Look who’s back on the toy shelves, and with a new company!
Above: Product photography from Amazon.com of Voltron Legendary Defender “Bend’Em” toy by Sunny Days Entertainment.
Tipped off by ActionFigureInsider’s IG post of new toys hitting Walgreens. They have a photo of this toy on the shelves, also Pacific Rim and Gundam toys too.
So, Gundam and Pacific Rim get legit action figures, while VLD gets a Bend’Em for 3-5 year olds. Okay then. VLD’s story doesn’t really fit that age group, and it barely fits the Y7 that it’s rated as, but I get it. Voltron is brightly colored and a young child doesn’t need to watch the show or even know what the brand is in order to be attracted to the toy. That’s fair. Are we gonna get a cereal next?
A bendable Voltron toy for 3 year olds is the last thing crossing my mind in toy merch after VLD’s story dove into the dArK aNd EdGY dumpster in S6 and then proceeded to meander through a swamp of tragedy pr0n gussied up as a nonsensical Robotech homage.
Thanks to @ptw30‘s post, “A Few Thoughts on DW/VLD Marketing” for reminding me that I’ve had a draft about VLD toys, merch, and marketing copy inconsistencies to complete. Read her post first.
I’ve been researching the toys and merch for several months now to follow-up on weird things that I noticed much earlier. I’m a toy collector who is also a designer and have worked in advertising/marketing, and in broadcasting at Cartoon Network. I left that world to design and develop applications in genetics/life-sciences, best decision I ever made (co-founded a startup in between all of that too. Good times). My experiences had me zeroing in on this show bible business that came up during that Let’s Voltron interview (March 28th, 2019). I’ve been suspicious about it for awhile, as the gradual unraveling of VLD’s narrative, lore retconning, and OOC dialogue and behavior of the characters (most egregiously in S8) is indicative of a lot of problems, and an incomplete or poorly-done show bible is at the top of that list. Now combine that with the weirdly slow-to-market of VLD merchandise and toys.
Both manufacturers and merchandise license program partners can’t get product to market in time to meet (or even anticipate demand) if they don’t have official assets from the show, and that includes anything that would have been in the show bible. When the show-runners let it out that their show-bible was the “loosest you’ll ever see”, and then complained about the elemental icons used on the toys by the manufacturer (Playmates) not matching their aesthetic, and after they redesigned them, Playmates didn’t want to use them, I was like: “Really? Y’all got hung up on that?”
It takes months, sometimes over a year, to design and test molds for toy prototypes and then to go into mass production and distribution. Traditionally, there is also a step where the IP holder has to approve the design concepts created by the manufacturer (toys and other merch).
The IP approval step could potentially have been made more complicated by the different players involved in the communication: WEP, DreamWorks Animation, Playmates, Studio Mir, and the most complicated layer of all, DreamWorks Classics, aka Classic Media. All of them could have been involved, I’m not saying that they all were, but it’s something to consider.
DreamWorks acquired Classic Media in 2011-2012 and formed them into a separate unit within DreamWorks Animation. Classic Media were the managers of the Voltron IP among many other brands in their huge IP library. That’s the short version b/c it’s complicated. IP ownership and licensing is not always as straight-forward as one might think, especially with these toy-cartoon properties from the 80s.
So where did the elemental icons come in during the creation of the show bible and toy design approval process?
Above: packaging inserts showing the elemental icons.
I kept the package inserts because—as a toy collector—I strongly felt that the packaging was done very well. The graphics are slick and look good. The ink has a nice saturation with a lot of color depth, range, and fidelity. The die-cuts are excellent and intricate. The packaging on the larger lion sets makes great use of aqueous coating and spot varnishes. Whomever designed the packaging knew what they were doing, and also understood the print production process (Hi! I used to do that too).
I kept these even though I always ditch packaging because I wanted to scan them for collage art. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these elemental icons, and they look reasonably well integrated with the graphic assets from DreamWorks and Studio Mir. These inserts were from the toys released in 2017.
The toy packaging gets more interesting when you see what marketing copy was sent to Playmates to use (or work from if it was from the show bible).
Above: Shiro’s package insert with descriptive text that says, “Long ago a mighty robot warrior, Voltron, was created to protect the galaxy from evil. Now, five young heroes must master the power of the Voltron Lions to defeat the Galra empire and restore peace!”
“Five young heroes” eh? They must have gotten that text early on because that’s kind of a weird way to say it when the Shiro packaging also says “…wise beyond his 25 years…”. I mean, 25 is still young, but that’s not what comes to mind when I read “five young heroes” on a toy box!
Shiro is the only one with a listed age in any of the packaging. I noticed this when I got these toys in 2017 and it reminded me that I had originally read that it would be five teenagers and I had to go looking for articles that I kept (yeah I do that b/c toys).
From this article on ActionFigureInsider.com about Playmates launching the VLD toyline in 2016:
“Let’s Voltron! Playmates Toys and DreamWorks Animation today announced plans for a new toy line based on the new DreamWorks Animation series Voltron: Legendary Defender, a re-imagining of the classic property featuring five teenage pilots and mystical robot lions, set to debut as a Netflix Original Series in 2016. Playmates Toys will serve as the master toy licensee and will create an expansive line of toys set to launch in spring 2017.”
and
“Voltron: Legendary Defender follows five unsuspecting teenagers as they are transported from Earth into the middle of a sprawling intergalactic war and become pilots for five mystical robotic lions in a battle to protect the universe from evil. Only through the true power of teamwork can they unite their lions to form the mighty warrior known as Voltron. Voltron: Legendary Defender premieres on Netflix in 2016.”
LULZ. That ain’t no fluke y’all. That loosey-goosey show bible and the initial story planning drafts/concepts must have had Shiro as a teenager. Oops.
Playmates got part of the message in time to slip-in Shiro’s age on his packaging, but why the discrepancy between the article in early 2016 and the 2017 toy release in the first place?
Obviously, things changed between the first story planning phases, the release of marketing copy to media, the release of production art assets to Playmates, and when S1 was made. There still would have been time to update that copy for Playmates and media in early 2016, given that S1 would have already been in production, with S2 to quickly follow by that time. The show-runners already knew before that article ran that Shiro was not going to be a teenager anymore (and likely many other toy-relevant details). Did they intentionally not update anyone who had a right to know, or did it just slip their minds? Did someone else in the chain of communication mess up? Did that disagreement over the design of the elemental icons take up a lot of time, or possibly include larger disagreements?
Since the first wave of toys were released in 2017, when Keith was in the Black Lion, they would have been designed for production and manufactured much earlier than that. Playmates can’t turn around on a dime to manufacture toys (not to mention design the packaging) to match the seasons. They need to have the information of what will happen in a season way ahead of time. This is one of many banal-yet-important reasons why your show bible needs to be tight, and your character arcs well-planned out.
We can see the first wave of the toys in photos from Toyfair 2017. There’s even a Zarkon figure, and various toys that are clearly for young boys (prop swords, masks, and the like). I remember seeing these photos right after Toyfair and thinking that Zarkon figure was looking pretty cool looking for what it was.
Above: Zarkon prototype figure with black bayard sword. Photo by Jim Kiernan for NerdyRottenScoundrel.com.
Since Playmates was able to create a prototype of Zarkon ahead of Toyfair 2017, that means that they began the design phase in early 2016 before the show first aired (possibly before that even). This also means that they knew that Zarkon had the black bayard, so that much was planned out.
Then in Toyfair 2018, Playmates had new toys, including prototypes for the Hunk, Pidge, and Allura figures, the HyperPhase lions, and the “Stealth Mode” translucent lions. It’s worth noting that photos of the Pidge and Hunk paladin figures show up on the inserts in the 2017 toys as they were originally intended to be part of that wave.
Above: Prototypes for the Allura, Pidge, and Hunk paladin figures. Photo by Joe Moore for Toyark.com.
So salty that Playmates cancelled these.
Below, an excellent video from Toyfair 2018 where Pixel Dan asks the hard questions of the rep (if video doesn’t show here is the URL to it on YouTube):
Pixel Dan asks about the possibility of a Lotor figure, and what happened to the other villain figures from 2017 (e.g. the Zarkon figure, and there was a prototype for another robeast other than Myzax). The rep says those were pushed back, and there “will be more Lotors” (LOL) in the next phases in development. I’m pretty sure he got Lotor confused for Zarkon.
It’s important to note that Pixel Dan and the rep talk a lot about the slow distribution of the first wave of figures based upon what retailers were doing with their ordering and stock. That people weren’t seeing them in stores. The rep explains that the toys are made in response to demand and that’s also up to the retailers to order them, but there’s also some comments that I interpreted as though they didn’t have enough details about what to make in the first place.
For those who haven’t already seen me share ToyGalaxy’s excellent video about the action figure industry being broken, give it a watch:
The video above explains a lot about why Playmates had problems with distribution, as ALL manufacturers were-and-still-are having distribution problems. It’s really hard to find toys at stores, my partner and I go hunting all the time, the lengths we go to are absurd.
I’m certain that retail distribution problems contributed to demand for the toys and that’s partly why they were cancelled. But this problem with the show bible also contributes because if Playmates had future season information when they should have, then they might have been able to design toys that more closely matched the show, thus boosting demand once it hit critical mass. I also wonder how much time they lost in the beginning due to the back-and-forth over the elemental icons.
Other merch, like t-shirts should also have been in production before 2017. They would have required details from the show bible as well. We could have had lion slippers y’all. Just sayin’.
So about those Allura with the Red Lion t-shirts that @ptw30 mentioned in her post:
Above: officially licensed t-shirts for Allura and Keith with the Red Lion, bearing the fire element icon.
Someone (ptw30? headspacedad?) called these shirts to my attention privately a few months ago—after S8 but ahead of Hot Topic’s recent new t-shirt release—and alarm bells went off in my head. Typically, this is the kind of error that you’d see in a knock-off, but these are officially licensed and they were linked to directly from the Voltron store page (at the time they had a re-direct promo image for merch on Amazon, in addition to what they sell on their own store page).
Descriptive text in the shopping page for all of the t-shirts of this style reads:
“Join the Paladins Shiro, Keith, Lance, Pidge, Hunk and Coran as they combine their lion mechas together to form Voltron! Help them take on the Evil Galra Empire with these officially licensed Voltron: Legendary Defender graphic tees, pullover hoodies and popsockets!”
Coran eh? Interesting choice for text about combining lions. Why no mention of Allura on her own t-shirt? And what the hell is a popsocket?
On another Allura t-shirt—which also has different product specification text indicating that it’s probably not manufactured by the company that made the t-shirts above—has descriptive text that reads:
“Voltron is the classic cartoon series that began in the early ‘80s. It is an animated show that brings back the nostalgia of classic cartoon fever. Not to mention a popular show pretty much stole the idea. (starts with pow- ends with -angers….) Voltron will always be number #1! This women’s junior’s shirt features a high quality character design of Princess Allura and Blue Lion.”
Why are they dragging Power Rangers in the text for an Allura t-shirt?
And actually, it’s incorrect. Power Rangers aka Tokusatsu Sentai shows came first. Voltron/GoLion descends from the combining mecha genre that began with Go Nagai’s Getter Robo series in the 70s, which was influenced by the Tokusatsu Sentai shows. So no, Power Rangers didn’t steal that idea.
Did anyone involved with VLD do their homework other than Tim Hedrick and May Chan?
We can see here that the t-shirts that are available on the Voltron store, and what’s available on Amazon are not always the same, even though the shirts say they are officially licensed. What’s going on here?
Some—but not all—of the t-shirts in the Voltron store list “From Trevco” in their description. Trevco.inc does licensing for branded merchandise, and selling t-shirts via Amazon appear to be one of their licensing product programs. Both DreamWorks Animation and Voltron: Legendary Defender are among the brands listed. Oh look, another layer in IP licensing cake!
Meanwhile, in the Hot Topic store, there’s a completely different style—in terms of aesthetic and design—of both VLD and Voltron DotU t-shirts being sold. I suspect that HT licensed VLD and Voltron DotU for in-house design, plus artist collaboration design, as these are exclusive for Hot Topic and I’ve not seen them anywhere else. That could mean they have a different kind of license than what Trevco and others selling on Amazon have. The t-shirts from HT don’t list any other manufacturer on the label, other than being made in Haiti. I kind of want to buy that weird Allura with Red Lion t-shirt to just compare them. (Surprising no one, I bought the Lot//ura and Black Paladin Shiro t-shirts from HT).
The difference in style between what’s on WEP’s Voltron store and Amazon, versus what’s in Hot Topic is very interesting, and I assume it has a lot to do with demographics for their respective markets (perceived or real). In a traditional merchandize licensing agreement, WEP and/or DW would still have to approve any designs created by—or if artist collaboration with—Hot Topic.
How long did that approval process take?
The recent release of t-shirts (Feb/March 2019) include a t-shirt with a scene from S5 (the chosen marks scene for Allura and Lotor). There are no MFEs, Atlas, white-haired Shiro, or anything else from S7-S8. There is a Keith t-shirt with his cosmic wolf, and a shirt with the Monsters and Mana designs, so they got something from S6.
Above: Funko Pops. I’ve got a poorly-painted Allura (her right earring and tiara y’all), both Shiros, and the Pidge, Hunk, and Amazon Exclusive metallic paint VLD Voltron (Pidge, Hunk, and Voltron not pictured).
The VLD Funko Pops came out in the end of 2018 but ahead of S8. I’ve seen them at Hot Topic, and online (Amazon, and BigBadToyStore.com), but I have not seen them at other retailers that carry Funko Pops like GameStop and Target. We go toy hunting to those all the time, in many different places. I guess that demographic of boys aged 9-12 just aren’t interested in VLD to demand it at GameStop and Target. At least Hot Topic knows what’s up.
The Funko Pops use Allura’s uniform from S1-S2, and have two designs for Shiro (Black Paladin, and his black outfit). How long did these take to license and approve? Funko Pops are the lowest hanging merch fruit, so they should have been an obvious licensing choice by the end of 2016 once it was clear that VLD was a hit. But we didn’t see these until just before S8?
Finally, apparently WEP and the Voltron Store don’t mind those elemental icons that the show-runners hated, since they have a lanyard with them on it in their store (image below):
It’s almost as if no one is on the same page!
If I didn’t know any better—oh wait, I do because this is kind of my thing—it looks like these elemental logos were designed to be like Boy Scout merit badges. That’s fitting as the toys were meant to be bought by boys aged 9-12, and are safe for children aged 4 and up. With over 15 years of professional design experience across multiple fields and domains of design, if I were designing these, that’s exactly what I would have done from Playmates’ end, especially if DW and WEP had told me that their target demo was boys aged 9-12.
Shouldn’t the show-runners and Studio Mir’s very different design aesthetic have been made clear in the show bible and in any discussions and communications with Playmates (and whomever else was involved)? Who was responsible for communicating that?
To be clear, I like Studio Mir’s aesthetic much better, but what I like is irrelevant when we’re talking about toys and target demographics for marketing them, vs what’s appropriate for merchandise that could be for all kinds of demographics.
I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to design in parallel with an outside agency, and in the dark with little communication between us. It’s an awful position to be in, and I’m surprised that DreamWorks didn’t know better than to make sure that didn’t happen between those designing for the show and Playmates and anyone at DreamWorks Classics and WEP that might have been involved in communications.
I spat out my coffee when I read that bit about the show bible, because damn, if you’ve ever had to design an ad campaign (which can last for years!) with a half-assed or incomplete branding guide and little-to-no marketing and romance copy (let alone a style guide to help your copy editors write it), then you’re looking at a huge mess once that thing finally gets finished.
