Forum - View topicNEWS: Voltron: Legendary Defender Animated Series' Final Season Previewed in Video
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Chester McCool
 Posts: 322 |
|
|||||||||||
That's a common problem with remakes/reboots in the west. It's clear a lot of them are made by people with either disinterest or outright contempt for the original. The reason Grant isn't in Netflixvania is because the head writer doesn't like him. That's a really petty reason not to have a main character in the show. The staff of the Netflix She-Ra has made similar comments on the old show, and of course Voltron's clear contempt for the titular mecha aspect of the show. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
|
|||||||||||
Fair enough.
Looks like they were poached from Dreamworks rather than jumping ship. If you worked in American animation, would you turn down the chance to do Spider-Man? It certainly disproves H. Guderian's assumption that:
No, they just got a job working on superheroes. Can't get a higher profile American animation gig!
Again, without viewership numbers, we have no idea if Voltron reached its target audience or not. We only know that their toys did poorly, which could be Playmates and Toys R Us' fault. You may have found the hand-to-hand combat scenes "boring", but the packed Hammerstein Ballroom at NYCC begs to differ. And there's no proof the Voltron TV show was cancelled or otherwise discontinued early, even with the bad toy sales. The show had a good run. Maybe it would have gotten spin-offs if the toys sold better, but the main show has come to an ending point. FYI, a lot of Netflix shows will not run on forever.
Got numbers to back that up? Failures don't get blu ray box sets, ongoing, top selling comic book series, or live action show adaptations from Netflix. Viacom dropped the ball, though. Because:
That's because media companies still shoot themselves in the foot believing age-old myths about what kids want to watch. I saw Daron Nefcy at an author event promoting the new Star vs. The Forces of Evil book. She told us that Star was rejected by Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network before it was picked up by Disney X.D. because it starred a female character. She also said that Disney was iffy on letting her do serialized stories until the second season,,,serialized stories that, of course, made the show popular enough for at *least* 2 more seasons and a book. American network execs have been underestimating kids for years, believing them too impatient for serialized stories and unable to relate to female leads, among other things. That doesn't mean kids aren't interested in serialized cartoons. Hopefully, Netflix's insistence on serialized (and bingeable) everything is changing some minds. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 4824 |
|
|||||||||||
|
Besides hardcore figure collectors, I'm curious to know how much figures of mainstream franchises sell in general in the US anyway?
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Beatdigga
 Posts: 4371 Location: New York |
|
|||||||||||
|
It’s worth noting as well the Hammerstein seated several hundred LESS than the main stage at NYCC, which they were booted from for the main stage for a panel on the box set of Batman The Animated Series (which I had to get). I assume it's like Firefly, small, dedicated, but ultimately insignificant in terms of the general audience.
I presume superhero toys sell quite a bit given how many Avengers toys you can see consistently at department stores. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
|
|||||||||||
|
^I didn't know that, although I have a theory that NYCC assigns panel space based on how much the panel "guests" pay them---there is just no other way to explain Sony Crackle's SuperMansion getting a mainstage panel 2 years (or is it 3?) in a row! When I went a year or two a go, the auditorium was barely a quarter filled despite Bryan Cranston being one of the guests. Why on Earth was SuperMansion given mainstage status again?
*Ahem*, but New York Comic Con status aside, it's really impossible to know how many people watched Voltron, because Netflix is frustratingly opaque. Firefly had Nielson ratings (and I don't think it truly gained it's cult status until after it was cancelled. It just wasn't lucky enough to pull a Star Trek). I think I heard that Netflix doesn't even share it's viewing data with showrunners, which must be harder on them than it is on us fans. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
roseadry
Posts: 4 |
|
|||||||||||
Hi, I've worked in a toy store for years and figures definitely do sell. It really depends on the franchise and character though. Some times though it's not up to us. Management interacts with the parent company itself and sometimes they'll choose to ship certain figures and toys against the management's requests if they want to sell a certain product or character. Disney is one of the more aggressive companies in this regard. This is only from the store I work at so take it with a grain of salt and it may not be indicative of every store everywhere. To be honest I'm not sure we ever stocked Voltron figures. Toys based on Netflix shows tend to not do as well as those on TV. People like to say kids are watching streaming more these days, but maybe it's just around here, but we sold way more toys of shows and movies on TV and theaters than Netflix exclusive ones. Like Ninja Turtles, My Little Pony, Paw Patrol, and Transformers. She-Ra had open orders for the toyline awhile ago, but they were cancelled at the last minute. I think the parent company realized that they were not going to sell well so they scrapped the line completely. It seems like a show not being on TV really hurts toy sales despite the popularity of streaming. But then you have toys like Fingerlings, L.O.L. Surprise, and Hatchimals which sell well without any kind of TV show but word-of-mouth and trends really help push them. Sorry for the random tangent, but to answer your question figures do sell well so long as it's something kids want. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Cardcaptor Takato
Posts: 4824 |
|
|||||||||||
|
^Thanks for the informative post. I was curious to know how much kids really do still play with toys in general given the rise of mobile games and now the popularity of the Switch.
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group