by WebWarlock » Tue Mar 20, 2007 10:33 am
Here is the deal with Buffy.
Everyone was expecting this to be the next Star Trek in terms of sales and merchandising.
It wasn't anywhere close.
Some market research I was privy to a couple of years back (when it mattered) here are the rankings of characters with sales. Remember I am just the messenger here.
1. Spike
2. Willow
3. Buffy
4. Tara (Along with Willow and Tara; hard to tease out)
5. Others, mostly Oz and Giles.
Now the Willow and Tara figure sets sold well, and so did the Willow and Tara comics.
Many figure lines were dropped and even the pre-orders were not enough (Xander, Weasly and so on). Some props sold well enough, but again no were near what people thought they would.
Other merchandise is more difficult to track since most people don't divide up the fandom the way fans do (after all no one ever talked about Scotty vs. Sulu sales, or even Kirk vs. Picard really).
Do they sell well?
All in all, most Buffy items were not selling well. The new comic is, but the books are not, the RPG is gone and other comics languish in the bottom rungs. Anything that was going to sell already did and there are no new fans.
I have never been able to get good DVD sales numbers.
As some one who was selling this stuff I came to a few conclusions of my own.
1. Buffy fans are cheap. They don't want to buy stuff. Figures were sold mostly to figure collectors and the RPGs mostly to people that already played RPGs.
2. Buffy fans are factionallized to point of xenophobia. No one wants to buy anything outside of their own thin subset of the fandom (I am a prime example of that).
For what it is worth.
Tim
Web Warlock, web.warlock@comcast.net
Visit my Willow and Tara page! http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/p/willow-tara.html
Tara: "My whole life has been 'Tara, don't use your magic.' 'Tara, hide your powers.' 'Tara you will scare someone.' But you tried to hurt and then kill Willow. So maybe it is time I showed everyone just how powerful I am."
- The Dragon and the Phoenix, Episode 7: The Road to Hell