "The patience level has decreased so items that don't sell quickly are given up on more (easily)," Palisades' honcho Mike Horn explains, adding that he sees "a slowdown of the higher priced items." Entertainment Earth President Jason Labowitz, who enjoys a virtually infinite number of pegs on entertainmentearth.com, uses sales information and feedback from customers to determine what stays up on the site and what doesn't. Simpsons (Playmates), Star Wars (Hasbro), G. I. Joe (Hasbro), DC Direct and McFarlane are very popular right now. The action features Hasbro added to its Star Wars line (laser blasts clip into the muzzles of guns; Jedi have magnets in their hands) are "the smartest things Hasbro's done in a long time," Labowitz says. "Now collectors need two: one to keep and one to open to play with all the cool accessories."

Hasbro also debuts Star Wars Unleashed, highly detailed statues of popular characters from the films. Martin Pidel, Hasbro's vice president of marketing, Star Wars brands, hopes it will expand the core market by targeting "tweens too old for action figures (and people who) want something for their desks."

Note these are all licensed figures. It is often considered oxymoronic to conceive an unlicensed figure. All the more reason to take a closer look at what Todd McFarlane and Hollywood creature artist Stan Winston are doing, as both are developing lines suitable for back licensing.

McFarlane's Tortured Souls, co-designed with horror master Clive Barker, was released last year and is currently in development as a feature film. Barker, perhaps best known for Hellraiser, and McFarlane met out of mutual curiosity and brainstormed on something…other. While the figures did well, the voice of the action figure collector, alone, is only partial impetus for a film. "Even if every person who bought Tortured Souls went to see the movie, it's still not enough (people)," says Todd McFarlane. "It's, 'What is the idea?' The idea still has to be a good one. And: 'Who's reputation is behind it?'"

Winston conjured Mutant Earth from his rather fertile imagination to be the third offering from his fledgling toy company. Image will publish a Mutant Earth comic book, and the movie, Winston tells PLAYTHINGS , "will probably be in the process of being made within the next year." One might consider these as characters he'd like to create on a film set. "There are so many characters ruminating in my head that never can enough scripts be written. With the action figure line, we are creating all the creatures in our imagination freely." Winston hopes Trakk, the protagonist in Mutant Earth, will be the next great superhero. "He's an immortal monster hunter (who has) gone through the ages." The setting of Mutant Earth will be a post-apocalyptic Earth in the throes of an alien invasion.

Could it be that sculpting an action figure will become de rigueur when pitching a film script? "The fact that you can translate an action figure into a movie shows the power of the action figure market," says Mileta. "Those thoughts are clearly going around the industry," adds Entertainment Earth's Labowitz. Of course, he continues, "it's got to be associated with something," whether it's the names of McFarlane and Barker or Stan Winston. "Military figures are not really tied to anything so they only sell okay," he explains. "Put the G. I. Joe brand on it and it goes through the roof." Although more manufacturers are considering proprietary characters (Palisades' Horn says "it is something we are hoping to embark upon in the next year or so, and Blue Box Toys' Mike Murphy believes "there is a good opportunity to back-license Cy Girls, bbi's 12-inch female special operatives—Konami is already on board for a video game due out summer 2003), for now, it's a wait-and-see game. If McFarlane and Winston's figures transform into successful motion pictures, perhaps Hollywood will turn its wandering eye from the video game industry to toymakers.