Essential Indy Toys Hasbro Failed to Deliver

I really lament the passing of the Hasbro Indy 3"3/4 figure line - my wish list of things they omitted would include:

A Lao Che figure

German Mechanic

Toht/Melting Toht variant

Donovan/ Aging Donovan variant.

Any thoughts on how/why the line ended so abruptly and what you'd like to see?

 

The line ended because of poor sales. Indy toys, for whatever reason, have never sold that well for a franchise of its size.

I also think Lucasfilm really never pushed the merchandise.

 

I would have liked to have seen the guy with the Tommy gun who blasts away at the gong in TOT.

 

3 3/ 4" scale Flying Wing

3 3/4" scale Tank

 

I've often wondered why the Indy toys never took off in the 1980s the same way the SW ones did - same manufacturers, same sort of designs. I never had any, never knew anyone that did, although I remember seeing them in stores.

I'm guessing that it was something fundamental regarding the storylines - kids could easily play with SW toys, as their imaginations took to outer space adventures quite easily. Creepy stories about ancient religious artifacts & Nazis probably didn't appeal in the same way play-wise, even if the films were enjoyable to watch.

 

Over ordering and poor cases distribution was the biggest problem with the last Indy line. Indy toys hit the shelves in early May several weeks before KOTCS theatrical debut. Wave 1 was Raiders of the Lost Ark and Wave 2 was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The initial waves sold very well. I remember the week the film came out the pegs were quite bare. However the majority of stores over ordered the first two waves and simply restocked the shelves with wave 1 and 2. The initial demand already met within the first three weeks Wave 1 and 2 were now chocking the shelves. There was no peg space for Wave 3, The Last Crusade or Wave 4, The Temple of Doom.

Hasbro compounded the problem even more by only releasing wave 3 and 4 boxed with more figures from Wave 1 and 2. Figures from The Last Crusade were very hard to find, I seem to recall that there was only one Henry Jones figure per case, and The Temple of Doom wave were next to impossible to find. I never did see them.

Hasbro tried to sell the Indy line like Star Wars. There's always going to be Darth Vaders and Stormtroopers in a case of Star Wars figures because they always sell, unfortunately nobody is going to want a dozen Cario Swordsmen. If Hasbro had aimed the Indy line at a smaller core audience it would have been more successful. However, a successful Indy line would have only gone two to three waves per film. There's just not that many characters to make, unlike Star Wars. Having said that Hasbro did a pretty good job of getting a lot of Indy toys out there, more then I could have hopped for. I estimate they got about 60 to 70 percent of the stuff the hard core fans would want.

You can't completely blame Indy toys for not selling well on the property being less toyetic then Star Wars, which it is. LEGO's Indy line sold very well and managed to last for two years unlike Hasbro which killed their line in two months.

 

Lego's a very different beast altogether, though, when it comes to play value. They're able to release both whacked-out lines with weird new sci-fi concepts alongside very traditional lines like pirates, Vikings & mediaeval soldiers - which would be very risky concepts in a normal action figure format, regardless of whether or not there's a franchise attached.

Lego's simply Lego, every kid knows that - if some of the bits are specific to Star Wars, Indiana Jones or Harry Potter, that's just a huge bonus, because it means Darth Vader can co-exist with Hagrid in the Well of Souls without anything seeming too out of the ordinary. Or Indiana Jones can have Force powers because his head has been replaced with Yoda's. It's Lego.

 

News of the San Diego Comic Con exclusive six pack (Melting Toht, Bald Mechanic Boxer, Sapito etc) is real tantalising:

http://toynewsi.com/news.php?catid=262&itemid=17319