2020: A YEAR IN REVIEW!
RETROSPECTIVE NEWS:
2020: A YEAR IN REVIEW!
HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY! 2020 is over! All hail 2021! (If aliens invade earth, or Skynet takes over, someone please screenshot that first sentence as a “Well, that didn’t age well…” meme).
2020 was a rough year for a lot of us, there is no doubt about that, but actually, the toy industry ended up having a fantastic year! Lots of awesome toys were released, we had some awesome events (ToyFare, Hasbro Pulsecon, tons of virtual events… ToyFarce finally got to attend SDCC this year!!). ToyFarce picked up a few points that made 2020…so 2020!
THE RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF MCFARLANE TOYS FIGURES
In January 2020, McFarlane Toys released the first wave of their newly acquired ‘DC Multiverse’ line. Now, 12 months later, we have…
49 figures. FORTY-NINE FIGURES! That includes the nice (albeit unnecessary) blue, bronze or gold repaints, and a vehicle. What other brand has ever done 49 figures on their first year? We got 12 AEW Unrivaled figures from Jazwares, we got 18 figures from Hasbro’s G.I.Joe Classified Series. Even the established lines like Hasbro’s Marvel Legends or the Mattel’s WWE line didn’t make that much figures in their early years (and do about that amount nowadays). Meanwhile, Todd McFarlane said “Hold my beer…” and released 49 figures from one single line in one year (and there’s already dozens of DC Multiverse announced for 2021). While still releasing figures from other lines, like Mortal Kombat, Anime (My Hero Academia,…) and other figures during that year, including the Kickstarter exclusive Classic Spawn, which brings us to…
THE RISE OF THE CROWDFUNDING
Crowdfunding was certainly very popular this year. Not that it wasn’t before that, there were already some awesome toys to back on Kickstarter in the past, along with Haslab’s Jabba’s Sail Barge and Transformers Unicron, but this year is when it went big. Between the HasLab Marvel Legends Sentinel, the Star Wars Vintage Collection Razor Crest, and the McFarlane Toys Kickstarter Classic Spawn, collectors spent a lot of money in crowdfunding in 2020. There were also tons of smaller scale projects that were successfully funded as well. Todd McFarlane has already mentioned that there will be more to come from his side (teasing a Medieval Spawn, when we really wanted Tremor - self-reference to a previous article!), and we all know Hasbro is going to come up with more awesome ideas for us to throw money at. And that’s only for things that won’t be found at the store…
THE COMPLETE CHAOS OF DISTRIBUTION
This year, more than ever, was a very bad year for distribution of toys. With more and more Walmart Exclusives, Target Exclusives, and the disappearance of a certain beloved toy store (We miss you, Geoffrey the Giraffe!) that could distribute those better, some toys were really hard to find this year, from a distribution perspective alone. Some states (and countries) just didn’t get some lines at all. There are people that still have never seen a NECA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figure, a G.I.Joe Classified series figure or an AEW Unrivaled series 1 figure from Jazwares in the wild. Some states got them, some didn’t. Someone in Maine will say “The Target next to my house had more than 12 of that *insert figure* left!” while someone in Texas will say “I have never seen a single one, and I checked all the stores in my area, driving 6h”. There is clearly an issue with distribution. And we’re only talking about distribution here… There’s another issue related to that…
REVENGE OF THE SCALPERS:
This year has been particularly lucrative for the members of the S.C.A.L.P. When it’s not a distribution issue, you can bet that it’s that other kind of issues. Some people just can’t stop themselves, and would even go to say that they’re doing the right thing, “helping up fellow collectors”, by buying the entire stock and reselling it with a huge mark-up, instead of just letting other collectors finding them themselves. Then, you add the “Time and Energy” tax (woohoo! Another self-reference to a previous article!), and somehow, the price is now double, sometimes triple. This year’s hot items were: Anything Neca TMNT-related (with the Casey Jones/Undercover Raph two-pack being one of the first to really blow up this year), the GI Joe Classified series, or any line of figures that came out in some places a few weeks before it came out in others… Some people bought Marvel Legends, DC Multiverse, WWE Elite or AEW Unrivaled series 2 figures for over $300 from a scalper, only to find them in their own supermarkets at retail a couple of month later. Remember the Marvel Legends Red Hulk? ToyFarce remembers… If people had just waited a little bit, instead of FOMO’ing… oh well.
Talking about waiting:
CORONAVIRUS, AND THE EVER-LASTING DELAYS…
The coronavirus was, of course, the major thing to blame for 2020. Tons of events were canceled worldwide, entire countries were on lockdown, and everything was delayed… Oh boy. The delays. We were hit pretty hard by those, weren’t we? And then everything came out, all at once!! Most of the toys that were supposed to come out between march and october WERE ALL RELEASED at the same time in october/november. Now, there are still some toys that were supposed to come out already that have yet to be released… Like the entire MAFEX catalog, apart from 2 or 3. Hey, Miles Morales from ‘Into the Spiderverse’ just came out, with only 6 months of delay! It seems like we’re going to have to be a bit more patient, as things will continue to be delayed for a while, until the Coronavirus situation gets under control, so we invite you to check out our article about patience from a few weeks ago > https://www.toyfarce.com/news/what-to-do-when-a-toyfarce-psa
In the meantime, while we didn’t get new new toys, we certainly did get new old toys!
WHAT’S OLD IS NEW…AGAIN!
Several brands have been surfing the ‘Retro’ wave for the last few years, but Hasbro became the king of retro in 2020. With several figures from the Marvel Legends wave using the ‘retro’ Toy Biz packaging, the Real Ghostbusters line, that looks just like the one we had when we were kids, the G.I.Joe retro line, and the Star Wars Vintage Collection (which was already ongoing), if you want to re-live your childhood by getting figures that have the same packaging as back then, Hasbro has got your back! Also, can we really call the early 90’s “Retro”?? Are we that old already? Damn…
ToyFarce would like to thank the 3 people that will read the entire thing (Hi, Erik, how you doin’?) and wish you all a glorious 2021!
More news at 11:00…in 2021!
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PS: This article was written on December 31st, so if we all die before the clock hits midnight, it will have been all for nothing!