Hasbro Leverage

[RFisher]

When my wife goes shopping, 9 times out of 10 I can say, "Hun, I am running to the toy section to look at heroscape". I can do this at Target, at Wal-Mart, K-mart, and especially at Toys R Us. And I am at those places a lot more than I am my FLGS and a little more than at the mega-book stores that carry gaming.

How I miss the days of looking at D&D stuff at game stores (in the mall), bookstores, hobby stores (even the big one's like Michaels), & all over the place. How much of that was just because it was a "golden age" of the hobby/industry...I don't know.

Really, though, it seems I can hardly find anything on store shelves that really makes me enjoy browsing anymore.

I blame the internet. No, really. It has shifted more "medium selling" products out of brick & mortar inventory to order. Which is probably a good thing for retailers (whether brick & mortar, online, or both), but which has killed browsing. At least for me.

On the other hand, the net has also made it a lot easier to acquire the lowest selling stuff.

So, is there any sense of competition or lost dollars between Heroscape and the RPG?

Sure. Every product competes with every other product for our dollars. & Heroscape & RPGs are both games, so to some extent Heroscape competes with RPGs "more" than (e.g.) DVDs compete with RPGs. But I don't think an RPG product manager should be losing too much sleep worrying about Heroscape.

Although, I have my doubts that this hobby really needs much of an industry anymore.

 

[Dyne]

I've never seen a D&D product in a toy store, except maybe minis. Even the bookstores around here have very meager displays in D&D books, so I buy pretty much everything online.

 

[Hussar]

Good grief. Blame the internet? D&D products were out of the mainstream toy stores in the early 80's, a long time before Amazon was even a gleam in someone's eyes.

 

[Bayushi Seikuro]

When I grew up in Michigan, I remember clearly buying D&D and TSR products at the Meijer toy department. It was about a 4' wide display, bookrack style, and had so much of this... Cool Older Kid Stuff!...

On entering mass-market areas, I had been browsing WotC jobs online the other week, and they had a job for someone to work with Walmart corporate offices, ordering product, making sure product was in the stores, etc. I'm not sure if it's a concious push to get into big stores more, but Everywhere has a Walmart... maybe it's something WotC's looking at as a way to expand...

I'm rambling

 

[Mercule]

I would welcome D&D in Walmart, Target, etc. This would probably be a better hook for people coming into the hobby than the LGS.

I got my red box at a Walgreens. Most of my 1E books were from Kay Bee -- even Legends and Lore, which would get them sued today. It was only after getting the beginner stuff at stores that don't carry them today that I even considered being hardcore enough to go to the local hobby store looking for gaming stuff.