>"this toy/hobby/subculture is dying, why?">look inside>overpriced>nostalgia baiting older generations>nothing provided to newer generations aside from low effort slopit's happening everywhere, Lego, Mattel, Hasbro, even the toy train companies seem to care more about pandering to manchildren and resellers than they do actually making toys for freaking children
>>11584543>>11584543Newer generations collect Labubu, Pokemon, and various anime figures. That's what western toy-makers have to deal with.
>>11584543children don't like toys anymore how many times do we have to tell you this
>>11584543There really are no real toy stores any longer. The few that are around are independent places that mostly stick to funkos and hot wheels, which some really random import stuff from Korea and China. But no big named franchises or tie-ins at all. Meanwhile the bigger American companies keep remaking, re-remaking, and re-re-remaking the same shit from the 80s to sell to the exact same group of people for the last 40 years. Great! More He-Man, Ghostbusters, and TMNT toys. Either the exact same molds from 1987, or a slight update of the 1987 figure but with a few extra joints!!!No shit kids aren't collecting a goddamn thing. no one is making anything for them and retards around here are falling back on>Hur durr, kids don't play with toysYeah again no shit, no one is making toys for them or has in more than a decade.
>>11584548They only collect those things because Youtubers, influencers, and eCelebs tell them to.
>>11584591Most of the (new) "franchises" that get created these days, can't seem to rope kids in to buy them. Even if it's stuff that should theoretically be sellable (like FNAF, Minecraft, etc) don't seem to really sell, because kids really don't seem to care about the toys for those, despite how lucrative the actual IPs are.And the efforts to actually "revive" 80s and 90s franchises (like Ghostbusters, TMNT, etc) don't seem to land very well. Most modern revivals are at the mercy of political correctness, and the idea that weapons and fighting are offensive, so you kind of get these neutered versions what was going on in the 80s and 90s. So, it doesn't appeal to kids, and the adult collectors have no connection to the new versions, and just want the old versions.
Action figures can't beat electronic devices. Physical action figures just are not for younger generations and will eventually cease to exist. Actual kids toys will be reduced in prevalence, but continue in a small role when parents buy them.
>>11584590>children don't like toys anymore how many times do we have to tell you thisJust because your single mother sister is a bad parent, doesnt mean this is true
>>11584609The fuck do kids not liking toys have to do with how his sister raises her children?
>>11584543Couple things going on1. Death of cable and animation blocks. Kids used to watch a block of animation with ads. At their worst, the ads would be nothing but toys, candy, and good. This was around 85 at its peak. That kind of advertising was phased out but the animation blocks remained. The magic price to enter most of these cartoon worlds was $5. Sure, the bigger toys were 15, 25, 35 and so on. But most shows had popular characters you could get for $5. Heman, all your transformers minibots, insecticons, combiner limbs, tmnt, real ghostbusters, GI Joe, etc, all $5 and often less. Maybe 3.99. What does a kid get now for $5? A 2.5 inch sonic? Those surprise balls? $20 gets you one figure when it used to get you 4! Parents grown and moan about having to spend all this money. And who can blame them? Toy prices go up while wages have been stagnant for a while. So what do parents do? They give them an old IPad or tv and put on free YouTube and just dont take them to buy toys.Anons that think kids dont like toys are nuts. When I go thrifting, kids always look at the toys. All my nieces and nephews love toys. Parents just dont take their kids to the toy area of walmart and target, and instead give them the old iPad because there is a perception that iPad are free entertainment. It goes back to Parents, then to wages. Kids will always like toys.
>>11584618>The fuck do kids not liking toys have to do with how his sister raises her children?Kids no toy, only touch pad is a meme repeated by guys who's only exposure to kids and how they are raised are those with shitty mothers in their own family.If they actually spent time around children, they'd know kids love toys when they are provided
>>11584624Parents can't afford toys anymore unless they're rich
>>11584594They're still shelling out cash to buy it to where Labubu now makes more money than Hasbro and Mattel do.
>>11584622Anyway, yeah1. Kids dont warch animation blocks because parents cant afford or so not want cable. They get free shit like YouTube. Maybe the parents spring for disneh +, but most Disney shows and movies do not have peosuct on the shelf. If they do, like the princesses, theh still move product.2. Most entry level toys were $5. Now theh are $20 to $25 or even $30. All this while wages have remained almost the same.2.
>>11584598>Most of the (new) "franchises" that get created these days, can't seem to rope kids in to buy them.that's because most new franchises are either tumblr-bait, manchild-bait, or in the vast majority of cases created by independent artists with no budget for creating their own merchandise. Like look at all the new franchises of the past ten years that are quite popular with kids nowadays>Friday Night Funkin>Undertale/Deltarune>Five Nights at Freddy's>Among Us>Fortnite>fucking skibidi toiletAll of these were unexpected hits, but all of them (except fortnite) were made by indie studios, and fucking skibidi toilet was originally a sfm shitpost.>Even if it's stuff that should theoretically be sellable (like FNAF, Minecraft, etc) don't seem to really sell, because kids really don't seem to care about the toys for those, despite how lucrative the actual IPsthe problem with them is that most of their "toys" are just funkos or shitty chink merch you see sold at Target or on shitty kiosks run by third-worlders, most of them bootlegs with no playability whatsoever.>>11584622>Toy prices go up while wages have been stagnant for a while.wages haven't been stagnant, the dollar itself is just becoming worthless, thank congress and the Fed for that, but all your other points are solid
>>11584631>LabubuDont worry about labubu. Really, dont worry about anything adult women purchase as part of a hype train. That shir comes and goes and doesnt matter. Its essentially companies playing a slot machine. All it takes is like a mid day rv show that mom's watch and 3 famous women to hype up some random thing and then fomo makes women buy it in droves.Then they realize it was stupid and it ends up in the garbage oe at the good will.
The unfortunate part is that everything for kids today is utter slop and the toys reflect it>Pokemon is at least moderately still popular with somewhat reasonable toys and prices>Fortnite is popular with kids but had like 3 failed toy lines>Skibidi Toilet shit is shelf rotting right now>Mr Beast figures that i don't think he even advertised are starting to be shipped off to OlliesThere's literally no other shows that are popular with kids right now that have toys except for anime shit which is mostly blind bag toys.
>>11584643I guess to add to this, nicktoons kind of killed toys? Or at least wounded them.Its no secret john K hated toy driven cartoons and that thought impacted how a lot of animators thought. A lot of creatives thought action figures were selling out. Not all mind you. I guess Eastman and lard loved them and saw how the toys could be a level of expression too and made all sorts of wild ones.Anyway, yeah, it was popular after the success of nicktoons and later cartoon network to not make shows that would sell toys. And as a result, stations also stopped green lighting action cartoons. Part of the popularity of Avatar was that it was an action / adventure cartoon after going so many years without one.There are of course exceptions like the disneh afternoon but Disney rarely made action figures and play sets for Disney afternoon or Saturday morning shows and by gooftroop, they were also leaning away from adventure series.Also, to back up, if you're gen z or a, back in the day you would read a comic or watch a show and then go to the store and you could spend 4 to 5 $ for a character from that show and you and your friends would get together and make up your own stories with the characters. Sometimes you'd make up your own stories at home and act them out with the characters. The related tv show would play usually after school or on Saturday. That entire eco system started to erode when Pokémon and dragon Ball Z hit and would be over entirely around 2014 when the last Saturday morning cartoon airedThe pricing, the cartoon blocks, playing with friends down the street, its been gone for 11 years now
>>11584666>I guess to add to this, nicktoons kind of killed toys? Or at least wounded them.Also video games.Transformers, heman and GI Joe all hit it big after the video game bubble popped and we're able to sponge up a lot of money. Some how, around the tail end of the 16 bit period and the start of the 32 bit era, gaming some how convinced young boys that gaming was for teenagers a d toys were for small children and man babies. Which is kind of funny given just how many gamers are man babies and how many of their favorite games are still for children or based on children's IPs. Some how games were able to make a branding shift that toys have never been able to do, despite video games still being, we'll, games. Games coming back from the grave during the middle of the 8 bit period pulled a lot of money out of toys. The real damage was done around the release of 32 bit games where consumers would drop toys entirely for multiple $60 purchases.In some ways this just wise consuming. Games have stayed relatively the same price wise. In 1985, for $60 you could buy like 15 figures. So you could pretty much buy multiple seasons of characters. Thats a lot of play value. Now? 3. You can buy maybe 3. Maybe just 2.
>>11584646Not really. I've noticed the variety of "blind box" toys offered in toy aisles. That's the fad, and it's been around for a while. The stuff's cheap and easy to make, and has a high-sellability if done right. Labubu will fizzle out, but blind-box collecting won't. That's something Hasbro and Mattel need to capitalize on instead of licensing out to others.
>>11584685>Not really. I've noticed the variety of "blind box" toys offered in toy aisles. That's the fad, and it's been around for a while. The stuff's cheap and easy to make, and has a high-sellability if done right. Labubu will fizzle out, but blind-box collecting won't. That's something Hasbro and Mattel need to capitalize on instead of licensing out to others.Are tou arguing with yourself?This is a fad, but then its not a fad? Go reread what tou said
>>11584666wasted satanic trips>Its no secret john K hated toy driven cartoons and that thought impacted how a lot of animators thought.who cares about John K? He was a narcissistic hack and a pedo>And as a result, stations also stopped green lighting action cartoons. Part of the popularity of Avatar was that it was an action / adventure cartoon after going so many years without one.what the hell are you talking about? there was a ton of Action and Adventure cartoons back in the 90s and 00s on nick and cartoon network especially, Teen titans, Ben 10, Samurai Jack, TNMT, not to mention batman and the freaking DCAU.
As someone who works with children, they seem to still like toys. But mostly it’s little collectibles and Knick knacks, oh and stuffed animals, the girls love soft things. Everyone was really into tiny ducks for a bit last year, they were like the silly bandz of today. Boys still get the nerf guns. Action figures/dolls specifically are sparse though, I rarely see any kids packing those or even talking about them.
>>11584690Labubus are a fad, but the underlying gimmick that's driving them is not a fad. It's not hard to understand. WHEN Labubu falls, another blind-box brand will take over.
>>11584646>Then they realize it was stupid and it ends up in the garbage oe at the good will.Good news, everyone. It's already happening.https://www.dailydot.com/news/goodwill-store-flooded-with-labubu-donations/
>>11584694>what the hell are you talking about? there was a ton of Action and Adventure cartoons back in the 90s and 00s on nick and cartoon network especially, Teen titans, Ben 10, Samurai Jack, TNMT, not to mention batman and the freaking DCAU.Im sorry you take things as a binary and dont understand spectrums and gradual declines
>>11584711>Im sorry you take things as a binary and dont understand spectrums and gradual declinesyou specifically stated that that they actively stopped greenlighting action cartoons and Avatar was the first action adventure cartoon in years, both of those things you said were objectively false. Avatar wasn't even a Saturday morning cartoon ffs, it was only on nickelodeon
>>11584721You're free to look at rhe schedules for each year and look at the numbers of total shows dropping
>>11584543/toy/ is so shit right now because you have a large subset of users that have been priced out of the hobby this year and for some reason they've decided to take it out on all of us. The endless whining over $4 is outrageous to me. If a $3 price increase was enough to get you to not buy something, you didn't really even want it in the first place.
>went from pretending that Avatar was the first action show for years even though at the time ben ten and Teen Titans were highly popular because John K had a temper tantrum to "muh total numbers"CN and Nickelodeon's decline was well after ATLA hit the picture, you delusional redditor
>>11584768>$3-4 price increases>meanwhile Lego casually selling sets that are $20-30 marked up purely to profit off of collectors>pic related costs $160 and there's not a single set under $10 outside of polybags and tiny vehicles
>>11584772Lego was a whole other animal even back in the 90s, I remember thinking Lego was overpriced compared to other toys THEN. I can only imagine how bad it is now (I don't look at Lego stuff now).
>>11584768Dan, Marvel Legends were $20 in 2020. They are now $28 in 2025. That's not just a $3 price increase. That's $8 in 5 years. $20 to $28 a 40% price increase in 5 years. I can tell you right now I didn't get a 40% total raise over those 5 years and my metrics are close to as high as you can get -- I get raises almost double the company average. I can only imagine what people who got lower are feeling.
>>11584786*$20 to $28 IS a 40% price increase
>>11584786Anon $8 is literally nothing to me. I'll be alright, especially since I've been slowing down on MLs and other toy purchases as I feel my collection is as good as I am going to get it.
>>11584768>/toy/ is so shit right now because you have a large subset of users that have been priced out of the hobby this year and for some reason they've decided to take it out on all of us. The endless whining over $4 is outrageous to me. If a $3 price increase was enough to get you to not buy something, you didn't really even want it in the first placeIts been an addiction for many for a while. It was always about the hunt and getting things cheaper than others. Same soet of people who bitch about ankle rockers and then display 50 figures on a walmart shelf all just standing there, like trophies
>>11584769>you delusional redditor>everyone i dont like is neatly packaged into one group
>>11584772Lego has been expensive for 40÷ years
>>11584794If you weren't slowing down on MLs, you would feel that $8 as an extra $48+ per wave depending on how big the wave is.
>>11584768At retail there's $75 spent in this picture. You can't tell me that's OK.
>>11584781>>11584802back in the day, by average price of the most expensive sets per theme around $90-100, and that included GOATS like the OG star destroyer, hogwarts, bat cave, and City police station. the average price of sets back then were JUST around $10-30, fifty if you wanted a big set (pic related costed only $50). Nowadays it's rare to have an entire theme to have a set under a set under $20 with sets having double (sometimes triple) the price of what the objectively should be valued, even after inflation.
diet of salt, rage bait, and spam clogged the /toy/letwe don't need a jannywe need a plumber
>>11584894I wouldn't really call that a big set. I'm talking more like this as a big set and as you said these were approaching $100. The big sets were the only ones that gave me the wide enough freedom to build what I wanted, medium ones were very constraining and the small packs really weren't even worth getting besides as supplements.
>>11584594Yeah, when I was a kid, there were never any trends. Fuckin' woke DEI garbage.
I've been an active user here for 10+ years and only come here now to check out the Lego/Playmobil/kids toy threads, because I have kids now. I used to collect primarily imports but having so many toys that kids can't play with is starting to feel gay and dumb. I'm getting rid of most of my shit to make room. Even if I wanted to buy figma or whatever I can't even get that shit shipped to the states right now. For the quality of the product which I would argue has declined significantly it's just not worth it anymore.
>>11584949The the very thing with Lego is that you could quite literally build whatever you wanted, yeah the big set was expensive but you're getting more bang for your buck back then, beside even if your didn't have the money for the big set you could've always used those smaller sets and rebuild them into whatever, especially if you had those dirt cheap brick boxes. for instance, this set from that exact same wave only costed $30...
>>11584988by contrast, this set is what TLG considers to be worth $50 now. $50! oh and if your wondering why I chose a harry potter set and not a Castle set, it's because Castle has been dead for the past 12 years.
>>11584839As a non-American it's even worse, I'm basically priced out because international shipping prices are also out of control. It'd be like $150+ of my dollarydoos for those 3 little figures. I know nobody here cares about literally who countries but the point I'm making is the on top of how bad you think it is, everywhere else is even worse. The USD is very strong.
/toy/ is dying and the timer for captchas isnt helping either
>>11584591I collect, or more correctly, I buy 1:18 or 3.75in almost exclusively of stuff that looks cool, not line exclusive just characters i like how they look or catch my attention .If there were even half the awesome figures there are today back then when I was a kid, you bet your ass I would ask my parents to buy them for me.So yeah kids today are fucking stupid, they hate toys so fuck them.
>>11584707i love it when the famous person who blew it up hates it after all the femdrones overspend on it all
>>11584598As a FNAF fan, I think the main problem was that no companies really cared to give it good toys in the first place. They treated it like a crappy kids toy without putting in the effort to make them sellable. Which is kind of ironic because if companies made them.better then they'd probably sell well. Instead Funko was the only one making figured and the figures were fairly poor. I suspect a similar sentiment is pushed to kids todays. Instead of making products of higher quality they go with bare minimum for kids and then turn to the 80s and 90s people going 'thatll be $40' for a better quality figure. Horrible long term planning, but thats how it is sadly. Short term gains, long term... did I mention short term gains?
>>11585132I TRY to collect as best as I can, but prices are a factor. My most recent aquisition two days ago is a Black Major Cobra Commander. Yeah the shade of blue is off but I don't care. The original in good condition is simply priced out of the market for me. And my biggest problem is I don't collect one single line to focus on, and collect multiple lines. That makes it take longer to build up any given collection as well as more costly.
>>11584594...just like cable ads showed you your toys in previous generations
>>11584543Tarrifs happened
>>11586002Bullshit. Toy prices have done nothing but creep up for a solid decade now.
>>11584772What's the gif's problem? That Lego sets are made from bricks? Buy a model kit, not only it's more accurate to the source material, is cheaper and sturdier. I will never understand people who buy Lego sets to display them as model kits.
>>11586060First off>gifit's a webm>I will never understand people who buy Lego sets to display them as model kits.it's meant to be a PLAY SET. a PLAY SET. as in meant to be PLAYED by KIDS. previous versions never had builds both this small and this flimsy, and for double the price. it fails at both being a model and a toy
>>11586065Lego is overpriced nowadays but you clearly never played with Lego. No kid on this god forsaken world play with their bricks like that. Tank needs to explode anyways.
>>11586079>build integrity doesn't matter because "muh tanks explode"I'd like to remind everyone the previous version was bigger, sturdier, and had a side build, all for $50 less>but you clearly never played with Lego. No kid on this god forsaken world play with their bricks like that. people like you are the reason why the Toy industry's gone to shit, of course kids are going to play with it like that, they've been playing that for years, I've can say that personally.
>>11586103Looking at that picture that set should cost $40 max.
