Series 1 to 5 Rant

[Martin Milner]

If they plan on continuing the figures series much longer I would think that combining male and female characters into a single set of 12 would be in order... 6 boys, 6 girls... perhaps rotating through the themes and doing 2-3 male and 2-3 female of each selected theme per series... but that is just because they will run out of ideas if they keep up this pace.

The actual market purpose of the figures series though is best met as is... getting kids interested in themes they don't have because the get a space man when they only collect knights... etc... but the company need to do a better job of market saturation with these guys... throw in a mini catalog with the online site into the bag and sell to the Walmart and Target type stores at break-even prices or even a loss leader to get the word out about Playmobil... these guys should be at every register everywhere and cheap enough that anybody can pick up one or two without having to have an excuse to get the kid a present... then the kids would ask for Playmobil themselves after perusing the catalog included with the figure.... my little rant 

I think they've already run out of ideas...

I can't understand their marketing and sales strategy at all; it is, to my mind, shambolic, but maybe they just don't have one, at least as far as North America is concerned.

As you say, Walgreens (and Rite Aid round my way) carry toys, and the Fi?ures would be ideal stock for their pegs, but no Playmobil is in evidence. It's as if Playmobil want to see a nice profit margin from every sale, and have no concept of widening their market base with loss leaders. The concern is that there are fewer retailers carrying Playmobil now than there were three years ago when I came to live in the USA, and in another five years Playmobil may become an online only purchase.

 

[Jay]

My problem with the F?gures is the volume. 48 per year makes it tough to get all the ones you want. Even though I have had success feeling bags. In Montreal they seem to be selling well with Series 1 and 2 mostly gone. Series 3 was not as readily available so most places are sold out. I did go to one place last week that had a new box and was able to find 2 more Grenadiers. Hopefully we keep getting more until Series 4 shows up in April. As for price they are 50 cents cheaper than Specials at 3.50 And the same price as Lego bags.

If it was possible to get all 48 by only getting one of each, but that's not the reality. My son bought 6 of the Danish bagged figures at Christmas and had 3 of the same thing. I'm sure anyone who has bought a handful of the PMB has had the experience of getting 2 of the same, usually not the ones one would want.  But, it's worked for the Danish company, though they are a few dollars cheaper.  But so far I haven't found any place that has the PMB at clearance prices.

[DrDalek6]

Well in the UK we've got them for £1.99 near me, I've only bought from Toysurs and they only recently got the Series 3, I've never really looked in any other shops apart form a small one about 20 minutes walk from me and those are right by the counter. I feel for the figures I want and I'm always worried about not getting the right one but, I won't buy unless I'm fairly confident as I don't have the money to justify buying the figures I don't want, so far guessed all right out of the 6 I bought, I normally feel for a certain piece/s to identify a figure like Elvis's cape and then his hair which after feeling several Aliens convinced me I'd got the right one.

The ones I have bought I've liked all of them as figures I'd gladly get at least one more of most of them to keep one as an original and one to customise if I had more money to spare. I'm looking forward to Series 4 the figures do look a bit familiar let's face it they could be a lot more creative but, on the other hand I don't have similar figures to the ones being released so personally they'd still appeal to me enough to go out and get them, in contrast I'm really unimpressed with what I've seen of Series 5 so far.

I also think it's good that you can take them apart easily because I'm not very good with my hands at stuff like that so I think more figures which you can customise easily or a tool to help 'pop' Klickies is a good idea for kids and people like me who struggle to take figures apart although not necessarily in this format.

[Ismene]

I do love that they are easy to pop. I'm not very good at popping regular klickies, which is a problem because I have a couple older ones that need new parts.

Overall, I think it's a great idea, but:
(1) they need to be readily available [I can't even find them locally, and Toys 'R Us is very hard to get to by bus from where I am.]
(2) they need to be priced such that kids can buy them with their allowance.

[DrDalek6]

I do love that they are easy to pop. I'm not very good at popping regular klickies, which is a problem because I have a couple older ones that need new parts.

Overall, I think it's a great idea, but:
(1) they need to be readily available [I can't even find them locally, and Toys 'R Us is very hard to get to by bus from where I am.]
(2) they need to be priced such that kids can buy them with their allowance.

Yes I agree with you on those points it does seem like there is a wide variation in prices in some places it should ideally work out at being pretty much the same price regardless of where you live and they should be widely available, still for me at least I know that they're normally cheaper than on Ebay most are at £2.99 or more some are £5.99 or £6.99 ridiculous really 

[el jefe]

A problem with putting mystery figs in Walgreens, is the price would be jacked up so high.  They'd probably be 8 bucks a piece.  There other toys are super overpriced.  12 dollar action figures, etc. 

[nunney]

A problem with putting mystery figs in Walgreens, is the price would be jacked up so high.  They'd probably be 8 bucks a piece.  There other toys are super overpriced.  12 dollar action figures, etc.

that's probably true. walgreens was really just an example and they're a changing presence as new stores are becoming more multipurpose and since they acquired drugstore.com.

ideally, target, walmart, barnes & noble...

online shops - yoyo.com, amazon. com (proper, not 3rd party)

toys r us has a monopoly on the national toy market and online. their umbrella company - geoffrey - owns tru, fao schwarz,  etoys and toys.com. outside of limited stock in barnes & noble and kohls, i don't believe there is another national retailer that stocks playmobil in any capacity either virtually or in brick and mortar.

[Jay]

Nunnery, good points. but up until a few years ago Walmart was the leading toy seller in the country.  I don't know if it's still true. I would also suspect that Target either way is a close 3rd.

[Rasputin]

Geobra did have a contract with Target and Walmart for a while but I bet they were a bit unflexible on prices. Its not really that benifical for them to even sell there as those stores are all about more for less where as Geobra is less for more. Geobra would be better off selling on their own site anyways and retain 100% of MSRP

[Jay]

There are at least 3 Lego stores in the Chicago area, plus one of those super store type thing. PMB had 1 store in Orlando, and they closed that.   A few years ago they had a traveling display which went to about 5 locations in all the US for about a week each. At the mall they chose for the Chicago area (small, class "B" mall) there was no store in it that actually sold any product at all.
 Playmobil is trying very hard to have a very small market share in the US.