Welp, lemme tell ya...
*takes deep breath*
Hasbro's actually been pretty candid with fans about the issue of "playsets", as that's been a big question from fans to the H over the past while now that we've had no playsets to speak of in the Star Wars line. It's good to cite Star Wars because ultimately it's been considered the most successful boy's toy brand for a while now. Shocking given today's toy market.
-The first big problem is kids today... When I was growing up (walking uphill, both ways, to school, in 3 feet of snow daily all year), toy brands had some staying power... I joined in on GI Joe the first day K-Mart opened in 1982, and I got just about every piece ever made, and technically almost two of everything because of my brother... That lasted into the late 80's, early 1990's too... Along the way, there was MASK, Transformers, and other brands I actually stuck with too.
Basically in a nutshell, kids are fickle. The market's largely dominated now by video games. That's where the majority of kid's attention goes, and toy brands tend to have less shelf life. For example, you can name any number of film brands that have come and gone. Terminator Salvation is a dying brand (though Playmates claims Star Trek has some life), Indiana Jones... Basically kids are needed to really drive these, and they're just not there like we were when we were kids. Short attention spans and all that jazz.
-Next, costs... Line's today aren't costed out like they were in 1982. So, sure we got a kick butt GI Joe base and other big stuff for that line, but today budget's are often tighter, as are margins, and production costs and the like... Hasbro's very bluntly said that they cannot produce a playset for cheap, and people are often not willing to put their money where their mouths are. They cite large vehicles and playsets are just the things that are too cost-prohibitive to make it to the shelves.
Look at the ST playsets... To complete either, you actually have to buy a full set of figures, and the Bridge playset is so many levels of simplistic in design that you really may feel ripped off. You shouldn't since you barely paid much for what you got anyway, but still people "expected more". The transporter costs more, and it's more substantial, but to complete it you still need to buy figures.
-Play Value... What "we" want, and what actually is needed to move a toy are two different things. 21st's playsets kicked butt on every level. The farmhouse? I love it. The government building thing? I love it. The farmhouse? I love it. The fountain? It's neat and I got it cheap.
Tough to say I love it.
But that's beside the point... The thing is, those were REALLY costly things to produce, and yet when you break them down they're insanely simplistic. A couple molded walls that snap together and this and that... Not much to them. Paint aps were complex (IMO anyway) but really as playsets go they were "dull". They're more displays than "playsets". Hasbro insists then that a "playset", to be successful, requires play features and things for kids... Firing missles, exploding crap, and the like.
SW fans keep clamoring for these ornate display pieces, with no real play value, but lots of display value. One idea of mine that others have also had is to do a stackable set of "cubes" to make a modular Death Star for instance. Something that you can connect in a variety of ways... Hasbro's said that A) it'd be really expensive, and B) it wouldn't sell because it wouldn't interest kids, and they need kid interest for it to move.
Look at the AT-TE... It's huge! It has lots of play features, and it has features for kids and is focused on a kid-driven property with the current Clone Wars 3D Cartoon. They consider that the ideal... Same with the upcoming Turbo Tank, or the "Big" Millenium Falcon (which is a playset to itself really).
I always like to compare though, items like 21st's playsets to what is supposedly "needed" to sell. The 21st's sets are ultimately "ideal", but they did not sell. They're what "we" want though. I love 'em... But they were failures. Likewise, so would a Bespin Hallway or something like that... And that's got a much larger market base too.
-Trial & Error... The next thing though, is that it's not like companies haven't tried. Like 21st's sets, Hasbro's tried some things recently. One being the "Sarlacc" in the ultimate battlepack at Target this year. They tried giving us basically a scaled Sarlacc monster from ROTJ, something fans have clamored for, for ages now. I love it too! But I got mine on clearance because I refused to pay what they wanted to get basically a bunch of stuff I didn't want + the monster I did want.
Likewise, the "dome", was one of Hasbro's other recent efforts to make basically a "playset". It's the Skywalker family dome, and it's a nicely sculpted plastic dome, with a bottom to it, that makes the... well... the dome that sticks out of the sand to let you know Luke has a home somewhere around there.
It rocks, but it was like $54 to get 3 figures you already had, a PVC rodent thing, and a re-used moisture vaporator... and the dome.
Hasbro INSISTS that it was all they could do to get this item to retail for $54 with those crummy figures, and stuff, to just get that simpel two-piece-dome out there. Basically, what they're saying, is it cost them $45 to get that dome out, and $9 to get you the rest of the junk.
If it cost that to get that, what do you think a stackable set of cubes with opening doors, some other details and things might cost, to get a "modular Death Star" out there? (I keep citing it because it's probably the most asked for SW playset.)
We ran a story here not too long ago at all that we broke a Death Star mock-up made of foam board that Hasbro routinely passed around for years now at meetings, to see if they could do it. Basically they wanted it to be a spherical shape to appeal to kids and let them know that it's the Death Star. It had various rooms interconnecting that showed the main scenes from the Death Star, features like chasms figures could swing across and things, lasers and stuff.
I sat on the images for that playset mock-up since 2008 when the playset debate was really raging on SW boards, and I kept thinking that it was nowhere near what all the collectors kept claiming they'd pay top dollar for. Hasbro says that's what it would have to be though (cramming play features into a recognizeable design/shape for the kiddies, while doing some aesthetics trying to get adults to want it too). I knew in my heart nobody would want it.
So 2009 rolls around, I ran with the story one day, and I got exactly the response I had expected. Fans were disappointed, people were upset at not just my board but on Rebelscum and elsewhere. Some even doubted Hasbro would create something like this saying, "they know what we want so there's no way this is real", and things like that. People were flat out mad that it was being considered and it would look like it did perhaps.
That pretty much summed up, to me, why playsets aren't getting made... The Sarlacc didn't sell, the Lars/Skywalker dome didn't sell, the 21st Cent. Toys playsets didn't sell...
Hasbro readily admitted the need for kids to sustain the INdy line, and it sounded like, to me, they were planning more sets for it. They said Indy is more environmentally-centric and so they wanted to get more playsets out for Indy... But would they be the Well of Souls, or Maproom from our childhood? No... They'd have been the Akator playset, that crammed every little action thing into it that they could think of from the movies.
It sucks... It especially sucks knowing what 21st was GOING to produce. I mean, that bridge? I'd have paid pretty hefty (by my standards) for that. And the 3-story building would've also dug into my budget.
But most companies see playsets as just not feasible when comparing risk to reward. ST's apparantly doing better than most people realize (I'm shocked as well), but I don't expect more sets for them. Just the figures we've been shown.
Hasbro's definitely focusing on trying to milk the $20-ish vheicles for what they can. Repaintability is a huge plus to those. They're taking a smaller risk now with their deluxe vehicle line (but still probably banking on repaintability given that things like Gunships and ARC-170's fall into this group). Playsets though, they're pretty much dead. Toy lines usually have a finite time to get what they can out, and riskier items are usually chopped out of the line-up immediately to maximize what they can in profit while they still have something that sells.
SW is the rarity that has longevity, and they say that unless it's veyr important in the current media (right now, the cartoons), they're unlikely to touch it, and that playsets are not in the cards for the foreseeable future. Even less so for ones from movies that are over 30 years old to boot.
Things like the original GIJ: ARAH line are from a totally different era... It kind of makes you look back on them with greater appreciation.
I was up in my attic getting some items down to sell recently and found my old Indy playsets. I was so happy to find those... They went immediately onto my Indy shelf with my new awesome figurse, and they're everything I wish Hasbro would've delivered (sans any paint aps), and my new figures look amazing standing on these old school sets.
Perhaps you can make your own playsets?
