Nearly Non Existent Pony Section

[BlackCurtains]

Who is opening up Toys 'R' Us in their stores? Is that Target? Maybe they will have more ponies when that's fully implemented.

[Loa]

I wonder if they are doing a big clear out before a new range!

[Taffeta]

I don't think the Entertainer's pony display has changed since 2022.

I wish I was joking.

[Carrehz]

Who is opening up Toys 'R' Us in their stores? Is that Target? Maybe they will have more ponies when that's fully implemented.

Macy's has Toys R Us, at least in New York. When I was there last July the one in Times Square had a small MLP section, not much variety but still more than I usually see here in the UK x)

[Minty_Magic]

The pony sections around here have been so sad at every big box store I’ve been to! A lot of times I just don’t even look anymore, the same 5 or so items never seem to change.

Macys does have a TrU section here. They do admittedly have more ponies than say Target or Walmart, but it just seems like there are so few G5 releases to begin with that even when a lot of them are there it doesn’t feel like much.

 I get the feeling Hasbro kind of just w to G5 to fizzle out at this point so they can try another reboot. It’s a shame because I think G5 is really cute, but they haven’t been given much of a fair chance. The toys released have been really mixed in terms of quality and the lack of unique characters certainly hasn’t helped.

[Carrehz]

This thread got me wanting to go through my photos and see what I had in the way of store shelf pics... I'll put them under a spoiler tag so I don't clog the thread up too much.

Spoiler

Here are my pics from TRU in Macy's NYC, Times Square, from last July. (FWIW I went in the one at Queens Center mall too, but going off my pics, I don't think they had any ponies in stock at all.. they did have a section for them though so maybe I just came in pre-restock or something. I was kind of rushing since I got to that one like 10 mins before it closed, so yeah.)

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Not even kidding, this is the BEST selection of G5 toys I've seen since the line started. And even then there's really not that many different toys when you look at it Even worse variety, only THREE different characters here, or four if you count the little dragon thingy.

Compared to these pics I took in a UK Toys R Us in March 2018, before it closed down....

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I mean look, this shop was closing down, everything was being clearanced, and there's STILL more of a variety than in the 2023 photos. I just... HOW?!?! Okay granted most of this is still main 6 stuff, but even then it's still way less same-y than G5!!!

Darn.. I've made myself sad now

[cowboyopossum]

I really don't understand if it's a distribution issue or what, there's just never anything new! If you want a specific set you have to buy it online from amazon or resellers, and pay shipping costs... I miss going to stores back in the day and looking at all the different ponies they had.

[goddessofpeep]

I think the problem is more to do with the state of Hasbro than anything else, though they did not make good decisions about MLP’s G5 from day one.  I personally thought they should have taken a break from MLP for a few years after G4 ended, and then brought the brand back with a lot of fanfare to build excitement.

Anyway, bear with me. I apologize for this getting long.

Hasbro has been in freefall for a while now, and I’m betting this is a symptom of that.   Hasbro is not doing well at all, and their leadership has been actively destroying the company with very, very bad decisions for a while now.  I keep a toe into Magic the Gathering, and about a year or so ago Hasbro tanked that entire brand. I didn’t know this, but Magic the Gathering cards were basically so profitable for Hasbro, that they were propping up the entire company.  It was basically a money printing machine for them. Unfortunately Hasbro took this as a justification to try to squeeze as much money as possible from players, so they have been making decisions designed to not only gouge players, but to keep as much money for themselves as possible(cutting out the local stores which were vital to the health if the brand).

They’ve been churning out sets at an unsustainable pace for years, cutting costs on production leading to warped cards and low quality products even from their “premium” sets, and overall just abusing their cash cow. This came to a head with the 30th anniversary set which was $1000 for 4 packs of random reprints that were only available direct from Hasbro(bypassing the game stores that basically keeps the tournament community alive and vitally bring in a steady stream of new players), and weren’t even tournament legal. The cards were reprints of cards that were on the “never to be reprinted” list, basically destroying the entire second hand market for cards as well.  A lot of people buy Magic cards for investment purposes, and Hasbro violating their “will not reprint ever” list ruined the investor/collector market for cards as well.

This did two things: it pissed off the player base so badly that the *entire* community revolted as a whole to reject the set and Hasbro as a company, and it caused hundreds of local mom & pop stores to close.  Apparently, profit margins for local game stores are razor thin, and Hasbro’s polices made it impossible for many stores to survive with the repeated bad sets and keeping the most profitable stuff to be sold exclusively through Hasbro directly.  That’s a big one since it was those mom and pop stores that ran the local tournaments and “Friday night Magic” events, and that was a huge factor in keeping the demand for cards high and bringing in new players. Hundreds of game stores went out of business due to this, and players were *pissed*.

This all came to a head a little while ago, and the community backlash was so bad that it actually tanked Hasbro’s stock price.  It was so bad, Wall Street downgraded them. 

https://www.thegamer.com/magic-the-gathering-release-fatigue-leads-to-plummeting-hasbro-stock/

Magic the Gathering was basically propping the entire company up, and kept Hasbro alive though the pandemic.  Unfortunately the same idiots that ran MLP into the ground got greedy and destroyed the brand keeping the company in the black.  Everything that Hasbro touches is affected by this. I can’t overstate how important those cards were to Hasbro’s overall health as a company. They’ve been trying to claw back from this, but they broke the community trust and destroyed the entire local game store system that drove the game’s success for 30 years, and even destroyed the collector’s market to boot. Those stores that closed are never coming back, and the new place to get cards(Amazon) is filled with scammers repacking boxes.  The 30th anniversary reprints of cards that were never supposed to be reprinted also blew a nasty hole in the secondhand/collector market, and several of the biggest online stores stopped selling loose cards.

So basically, Hasbro is run by greedy stupid people who slaughtered their cash cow for a quick buck.  This is affecting all the Hasbro brands, and they’re in panic mode.  They’re looking for quick cash, and they’re not going to be supporting anything that isn’t going to line their pockets asap. The G4 brony fad is over, so unless G5 unexpectedly suddenly takes off, I think we can expect Hasbro to cut back on releases, and for stores to cut back on orders. Odds are, what’s coming out now is stuff that’s been in the pipeline since before this all happened.  Nobody fired the greedy stupid people that did this, so they’re still in charge and as greedy and stupid as ever. Also, selling directly on Amazon is Hasbro’s new thing, so we can expect a lot more of that.  They like keeping all the profits to themselves.

The leadership at Hasbro screwed up so badly, and they didn’t learn from it.   It’s not “maybe G6 will be better”, it’s “will Hasbro still be in business to make a G6?”


 

[ChocolateStarfire]

I wonder if Basic Fun can buy the My Little Pony brand from Hasbro, seeing as they've just relaunched Littlest Pet Shop and are doing very well with their properties? I think that's the only way we will get ponies from now on. I don't see G5 at all except for on clearance or at clearance outlets like Ross, Marshalls, TJ Maxx and Burlington, much less the thrift stores.

I had no idea Hasbro wrecked their Magic line. Another brand that lasted for decades, ruined. And I heard they laid off a lot of people and I think closed down their Rhode Island office? Correct me if I am wrong, please.

My heart has always been with G1 ponies and it saddens me that ponies and other animal lines just don't do well (see the struggles of Cave Club, Monster High, Enchantimals, Magic Mixies, even the release of Jurassic Park, etc). I think the key to resurgence here will either be us fans joining together to save this brand from extinction or another company like Basic Fun stepping in.

[Carrehz]

Holy !#@%$ I had no idea they messed up that badly with Magic. Oh geez.

[Koudoawaia]

I think the problem is more to do with the state of Hasbro than anything else, though they did not make good decisions about MLP’s G5 from day one.  I personally thought they should have taken a break from MLP for a few years after G4 ended, and then brought the brand back with a lot of fanfare to build excitement.

Anyway, bear with me. I apologize for this getting long.

Hasbro has been in freefall for a while now, and I’m betting this is a symptom of that.   Hasbro is not doing well at all, and their leadership has been actively destroying the company with very, very bad decisions for a while now.  I keep a toe into Magic the Gathering, and about a year or so ago Hasbro tanked that entire brand. I didn’t know this, but Magic the Gathering cards were basically so profitable for Hasbro, that they were propping up the entire company.  It was basically a money printing machine for them. Unfortunately Hasbro took this as a justification to try to squeeze as much money as possible from players, so they have been making decisions designed to not only gouge players, but to keep as much money for themselves as possible(cutting out the local stores which were vital to the health if the brand).

They’ve been churning out sets at an unsustainable pace for years, cutting costs on production leading to warped cards and low quality products even from their “premium” sets, and overall just abusing their cash cow. This came to a head with the 30th anniversary set which was $1000 for 4 packs of random reprints that were only available direct from Hasbro(bypassing the game stores that basically keeps the tournament community alive and vitally bring in a steady stream of new players), and weren’t even tournament legal. The cards were reprints of cards that were on the “never to be reprinted” list, basically destroying the entire second hand market for cards as well.  A lot of people buy Magic cards for investment purposes, and Hasbro violating their “will not reprint ever” list ruined the investor/collector market for cards as well.

This did two things: it pissed off the player base so badly that the *entire* community revolted as a whole to reject the set and Hasbro as a company, and it caused hundreds of local mom & pop stores to close.  Apparently, profit margins for local game stores are razor thin, and Hasbro’s polices made it impossible for many stores to survive with the repeated bad sets and keeping the most profitable stuff to be sold exclusively through Hasbro directly.  That’s a big one since it was those mom and pop stores that ran the local tournaments and “Friday night Magic” events, and that was a huge factor in keeping the demand for cards high and bringing in new players. Hundreds of game stores went out of business due to this, and players were *pissed*.

This all came to a head a little while ago, and the community backlash was so bad that it actually tanked Hasbro’s stock price.  It was so bad, Wall Street downgraded them. 

https://www.thegamer.com/magic-the-gathering-release-fatigue-leads-to-plummeting-hasbro-stock/

Magic the Gathering was basically propping the entire company up, and kept Hasbro alive though the pandemic.  Unfortunately the same idiots that ran MLP into the ground got greedy and destroyed the brand keeping the company in the black.  Everything that Hasbro touches is affected by this. I can’t overstate how important those cards were to Hasbro’s overall health as a company. They’ve been trying to claw back from this, but they broke the community trust and destroyed the entire local game store system that drove the game’s success for 30 years, and even destroyed the collector’s market to boot. Those stores that closed are never coming back, and the new place to get cards(Amazon) is filled with scammers repacking boxes.  The 30th anniversary reprints of cards that were never supposed to be reprinted also blew a nasty hole in the secondhand/collector market, and several of the biggest online stores stopped selling loose cards.

So basically, Hasbro is run by greedy stupid people who slaughtered their cash cow for a quick buck.  This is affecting all the Hasbro brands, and they’re in panic mode.  They’re looking for quick cash, and they’re not going to be supporting anything that isn’t going to line their pockets asap. The G4 brony fad is over, so unless G5 unexpectedly suddenly takes off, I think we can expect Hasbro to cut back on releases, and for stores to cut back on orders. Odds are, what’s coming out now is stuff that’s been in the pipeline since before this all happened.  Nobody fired the greedy stupid people that did this, so they’re still in charge and as greedy and stupid as ever. Also, selling directly on Amazon is Hasbro’s new thing, so we can expect a lot more of that.  They like keeping all the profits to themselves.

The leadership at Hasbro screwed up so badly, and they didn’t learn from it.   It’s not “maybe G6 will be better”, it’s “will Hasbro still be in business to make a G6?”


 

Wow. I had no idea Hasbroken had taken that nickname to such a new level with Magic the Gathering. Think this helps explain the virtually non existent pony sections. x.o

[Leave a Whisper]

Wow. I didn't know they screwed themselves over that badly goddessofpeep? What a complete disaster! I don't think hasbroken is quite licked, as they haven't tried to completely screw over transformers fans (yet), but it explains why they're still trying to recover from something other then the pandemic. And that they're still shooting themselves in the foot enthusiastically.

I wonder if Basic Fun can buy the My Little Pony brand from Hasbro, seeing as they've just relaunched Littlest Pet Shop and are doing very well with their properties? I think that's the only way we will get ponies from now on. I don't see G5 at all except for on clearance or at clearance outlets like Ross, Marshalls, TJ Maxx and Burlington, much less the thrift stores.

I had no idea Hasbro wrecked their Magic line. Another brand that lasted for decades, ruined. And I heard they laid off a lot of people and I think closed down their Rhode Island office? Correct me if I am wrong, please.

My heart has always been with G1 ponies and it saddens me that ponies and other animal lines just don't do well (see the struggles of Cave Club, Monster High, Enchantimals, Magic Mixies, even the release of Jurassic Park, etc). I think the key to resurgence here will either be us fans joining together to save this brand from extinction or another company like Basic Fun stepping in.

BF is too small of a company to buy such a long lived legacy brand. At least we have it, and HQG1C.

[goddessofpeep]

Yeah, for a few weeks, Hasbro’s stock freefall was all over the news.  It was nuts.  It was so bad, Bank of America downgraded them to “underperforming” and a poor investment risk.  They slightly improved with a few big releases since then, but they’re still not out of the hole. 

I’m not really into Magic that much anymore, but I buy a bit here and there for nostalgia sake, and I keep an ear open.  It all went down about a year or so ago, but apparently the general community has been complaining for years about too many sets, too fast, bad quality cards, too many types of releases, too expensive cards, cards that warp straight out of the pack, smell bad, etc.

I knew the mess would ripple through the rest of the lines, it was only a matter of time. And I figured a lot of the choices they made for Magic would also start showing up for MLP in some form or another.

A few of the things they did:
1) Released sets too close together for even the most hard core players to keep up just to keep a constant flow of money going.

2) Due to the breakneck speed of releases, the cards were frequently just not great for the game, so basically substandard cards design-wise.

3) They cut manufacturing costs the bone, resulting in poor quality cards that were damaged right out of the pack.  And this was while they were making record profits. They didn’t need to reduce costs(and how much can it cost to manufacture playing cards really), they just wanted to maximize profit, and the customers can go screw themselves.

4) They reprinted cards that were on the “Reserve List” which has existed since like 1995. The Reserve List was create to preserve the collector’s market as some cards on it can sell for $10,0000-$100,000+.  They did this AFTER one of the main people behind Magic swore they wouldn’t be reprinting any reserve list cards, so now nobody believes a damn word anyone says.

5) As a “celebration” of 30 years of Magic, they made the Collector’s Set that was a reprint of the first set of Magic. They sold it as a “box” of 4 packs for $1000. The cards were random, so you were most likely going to get crap(only 9 cards in the set were really worth the price, and only if you could actually use them).  They were only available directly through Hasbro, bypassing the local gaming stores and other online retailers completely. And this was the ONLY 30th anniversary “celebration” they did.  If you couldn’t cough up for the $1000 box, no celebration for you.  If you wanted to get a complete set, you were probably  looking at $100,000+ to assemble it from the random packs.  The whole thing was a giant middle finger to their customers and retailers.

6) They started to create an unending stream of “Secret Lair” releases - reprints of non-reserved cards with new art, available only from Hasbro directly and at crazy prices(usually $50-$200 for 3-10 cards).
 
7) They started to not only bypass local gaming stores for the big(profitable) releases, but they started to randomly dump product on Amazon for the rest of it.  A game store has to pay for the product regardless if it sells, and the profit margin is already slim.  If Hasbro is randomly dumping stuff on Amazon for below the cost of what the game store pays for product, they can’t stay in business.

8) They turn a blind eye to the myriad of scammers selling opened packs/repacks on Amazon, and don’t really invest in fraud deterrents so you never really know if you’re going to get scammed.

9) They got rid of the “manufacturer’s suggested retail” price so they could charge whatever they want for each set, and then started releasing all sorts of different packaging versions at different price points for every set. All the best cards were always in the Collectors packs which usually retailed for $25-$35 a pack.

10) They released multiple versions of each card in every set, making it nearly impossible to keep track of things and basically ruining the whole chase card concept for almost everything.

Basically in the last few years Hasbro tried to use their customer base as cash machines in any and every way they could think of, destroyed the local gaming businesses and communities that kept their brand going and brought in new customers, “celebrated” their 30 year anniversary with a product that was a giant middle finger to customers and hastened the demise of hundreds of local gaming stores, allowed fraud to run rampant, destabilized the entire single card market,  and repeatedly and blatantly lied to its customers. 

They are currently attempting to “fix” things, but it’s not enough and they still haven’t really learned. 

[Flitter]

Reading Hasbro's investor reports and presentations is disheartening. They pretty much read like "This IP failed so we are abandoning it and focusing everything on the 2-3 brands we did have success with last year." They seem to be oblivious or purposely omitting taking responsibility on how they messed up MLP so badly and why it didn't carry on popularity. I'm hoping for a reboot in a few years and that they learn from their mistakes.

[DreamvalleyMLP]

Goddessofpeep is on point with everything. Hasbro has messed up hard, and the contrast with Mattel's success makes it even more painful.

Being a publicly listed company is a delicate cord to balance on... When the primary focus is on the satisfaction of the stockholders, costs get cut down (both in design and quality) left and right to keep the margin as big as possible. It can be the start of a hard decline, as we now see...

That stranglehold of stockholders is the reason why Hasbro can't possibly do with G1 MLP what Basic Fun is doing; BF doesn't have any stockholders breathing down their neck. They are more free to focus on quality and can afford to be content with a lesser profit margin that keeps to company going, contrary to Hasbro.

What's even worse about Hasbro's current state is that 1100 employees will be sacked because of it.

I wouldn't mind if BF started a brand of pony figures all by itself to fill the pony void; too bad it wouldn't be called MLP, but I'm sure the quality would be much better than whatever Hasbro keeps cooking up.