Ask Jakks is back on track and just in time for San Diego Comic-Con. Jakks will also be hosting a panel this year, so if you’re in attendance, make sure to attend! The panel will take place on Friday, July 22 at 6PM in Room 29AB. These questions were submitted back in March and we’re just getting this back now, so if you submitted a question then, your answers are below.
A message from Craig:
Thank you all for the questions and comments. We do really appreciate them and like to hear all feedback. If anyone is at or on the way to San Diego Comic Con, JAKKS Pacific, Inc. will reveal several amazing new additions to the 2022 line-up including the NEW Mario Kart™ 24V Ride-on Racer at the JAKKS San Diego Comic-Con panel on Friday, July 22 at 6PM in Room 29AB. Hope to see you there.
Craig Drobis is the SVP of Marketing for boys action figures and collectors for Jakks Pacific. 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 July 30th, 2022 (send these in right away before we max out of submissions).
Update July 29th: Submissions are full. Check back for your answers.
Jakks Pacific products can be ordered on Entertainment Earth, BigBadToyStore, and Amazon.
Q&A:
Dough Is Good Doe asked:
Dear Jakks Pacific, I read up a article from sonic.fandom.com regarding the new “Jakks Gold” line of 4’inch sonic figures ???????????????????????????????? with ???????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????? and ????????????????????????????????????????????. I am wondering if elbow joints will be implemented as part of the “enhanced/special finishes”. It should since it will make the figure more premium and valuable. Jazwares had elbow joints on their figures which those figures were a few cm smaller than the Jakks Pacifc figures; so there shouldn’t be any excuse to not have them on the sonic figures. My point is; adding the elbow joints will bring smiles to a lot of collectors out there that want to do stop motion animations or make different poses of the sonic figures. I don’t see why not elbow joints won’t be as a enhanced feature. I beg ya Jakks Pacific to add elbow joints to the sonic figures and many others too. So far I’m loving the sonic figures, but there’s that 1 missing touch that (lack of elbow joints) always bothers me when messing with the sonic figures. I hope you guys take notes and see how this will improve over Jazwares line of sonic figures and your profit. I hope you guys keep up the good work!
Thank you for the feedback. We do put a tremendous amount of effort and detail into each figure to make them the best they can be. We certainly feel like Jakks has the highest quality figures at our price point and are really happy they are so well received. Sonic has been a tremendous brand to work on and have more new and exciting things to come. With regard to the Jakks Gold figures, each one has something unique to it to differentiate it from our mainline offering. While most are existing figures, it is the paint/finishes and accessories as well as the window box packaging that sets them apart. As far as elbow joints, I hope you are enjoying the Sonic 2 Movie figures where we have incorporated that feature.
Pedro asked:
So, the Classic and Modern Sonic Collector Edition will be the only realeses in that 6 inch scale or will other characters like Tails, Knuckles, Shadow and Silver join the line? We can expect to this line be a spirutual sucessor to the Super Posers line?
When the team concepted the idea of a larger, highly articulated figure with a display area, Sonic was the natural place to start the collection and see how the product would be received. The response has been great, so yes there will be more coming in the future.
Red Stick Studios asked:
Hi, I am huge collector of your Mario and Sonic 4 inch lines I have a few questions I would like to ask. First off, I would like to know why are these figures so hard to find I understand there popular and all but I have been to multiple targets looking for your omega figure for months now, and they only have Sonic or Tails or those Neon figures you guys made, I heard somewhere when ever a store gets a shipment they get 3 sonics and 1 of all the other characters, is there a reason for this, I understand this line is for kids but im pretty sure kids would like to find there other figures too, Ive also only ever seen the sonic 4 inch line at target and very rarely at walmart, I think it would be pretty cool if you started selling some of the figures on Amazon, I understand some of them are on there but the more harder to get characters like rouge and omega are not, I think it would be cool if you guys started selling the sonic 4 inch figures at GameStop as well, you could even give them new packaging like you did with the Mario 4 inch GameStop figures. I would also like to know, why is it that when i try to order the Mario or sonic figures on big bad toy store I have to buy the whole wave and not just one figure by themselves? One last thing and im sure you get asked this alot, but will there ever be a 4 inch daisy and rosillina, I saw that you guys are doing a 2.5 inch versions of them but I would love a 4 inch daisy and rosillina, you guys could even do like a 3 pack with peach daisy and rosillina and im sure it would sell really well. Well that should be all my questions sorry if its a lot but I just love these action figures a lot, anyways thank you for your time.
I am happy you are enjoying both lines and we certainly want to keep you and all the fans excited about the releases. There are a variety of different things that impact how easy or difficult things are to find. Jakks doesn’t like to see empty shelves at retailers either. However the global supply chain issues in combination with the tremendous popularity of Mario and Sonic makes it a very imperfect process to bring the product to everyone. As you know, we ship the figures in waves. The pace at which those waves sell through varies by store. Meaning, if the same quantity of figures were shipped to every store of each wave, the faster selling store may start to receive the next wave of figures before a slower selling one. We do spend a lot of time working with the retailers managing the quantity produced of each wave as well as the characters within each wave to make sure they sell through at a reasonable pace and no single figure slows down the ability to get the next wave to shelf. Sonic is the most popular character. There are only so many figures we can ship to a store at a time. There are always more Sonic figures in the master carton than the others and we are always analyzing the data and adjusting over time to find that balance. As for retailers, we have great support for Sonic. While not every store within a chain may have Sonic, the figures are at Target, Walmart, Meijer, GameStop, Walgreens, HEB, and many other retailers. Amazon has been focusing on more multi packs, including for 4 inch figure. As for the 4 inch suggestions, thank you for sending them. We do closely look at how the 2.5 inch figures sell as one of the points of data when determining the next 4 inch figures. The reception has been great.
Zon Whatever asked:
With Rouge and the Movie Figures getting elbow joints, will this carry over onto every Sonic figure, or will it continue being a case of if the joints don’t look too noticeable/can be hidden (like with Rouge and the Robots)?
Many people clearly like their elbow joints. Yes, it will be a bit of a case by case thing. First and foremost, we want to deliver the best looking figures we can and where we can add features like elbow joints we will. The movie like gave the team the opportunity to challenge ourselves to add the elbows and we are very happy with the final product. I can’t promise we will go back and re-release all the figures we have done with elbows. However, it is certainly something we will evaluate.
Would smaller characters like Cream the Rabbit or Charmy Bee get released in the four inch line, or would they be like the badniks and chao, where they are released as 2.5 but are actually made for the four inch?
The short answer is that anything is possible. The 2.5 inch can be a bit of a testing ground to see how individual characters sell as we make future 4 inch selections. We do like to keep things in a relative scale where we can which is why some figures are best released in the 2.5 inch with the real intention of them being paired with 4 inch figures for scale. There aren’t always absolutes however we do try to have the worlds work together as best we can.
With both the main Modern and Classic Sonic casts being nearly completed in their main scales (with just Vector, Blaze, Charmy and Cream left for Modern) (and just Ray and Classic Metal left for Classic), could we potentially see the line start doing figures for spin-off or Modern one-off characters (such as the Werehog, Babylon Rogues, Mephiles, Emerl/Gemerl, Infinite, etc)?
Could we even get IDW characters such as Tangle, Whisper and the Glitch Trio (Starline, Surge and Kit) in the action figure line at some point?
Thank you for the suggestions and yes, there isn’t an infinite list of characters to release. The movie line gave us some great opportunities for new executions of the characters and we do work with Sega to have more characters to bring to the line. At this point, we haven’t explored executions like IDW, as you mentioned.
Fans have noticed that since four inch Wave 5, we’ve been getting entirely Modern waves excluding the upcoming EggRobo, with the 2.5 inch waves having predominantly Classic characters.
So does this mean that we won’t be getting any four inch Classic figures (that aren’t made to scale with the 2.5 inch figures like Eggman and Mecha are) anymore?
(I’m not complaining, as I actually prefer to get the Classic characters in the 2.5 inch line, so they scale with the four inch Modern characters correctly).
I wouldn’t draw any conclusions based on what is in the market at a specific point in time. We were trying to alternate modern and classic in each scale and actually stagger them so one scale was largely Modern while the other was Classic. For a variety of reasons, including the supply chain issues noted above and the imperfect pace at which waves arrive to shelves, that hasn’t always timed as planned.
Throw Away asked:
In your latest q&a you said that with Sonic characters like Vector & Big, you’d have to adjust them to be released in the main line (like you did with Eggman). But wouldn’t that force Vector to be really tiny (as you’d have to shrink him just so he can fit his tail in the box)?
However, instead of doing that, could it be possible to just have these two released in packs similar to your Mario vs Bowser w/Bob-omb 3 pack, but have one for the Chaotix? Where you can have a 4 inch Espio (who’s already coming), a 2.5 inch Charmy maybe and a 6 inch/or just larger Vector that could be exclusive to the pack. Would that be able to work?
That is a good suggestion as far as the 6 inch combination of Vector in a multi pack. We can take a look at that. You may have some answers to your first question soon.
Enzo C asked:
Will there be a 2nd wave of toys for the Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Movie line?
Yes, and I know this question was asked a while back. There is a second wave of Movie coming. We had to include Super Sonic of course and have very cool redecos of Sonic and Knuckles as well as new accessories.