Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

Legacy's legacy?

(If you're not interested in Heroclix nor looking for a piece on business practices, skip this.)

The official announcement came through Thursday that the latest DC Heroclix set, Legacy, has sold out. This confirmed various rumors surrounding the set over the past few weeks, including some online vendors jacking up the prices markedly. Regional shortages had been reported, and most recently the local marquee event for the game only had enough boosters for 8 players. This is for a set that first hit the streets March 2nd, so that was 29 days later.

A Wizkids customer service note reported by one fan/customer yesterday, prior to the official announcement, effectively broke the news. That notice pointed to "low projections from our distributors" as the cause. Since distributors base their projections largely on early orders, it ultimately came down to a lower level of (at least early) orders from retailers and secondary wholesalers. A public notice from a Wizkids employee described the origins of the Legacy situation as follows:

Legacy was the conflux of several elements. We had to plan this set far in advance of its actual release date, because that falls right in the middle of Chinese New Year. During Chinese New Year, our factory shuts down, and this lasts for approximately a month to a month and a half (as they train new workers after New Year).

Unfortunately, the scheduling surrounding Chinese New Year meant that we had to base the print run off of the performance of past sets and hope for the best, because we wouldn't be able to do any re-prints for quite some time - literally, it would hit sometime after Fantastic Forces.

Needless to say, Legacy sold better than we expected. Personally, I attribute it to the good PR campaign around it.

Will this be the trend in the future? No. But if you're planning on buying a case, ten boosters, two boosters, or trying to help your retailer plan for a Marquee, make sure you let your retailer know and make sure that retailer orders early. Early sales are always easier to guarantee, because if a distributor knows how many cases retailers have ordered before a print run commences, we can make sure they have each case they want.

I want to check on some figures first, but there's one thing in all this that bothers me: The idea that they based the production run on previous sets. It sounds very reasonable, sensible and benign, but -- well, as I said, I want to check on something first. See, I've bought at least one case of every Heroclix set aside from Infinity Challenge (the first set) and each carton has a production run number on its side. In fact, one can look at his case and see that it's #6492 of 18,000. Someone mentioned in passing, somewhere in the past month, that he thought the number of cases listed for this set seemed small in comparison to previous ones. 8000-something, as opposed to the much higher numbers seen in earlier sets. Of course, all of that presumes that they feel they got the production numbers right on earlier sets. They may have decided that those higher-production runs led to a much more leisurely market, and month upon month of surplus inventory sitting in their warehouses awaiting wholesale reorders.

I'll check on the case info tonight and post an update note here.

Being owned by Topps, the emphasis has been on the "collectible" aspect of Heroclix. The success of Topps operations in the sportscards market, which is what most of us know them for, hinges on difficult to find "chase" cards which lure collectors to purchase items by the carton so that they increase their chances of finding those items. This has always been at the core of Heroclix, even when it was an independent company, well before Topps buying them out.

What I see happening here is that Wizkids is making a move to scare fans into placing orders for new sets very early - be that through an online distributor or through their local comics or gaming shop. Yes, they may have potentially shorted themselves on sales with this current set, but I'm anticipating that they're going to see much higher pre-orders on the next couple sets. Consequently, I'm not buying the "sold better than we expected" line for Legacy. This was a calculated move. They couldn't know exactly how soon the shortfall would occur, but whether it was now or a couple weeks from now they knew this was going to be a wake-up pinch for the fans and retailers.

In the meantime, it'll be inteteresting to see if the extra clix from Legacy will end up having more trading power than we would normally expect of them once the market absorbs the fact that supplies truly are limited, and more of the distributors who still have cases start to see this as a seller's market.

The Addendum Tedious: The production numbers become more complicated after the early sets, apparently. Hypertime, the first DC character-based set, appears to have had a straight production run of 22050 cases, though as it was the same set that filled up all of the DC starter sets, it has to be considerably more than that once one adds in the starters.. not to mention possibly later production runs. Clobberin' Time came in at a glorious 25220 cases, which I'm guessing was all they did. If there were more, then either Hypertime had other, serious, additional production runs, or Marvel sets really are that much more popular. Consider that we've seen cases of Hypertime go for around $50 on eBay, while Clobberin' Time sold out and the cases that remain command prices... well, really... just try to find a case.

The next set after that was Xplosion, which was definitely produced in separate runs. One case I have is part of a 9900 case run, the other part of a 4292 case run, so we're looking at at least 13292 cases of XP. DC' s Cosmic Justice would be next, and - again - it's at least two runs: 5734 and 1065, for a minimum total of 6799. Either they did at least one more run or DC production runs were smaller. Next would be Marvel's Critical Mass, a much-maligned set (generally by young, vocal punks and DC-centered detractors who didn't know many of the characters) that happens to be one of my favorites. I see that my case is part of a 10029 case run.

Next is DC's Unleashed, which had at least one production run of 6774. I suspect it had at least one more than that considering that it's still fairly easily available and had several sought-after pieces. Then there's Marvel's Ultimates, which seems to throw me off a bit. I have a case of Ultimates that's part of a 15013-case run, that much I'm sure of, but I have what appears to be another and that's part of a 11013 one. It's possible that the latter was part of a different set, a carton I just happened to toss extra Ultimates figures into, but I doubt it. That's a huge amount for a newer set based on the other info. (Even if the second Ultimates data point it wrong, the comparison with Unleashed adds another bit of weight to the idea that Marvel sets are produced in larger quantitues.) After that would be Marvel's Mutant Mayhem, where my case is part of a 10987 case run. My case of the most recent set, DC's Legacy, was part of a 8223 case run. We've been told this set is a single production run set, so that should be all. Oh, if you were wondering about the Indy set (Oct 2003 -- it was supposed to be a month earlier, but ended up coming out less than two months before Critical Mass did) -- I don't know if they did more than one production run, but mine was part of a 2000 case run. The situation with Indy, however, was complicated by variant sets being distributed in US territories and in Europe. I'd be happy to explain, but this piece is overstuffed with info of minimal interest already, so ask me and I'll tell you.

Anyone who held onto their actual cases -- I've always found them to be the handiest spot to store extras from that case -- I'd be happy to see any additional info to verify the numbers I have and add any signs of additional production runs.