Sales of Star Wars The Last Jedi related toys weren’t up to par with the big expectations. Now Hasbro is trying to explain why this happened. Long story short, it was due do several reasons that added up.
The Las Jedi hoped to ride on the success of previous Star Wars movies. But they were also out during times when the entire toy industry enjoyed some of its best years ever.
Last year certainly wasn’t one of them. There were lots of issues, mostly stemming from the demise of Toys R Us. And while this happened officially in September 2017, the issues were mounting up long before that.
Then it was also simply bad timing. “The fact that we began to merchandise the film in September and the film came out in December was just too long a period of time to sustain retail interest,” Brian Goldner, CEO of Hasbro says to Fortune. Basically, It didn’t help that lots of other toys were hitting around the same time, “with an array of entertainment initiatives coming to market.”
Hasbro hoped that it can replicate the historic success of The Force Awakens in 2015. The thing is, that was the first Star Wars movie in a long time and there was big demand. Now, fans get a new Star Wars movie or related movie every year. So, the hunger isn’t that big. Plus there’s only so much toys you can buy.
As a whole the sales of Star Wars toys actually declined last year. This means that the market for them is very saturated. Currently the movie industry is in a big cycle of reboots, sequels and spinoffs. All of this actually exhausts toy fans which can’t or won’t keep up. So, they buy less toys and pick the ones that they really, really like.
And speaking of overloading, in April Hasbro will kick off a new Star Wars toy line. It’s made after the “Solo: A Star Wars Story” movie which hits the cinemas on May 25th, 2018.
