Been thinking about flash in the pan failed doll lines....
And so, I give you...
L.U.V!
A doll line produced by Far Out Toys, the company who also made the Glow Up Girls, a line that had a thoroughly bizarre release here in the UK and was cancelled before we could even get the second half of the first wave.
L.U.V was, like the Wild Hearts Crew, a line doomed to failure by being sold ONLY at Walmart. Walmart, where dolls go to die. They also shot themselves in the foot by pricing them far far too high. At $30usd, that made them more expensive than a lot of Barbie, a lot of Monster High, most Bratz and several other doll brands.
now
yes, I get it. Smaller companies can't get such good wholesale deals so
their overheads are more expensive, meaning the final product needs to
be more expensive. but when you're launching a new doll line against the
big boys, you need to either bring something completely NEW to the
scene to justify that price point, or you need to cut a lot of corners
to get the price down to undercut the big guys and provide a "budget"
alternative. on top of that, a lot of stores won't take a chance on the
new guy, so getting your product INTO stores in the first place is hard.
Which is why so many new lines end up as exclusives.
The problem is
that Mattel and MGA have such a stranglehold on the doll market that
anyone new coming in has a seriously rough struggle to even be noticed. A
high price point and a restricted distribution is not doing you any
favors. Even if it all makes sense as to why it happens, it's just extra
hurdles to overcome when the deck is already massively stacked against
you.
what can new toy makers do? I don't know the answer to that sadly. but I do know that many have tried and almost all of them sink without a trace.
Anyway, let's take a look
