Everything Disney LOST By Going Woke (WCB)

In this video essay, we follow the trajectory from Disney's decisions to the ramifications at retail. (All-New Footage)



The Buzz Lightyear toys look really good, but they are not selling. It obviously takes a good movie to sell toys, even for well know characters. You can also see the huge drop off in toy sales with the Disney (is dumb) Star Wars movies.

The World Class Bullshitters channel takes a look at toy sales during this period in entertainment history.

As a customer you can notice that a LOT of big name brands are struggling to sell (Buzz Lightyear, new Marvel toys etc), or where the brands are simply not stocked (go look at the Star Wars sections in Target for instance). If you make something unappealing to kids, and also adult collectors, like dumb movies with poor role models for boys (who would would buy action figures), then you reap what you sow.

There are good generic toys stocked in the retailers, it's just that the big brands seem to have lost their luster. Poorly done movies have trouble selling merch. It's not just the woke aspect (there is a good definition of the term, that has now entered the dictionary, at the start of the video) but the quality of the story telling too. However, making male characters doofuses, compared to the other characters, rather than equally competent heroes, doesn't work. It kills action hero toy sales.

The big question with the action films is, who is your audience? Who is gonna be buying your merch?

This all seems like such a waste. The IPs are very marketable, and yet they are not drawing in the sort of sales one might expect. Someone in the comments to this video on You Tube pointed out that sales of old school transformers toys, and other older material, are kept alive because of love for the characters. If you make a forgettable character then ... no sales !

[Posted at the SpookyWeather2 blog, February 27, 2023.]