Jakks hires a Toy Guru

Jakks UFC outselling Mattel WWE for several more years is an ironclad lock now

I'll be interested to see what he does with the World of Nintendo line since we all know the TNA line ain't lasting any longer than the contract demands.

I'm pretty sure that if he okayed spending tons of money developing all new molds for a failing toy line based on a TV show that got canceled and moved to a channel nobody watches... He'd be out of the job pretty soon.

What a productive thing to say! you must be fun at parties.

I wasn't referring to him, I was referring to all the stupid stuff you said about TNA, but now that you mention it, expecting new molds is a bit unrealistic.

He's clearly there to work on Star Wars and DC Universe figures. Anyone thinking he's going to revamp what is basically a non existent line or even want to put his hands on it, is only fooling themselves.

Oh, you're in denial about TNA. Understood.

I don't care about Jakks TNA anymore, I sold all my figures, but i did keep three Samoa Joe, shark boy, and Abyss. I don't even watch TNA anymore. So as far as i am concerned if Jakks stopped making TNA figures, i wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

I don't have much hope that Jakks will ever improve their TNA line, even with Toy Guru on board. Like others have said I doubt Toy Guru will even look at the TNA line. Here's my prediction - Jakks will just keep half-assing the TNA line until it's no longer feasable to produce, and will then but total blame on for the line's "failure" on the brand and the market. Taking zero responsibilty for how the choices they made affected sales and customer interest. I know TNA is nowhere near as big as WWE but that isn't an excuse to just constantly do the bare minimum and not even try to bring the line to it's full potential. TNA's size as a company is not the only thing determining how successful the figure line is, and as far as I'm concerned from day 1 Jakks have just been putting their feet up and making bad decisions. I mean case in point, in 2009 or 2010 they put up two official polls asking fans what style the new TNA figures should be - RA, DA or a new style. RA won something like 70% or 80% of the vote on both polls. And what did Jakks do? They went with DA style. Instead of taking the strategy of allowing the vast majority of their existing customer base (RA style collectors) to build on their Jakks RA style figure collections, they chose to use the less popular DA style, alienating the vast majority of their existing 7+ year loyal customer base, which was without a doubt their strongest asset in the wake of the emergence and competition of Mattel's WWE line. In addition to this they virtually cut off all communication with the collector community for about a year, adding to the frustration, before promising to get more involved with the collectors again (and then not doing it at all). That's the kind of company Jakks is.

Even forgetting my frustrations with the TNA line, I would love to see Jakks do more Nintendo collector-aimed figures, but the way they've been handling the line so far is for the most part cheaply made toys aimed at kids, so I don't have much hope. Any decent company would have made HIGH QUALITY 6-inch figures of CLASSIC versions of the most popular Nintendo characters by now. While I get in part catering to the kids market, the fact that we haven't also got, for example, a SMB1 style 6" collector Mario, or an Ocarina Of Time 6" collector Link shows me Jakks doesn't have a clue what they're doing in regard to the collector market.