Toys to Retirement Weekly Wrap-Up #18
Hello friends,
Wishing everyone a happy Valentine’s day! I’ve been amazed at how well revenue has been the last couple of weeks, and I’ve been worried it’s just an unexpected uptick for Valentine’s day. But it’s the actual holiday and sales are showing no sign of slowing so maybe people are just in the mood for buying toys? Not sure, but I’ll take it. Let’s wrap up the week:
1.5 Hours of Star Wars Black Series Research
This week I sat down to do some product research for my own business and I decided I would record it and upload it to the site. So for those who are curious about the process I use to analyze toy lines, this video pretty much covers it:
![[VIDEO LESSON] Stars Wars Black Series Product Research](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F06b6ed0a-84d4-4e41-92d1-f93740fcd961_500x500.png)
Captain America: Brave New World reception
It seems the latest Marvel installment is opening with mixed reviews. Critics are consistently ranking it among the worst Marvel films, but the audience reception so far seems to be okay. The thing to keep in mind however, is that usually the first audiences to see a new movie are the ones who are excited about it in the first place. I expect the ratings across review sites to drop pretty significantly in the coming weeks.
The writing was pretty much on the wall for this movie after the constant news of reshoots — I’m just hoping Fantastic Four ‘resets’ Marvel into a new saga.
Regardless of the film’s performance, I was still pretty confident that the Red Hulk action figure would have some decent success either once the movie dropped or during this upcoming Q4. It’s hard to lose with Hulk, and the figure is currently harboring a very strong sales rank.
However, Walmart randomly discounted it to 50% off a couple of days ago, along with all of the other Brave New World merch, which is raising major red flags for me. I’m hoping not too many people were able to pick them up, as they’ll be holding the price back for awhile, even when Amazon eventually sells out. I don’t feel good about any of the other merch from the movie, but stayed tuned to see how Red Hulk does.
Speaking of a Walmart sale…
I hope everyone was paying attention this week. Walmart randomly decided to do a 24 hour sale on tons of action figures a few days ago. 50-70% off several products. $22 figures that sell for $60, $6 figures that sell for $25, some Q4 investments, so on and so forth. I spent a lot of money I wasn’t expecting to, and have been getting 30-40 boxes showing up on my door everyday since the sale — I’m drowning!
How was I one of the first ones to know about the sale? Nothing fancy. The same strategies I always preach and have done articles on in the past:
![[VIDEO LESSON] A Very Profitable Homework Assignment](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F89e94733-516a-4198-aa6a-9b2920fb7f9f_500x500.png)
Snow White live action - hit or miss?
A new teaser has dropped for the upcoming Snow White film. Lots of controversy surrounding this film, and I think it’s destined to bomb. But there is no denying that the updated ‘Whistle While You Work’ jingle has some potential to be a viral hit that gets stuck in everyone’s’ heads for days at a time. Awhile back I went and looked at a previous controversial live-action remake — The Little Mermaid, and determined that even when these Disney films perform horrendously, they still serve as a nice catalyst for merch, even if the merch is not directly movie merch.
After determining that, I went and bought some Snow White dolls for sub-$10 that I’m speculating should pop into the mid to high $20’s on Amazon or Walmart. Didn’t go crazy deep, but figured it was a worthwhile gamble.
Guess we’ll find out in March!
Tip of the Week #15
As toy investors, we obviously hold product for longer periods of time than others. Typically, if you run into any sort of customer complaint or lost item at the Amazon warehouse, you can simply logon to the site where you purchased it and download an invoice.
But heads up, several sites only keep your invoices for X amount of time.
I recently found a couple units of a figure deep in my storage unit that I ordered in early 2022. I sent it in to Amazon this past December, and Amazon of course lost the box.
Guess what? That particular distributor only keeps invoices for 3 years! So now I’m out of luck trying to get reimbursed for that item (unless they get back to me and have the invoices saved on their back end).
I’ve also run into this on a couple OA sites where purchase history isn’t saved forever.
So moral of the story, if you’re sending in items that you purchased a few years ago, definitely make sure you go back and download those invoices to your computer before they disappear.
LEGO VIP Points
If you have been ordering LEGO, you probably have been stacking up some LEGO VIP points. Well, there’s a new addition to the Rewards section on the LEGO site that may be worth spending some points on:
The next time you place an order you may want to consider tossing this into your cart, as it’s already catching several sales at $40 on eBay.
Alright, gonna wrap it up there. Everyone have a safe and lovely night, use that hard-earned toy money on a nice dinner! Catch you next week.
I’m not a huge marvel fan but my first impression of the red hulk was “damn that’s a pretty awesome looking figure.” I was planning on buying heavy on the Lego brickheadz set but may now reconsider unless there is a sale.