Posted in: Movies, san diego comic con | Tagged: entertainment, film, hasbro, marvel, San Diego Comic Con 2014, star wars, superheroes, toys, tv

A Hasbro Double Punch At San Diego Comic Con – Marvel And Star Wars With Designers And Execs!

Published Fri, 25 Jul 2014 14:30:10 -0500

by Hannah Means Shannon

Comments

By Will Romine

Hello friends o' mine!

I'm in San Diego and I'm at the Hasbro booth looking over some upcoming figures. I haven't seen such a large collection of 3.75 inches since I stopped to use the employee restroom on the Willy Wonka factory tour.

While I was here, I was fortunate enough to meet two of the big kahunas at Hasbro. Bleeders, allow me to introduce Misters Dwight Stall (Senior Design Manager: Marvel line) and Jeff Labovitz (Director for Global Marketing: Star Wars) to talk shop about what's cool in the way of these two monster toy lines.

I spoke first with Stall, a man as enthusiastic about his work as they come. He is a jack of all trades, overseeing the whole Marvel line, but focusing on the Legends series and upcoming Avengers 2 products.

I learned a few things from Stall. First, I've always been curious as to how they choose which figures to include in a movie license series of figures beyond those characters that appear in the film. " it usually starts with the design department pitching to marketing what figures they'd like to see" explained Stall, " then in around October or November, we get to read a script and we see what characters Marvel is going to focus on. Try as I might, I could not get him to spill the beans on Avengers 2.

I also asked him how "outside of the box" ideas make it from conception to retail. I was thinking specifically of "Hulk Hands", an idea far outside of anything that Hasbro had before created, but a huge retail success. He said that dozens of these ideas get thrown out based on perceived lack of marketability or retail constraints, but that the really cool ones end up as convention exclusives. Comic con is like their sand box, where they aren't limited by shelf space or market demands and instead design the toys that they want to see.

Next, I sat down with Labovitz. Star Wars is the grand old oak of toy lines. It was really the first "mega license" and wrote the rule box on action figure tie-ins. I was curious as to how Hasbro designers maintain their enthusiasm for this line, especially original trilogy figures, where it seems that nearly every version of every character has been rendered in plastic.

"That's easy" said Labovitz, "over the years, we've always gotten better. The design teams are always developing new sculpting techniques and new ways to articulate characters. You look at a 1977 Luke Skywalker and our black series. They might have the same coloring, but vastly different figures."

That got me curious. It is no big secret that action figures have gotten better looking over the years. Whether it's the expansion of the adult market or that kids have become more discerning, retailers can't sell the same quality of figure today that they could have 20 years ago.

Yet, the figures have more or less maintained the same price point. The same $5.00 that I used to buy a figure as a kid will still buy me a figure today. Stall explained that it's a give and take between design and retailers to come up with a consumable price point. For example, the Jabba black series figure will not come with a pedestal because design could not find a way to include that within a target price point.

Finally, I asked him about future SDCC exclusives. He couldn't say much, but he did say that we wouldn't ever see this.

For more news from the Con floor, follow me @notacomplainer