Page 100 - The Disneyization of Society

MERCHANDISING

comic book character and having apparent merchandise potential, or if a film
does not appear to have good potential for merchandising, products will either
91
not be licensed or will not be sold. Also, the merchandising of even fairly
40
successful films like Flintstones and Casper can be disappointing. Certainly, Disney
seems to have been very disappointed with the merchandise sales associated with
Dick Tracy, produced by Touchstone Pictures, one of its film-making divisions. 41
Interestingly, even though the Harry Potter movie-related merchandise was hugely
successful, in Britain it did not fare as well as that relating to Bob the Builder, a
children’s television series that was very popular around the same time. 42
There may even be some quite surprising failures in the area of movie mer-
chandising. The classic example is The Phantom Menace, the first in the Star Wars
trilogy of ‘prequels’. In the months leading up to the release of the film, a range
of merchandise was made available. In part, this was in anticipation of the level
of massive demand for merchandise that had accompanied the first series and
which had been a major influence on the perception of movie-related merchandise
as a major income stream. 43 While there were some worries that there might be
over-exposure, 44 toy makers and others did not want to get caught with insuffi-
cient stocks, which is what had happened first time around. In fact, the mer-
chandise for the film flopped. Two British companies – Character Group and
Dorling Kindersley, a publisher – ended up nursing huge losses in 2000, the year
after the film’s release. The losses in both cases were almost entirely attributable
to the failure of the Star Wars merchandise. 45 In the case of Character Group, its
share price had slumped to 62.5p from 440p a year earlier. In the case of Dorling
Kindersley, the debacle resulted in the transformation of a £4.7 million profit into
a £25 million loss and in the resignation of its chief executive and the loss of
140 jobs. 46 For the second prequel, Attack of the Clones, only half the number of
licensed products were signed up and the general approach to who was given
licenses was much more selective than for The Phantom Menace. However,
although the sale of merchandise was disappointing at the time of The Phantom
Menace, it nevertheless achieved sales of $2 billion in 1999. 47 The problem seems
to have been that expectations were too high and that some injudicious decisions
about goods and licensees had been made.
A further issue that relates to films is that to extend the franchise as much as
possible, further episodes need to be made. However, this means that in order to
wring as much as possible out of merchandise sales, the manufacturers of goods
need to come up with new and exciting ideas. Simply recycling old toys is insuf-
ficient. To a certain extent, the films’ storylines are likely to induce new charac-
ters and props with merchandise potential, but even though there is a need for
continuity between episodes innovation is still required. One extreme way of
doing this occurred with the second Jurassic Park film, The Lost World, where one
of the licensees persuaded the film-makers to include in the plot a truck that
could be turned into an attractive toy. 48