What is it going to take and what can us fans do?

[bczilla91]

Alright so we just had a successful American reboot of Godzilla that made over half a billion WW and is not only getting us 2 more sequels but the start of an American Godzilla Cinematic Universe also. We have the new Japanese film "Shin Godzilla" breaking all kinds of records in Japan and is currently sitting at $60 million. We also now have an upcoming animated Godzilla movie coming out next year..a first for the franchise.

Outside of that IDW's Godzilla comics seem to be still holding strong and consistent. Looks like Godzilla merchandise is picking up steam in Japan as the Shin Godzilla toy line seems to be selling out consistently. Everything seems to be going great right?

Well then what is the deal here in America? Why is it all the sudden so incredibly hard to get anything Godzilla merchandise related from any company? Any of the things that we do get seem to be randomly here and there...nothing consistent.

Bandai America has disappeared completely. NECA is shaky at best. FUNKO has gone off the radar and Diamond Select has floundered. No shirts or anything at Hot Topic or FYE. What's the deal here? Everything was just fine a few years ago and you would think with the success of Shin Godzilla and now the upcoming Animated Godzilla movie and American movies companies would be jumping at the chance to be doing Godzilla merch especially with pop culture being a big thing plus Godzilla has a solid fan base here in America.

So what is it going to take to get something consistent from someone and what can us fans do to help? I'm open to any constructive ideas. All us fans ask for is just some consistency please.

[Castellan Zilla]

Because Godzilla doesn't pull in enough money, as well as Toku in general. Figured that would be obvious. Americans want merchandise from American franchises. Marvel, DC, Star Wars, etc.

[ILL GREEN]

Its gonna take some overwhelming fucking demand from the public. Sure we demand it at Toho Kingdom but really how many kaiju forums are there compared to the other franchises like Marvel, DC and Star Wars? Its really a small number. A couple years ago we had Legendary Godzilla with the spotlight, but with a sequel in 2019, american fan's interest goes elsewhere. Thats how the game is.

[MandaSaurus]

Because Godzilla doesn't pull in enough money, as well as Toku in general. Figured that would be obvious. Americans want merchandise from American franchises. Marvel, DC, Star Wars, etc.

Exactly. You'll have to wait for the next movie year( the next Legendary movie )for merch to be readily available outside Japan again.

IOW, NOTHING can be done. Unless you wanna move to Japan...

[master_of_monsters]

I hope kong will get some love

[bczilla91]

That doesn't excuse Bandai USA completely disappearing of the face of the eartearth or NECA as slow as they are.

Just my opinion though.

[Castellan Zilla]

Bandai Creations disappearing...and nothing of value was lost.

[UltramanGoji]

BC is essentially gone. That was pretty much confirmed tonight for me, went to TRU and not a single Godzilla toy from them was on the shelves.

[Panther10]

As I said about 5 years ago when the SHMA figures came out: I think the trend is going to push more towards high end collectables and high end figures. The fans are responding more to companies like X-Plus and SHMA than their American counterparts like BC and Neca. Even the classic Bandai vinyls (which used to corner the market on imported toys) have slid back to a very distant third place. And the reason for that is understandable; For the same $70-$120 price tag you can either choose between a bandai 8" vinyl with mediocre detail, or you can buy a highly detailed 6-8" figure with super articulation for the same price. And if you really have the bread, you can purchase an X-Plus figure that has the same (if not better) detail than your average model kit and you don't even have to spend countless man hours attempting to assemble and paint them. In fact just at G-fest this year I saw more vendors selling figures from the SHMA lineup and X-Plus than I saw in any previous year, whereas there were maybe just one or two vendors that even bothered to sell any American Godzilla toys. Hell Bluefin had their own booth at G-Fest this year.

[Mechagigan]

What about when G'14 was a hot liscense? Or, hell, even G98's famously successful merchandise?

Godzilla is a household name, but not in the same way as Star Wars, Marvel, etc. Kids and families know the character, but few have actually seen the movies, let alone have any interest in the series beyond Godzilla himself. A child may obsess or Batman or Spiderman, but let's face it; these characters are constantly on TV, on shirts, in movies... practically inescapable. Godzilla is famous as a character, not quite for his output.

That said, there really isn't a huge American push for Godzilla merchandise. New movies - G'14 and '98 - gave us massive influxes, as they shined a light on the character bright enough to draw people in. It may be sad to hear, but most common people have only seen those two movies, and thus don't exactly need a constant stream of available merchandise.

Shin isn't getting a 'wide' release, and based on trend, AnimeGoji won't either. There's no reason for a typical, more 'commerical' US company to go all-out for these movies, when the market will be entirely niche. That's also why BC has died, and NECA remains at a sluggish pace; there's no gigantic push for these figures.

[Legion1979]

It's been over 60 years now. Nothing is going to make Godzilla mainstream at this point. Yes, he's a household name, but back when G2014 was out I NEVER saw merchandise and marketing out in the real world the way you'd see stuff for Marvel, Star Wars, Transformers, '80s nostalgia, Classic Disney, Ninja Turtles or a host of other things. Godzilla is always going to be a niche in the US, moderately successful American film series or not. And here's no changing that.

And for the record, Godzilla suddenly becoming popular again in Japan doesn't really have anything to do with what happens here. The movie isn't getting a mainstream release here in the first place, so here's no reason for the monster to get a big merchandise push in this country because of it.

Yeah, basically everything Mechagigan just said...

[Grunkle Sans]

I guess we can only hope for the best, tbh I'm pretty worried about the 6"/MMS scale, those are the only figures I collect (I just don't have enough money for stuff like the SHMAs or X-Pluses). The 6" scale is kind of a staple for Godzilla merchandise though, idk.

[JVM]

There's not much we can do right now.

Godzilla is not 'mainstream', as Legion put it - the hardcore, dedicated fanbase drops hundreds on X-Plus and SHMA imports from Japan, but these have zero appeal to the casual collector. The next group of fans are casual collectors, who will mostly be satisfied with a NECA toy of their favorite incarnation and while they might want their favorite monster, probably won't feel incentive to see ten obscure kaiju a year. Kids don't know or care about obscure old cheesy movies and only want the coolest Godzilla incarnation they like to mix with their Marvel heroes. He's just a cool big dinosaur to them.

The result is most of these groups don't create much demand for new project. The second and third groups are satisfied with what's already on the U. S. market, and the first group doesn't need to settle for what the U. S. market churns out.

The most solid bet to change perceptions of this franchise and merchandise-ability would be a new, American-made Godzilla film with multiple major monsters and a gangbuster haul at the box office. You need a big haul to reach a wider audience, you need to be American-made to reach distributors, and you need multiple major monsters because as long as Godzilla is the only icon, no company will feel a need to look at the rest, whereas even if Rodan, Mothra, and KG became mainstream, companies might be willing to give Gigan or Anguirus another look.

How likely is that? I don't think the current climate is very open to that kind of Godzilla film.

[FlawedCoil82]

Bandai Creations disappearing...and nothing of value was lost.

Completely true! Give me the flawless Bandai Japan 2014 figure with a bean for a head any day over BC. I still hate the blatant, undeniable bias against BC even when a blind man could admit when some figures were clearly superior to their Japanese counterparts. Sure, BC's marketing strategy sucks radioactive sewage but when they actually tried, they could deliver some decent stuff.

On topic, really the only two G items I can think of are the DVD release of "Return Of Godzilla" and the 2016 American Greetings ornament. I don't think there will be any "boom" in American G merch any time soon. And honestly, with as biased as many fans can be towards American made products, I don't really blame American companies for not trying to make merchandise for us anyways without the push of a major movie.

[Kaijugriffey]

There are two important things that people rarely understand about the toy industry in America.
1. The most expensive, most precious and most finite resource in the toy industry today is "factory time". As a result maximizing the returns on factory run time is where the margins and profit lie. What this means is it is not simply a question of a product or product line being popular or profitable. It has become "is this the best return we can get on those 2 weeks of factory time? Will anything else bring a better return?"

2. Toy products that have a current or reasonably current movie out will do a full order of magnitude more sales than the same products in years without movies. Short answer, if you have a movie out this year, tack another zero onto your sales figures (typically. There are exceptions. See: Kevin Feig'ed Ghostbusters.)

What this means is the bigger non niche players such as Bandai America will only put out the products when they can maximize returns. I.e. When they have a corresponding movie. This does not change unless or until a product line reaches what is sometimes called "evergreen" status, where is has a semi permanent place in toy aisles. These are rare. For IP products Star Wars is the most famous. Even in off years they offer some keep alive offerings to keep the retail merchandise space theirs. For comic properties the only unquestioned ones with this status are Batman and Spider-Man. Iron Man may be felt to be the latest to be so elevated (largely owing to how toyetic his stuff is.) At this point Transformers and TMNT's are really the only other such IP's that fit in that category, although Power Rangers may be bordering on it.

Godzilla, while a broadly recognized pop culture icon, just doesn't have enough there to push him into that Evergreen status in NA, thus we see the movie related ebbs and flows.

[LamangoKaijura]

We complain on face book VIP groups until they listen and make an X-plus of us and or our monster.

[Grunkle Sans]

Honestly I just think America isn't really the place for Godzilla. Most people really don't want to sit through an average ~95 minute movie to see about ~25 minutes of monster fighting when the movie is about monster fighting. In all honesty, I personally don't either but I do anyway, because I feel that's part of the movie, building the hype for the monsters to show up. Godzilla was never really easy to get in the US, the only time I ever saw the BC figures was in pharmacies and stores like Marshall's and Kmart, but they never actually sold their stock of about 6 figures (When they did it was probably me). We will probably not see US toys until the new American Godzilla movies come, which, is kind of disappointing, but it's the cold truth. Funko went off the radar because that's literally what they do - take a franchise, make a couple pops, never touch it again. NECA would probably sell better if they put out something else other than Heisei Godzilla or G'14 (That's literally all I've seen at local stores, except for 1 Burning Godzilla at TRU). Hot Topic just panders to edgy teenagers, and I've never met an edgy teenager that has ever put Godzilla on their list of favorite things. I have a few friends who have seen a lot of older Godzilla movies, and when I mentioned Shin Godzilla, they'd never heard of it. Godzilla really is a niche market and in all honesty, what we really need is stores that sell more Japanese merchandise. I remember I went to some old flea market that was held in an old mall, and I remember there was some shop that just sold everything Anime, and if I'm correct I remember seeing a lot of MMS figures. Barnes and Noble was picking up steam recently (My local one got those weird scaled down 6 inch scale figures that came in boxes, and 1 "Special Colored" Millennium Godzilla), and then they just gave up because no one bought anything. I remember they'd had their stock since the 2014 movie and no one ever bought anything, because in all honesty Godzilla is such a niche thing, like said above.

Overall, Godzilla's chance to make a comeback in the US market was in 2014 and it didn't really do that. I could only ever find the toys at TRU and when I did they were on the end of an aisle, on sale. While I don't think everyone will forget Godzilla, he's a household name, I highly doubt more people will see the movies.

[tymon]

As a kid growing up in the 90s/00s, there was a boom of Trendmasters/VHS stuff from 94-98, but other than that, there was NOTHING. In the early 00s I used to dream about walking into a toy or comic store and seeing Godzilla toys (imported or not), but it never happened...until 2014.

Looking at what we have now (Diamond/Bluefin distributing pretty much every Japanese toy company including stylized toys, nearly all of the films available on disc with subtitles and widescreen, IDW comics and a ton of memorabilia)...and it's just no comparison. How can people whine when you can walk into a Hastings and see Blu-Rays, MonsterArts, Bandai vinyls and group of huge Marmits? Give me a break. Be happy that we have as much as we do for such a niche franchise.

[UltramanGoji]

How can people whine when you can walk into a Hastings and see Blu-Rays, MonsterArts, Bandai vinyls and group of huge Marmits?

Hastings barely exists anymore, but I agree with everything else you said.

[LamangoKaijura]

It's been over 60 years now. Nothing is going to make Godzilla mainstream at this point. Yes, he's a household name, but back when G2014 was out I NEVER saw merchandise and marketing out in the real world the way you'd see stuff for Marvel, Star Wars, Transformers, '80s nostalgia, Classic Disney, Ninja Turtles or a host of other things. Godzilla is always going to be a niche in the US, moderately successful American film series or not. And here's no changing that.

And for the record, Godzilla suddenly becoming popular again in Japan doesn't really have anything to do with what happens here. The movie isn't getting a mainstream release here in the first place, so here's no reason for the monster to get a big merchandise push in this country because of it.

Yeah, basically everything Mechagigan just said...

...You dope, there was Godzilla toys out the ass when G2014 was coming out.