Craig Drobis is the SVP of Marketing for boys action figures and collectors for Jakks Pacific. Craig will be answering your questions for all Ask Jakks submissions. ToyHypeUSA will be sending him monthly questions and we will have your answers back on or around the beginning of each month. Send us your questions to [email protected]. Send in your questions by April 26th.
Jakks Pacific products can be ordered on Entertainment Earth, BigBadToyStore, Megalopolis: City Of Collectibles and Amazon.com
1. Your Sonic bendable figures look absolutely incredible but I have to wonder when will you release figures of characters such as Amy, Eggman, Metal Sonic, Silver, Blaze, Chaotix, Cream, Cheese, Big, Omega etc. I really love these characters and most of them never get any merchandise so I want to know when we will get these characters will become bendable action figures especially with Team Sonic Racing coming around the corner. I am really looking forward for these figures thanks!
We are very happy to hear the reaction to the product introduction at New York Toy Fair and the follow up discussions we had at WonderCon. We wanted to do something a little different than had been done before with Sonic and bendy felt like the way to achieve that goal. Sonic is a fun and exciting character with a lot more coming in terms of games from Sega and toys from Jakks Pacific. At this point, we have only announced the first wave of figures. As usual, I can’t promise every character will be made. There is a large Classic and Modern universe to play in and Sonic is always the most popular.
2. Hello there, I was just wondering if you had plans for a Super Sonic, Eggman, Metal Sonic, and Amy figures. They are my some of my favorite characters and I really want figures of them.
Thanks,
Unfortunately the answer is the same as the above. This is just the start.
3. I just wondering if Jakks Pacific has any plans in making toys for Team Sonic Racing. I would just love to see cars so that Sonic and Shadow could ride them and do you have plans of releasing charcters from the game such as Amy, Big, The Chao, Rouge, Omega, Silver, Vector, Blaze, Eggman, Metal Sonic, and Zavok? Me and a lot of fans would absolutely love them!
Team Sonic Racing absolutely looks great and gives us even more things to think about and plan for in addition to what is noted in the previous questions. We can only do so much at a time and are looking at all the possibilities.
4. At New York ToyFair, Jakks showed off several new World of Nintendo playsets such as Browsers Castle, Dungeon Playset and the Acorn Plains Playset. I, and many other fans of this line am so thrilled to see these coming out, and I personally wanted to thank you for helping make this happen. My question is how much of an impact did making all of these at once have following the success of the Mushroom Kingdom Castle Playset? Did the Mushroom Kingdom sell well enough to help the push for all of these?
The Mushroom Kingdom set was certainly something that had a lot of influence in the direction of the line. We had requests for play and display sets and we wanted to make sure we picked the right in game themes and had the right details. The Mushroom Kingdom gave us a lot of information. If you notice, it is mostly a façade with no real area in the back to play. The intent was to give fans the ability to wall mount the set and thus the poster and mounts were included. Some people did just that. Some people understood the intent, but chose not to wall mount. Some people didn’t necessarily understand the options and thus it wasn’t considered a value for them. In the end from various discussion polls like this, through our Jakks Chats, and Conventions, fans seemed to want more play and display area and the ability to recreate levels of the games. That was the motivation and learnings we incorporated into this offering. Then the challenge was which themes and levels to do? I hope you love what was chosen as much as we do. The Acorn Play set and Dungeon sets are available now at Amazon, Target, GameStop and elsewhere. Bowser’s Castle for this Fall was really the opportunity to use all the Mushroom Kingdom input and make a full 360 degree set with features and sounds. There is even more to come.
5. Would add-on accessories for the above playsets be something that Jakks would consider?
Our design team is always thinking ahead and giving ourselves some flexibility for the future. They have designed the sets to be modular, so pieces can be swapped around. There will also be items and accessories included in the figure multi-packs that fit with the playsets. So the short answer is yes and of course we are always open to suggestions of what we should do next.