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Post by MidgardDragon on Aug 30, 2008 16:16:54 GMT -5
thedisneyblog.com/2008/08/24/whats-hot-in-the-world-of-disney/Top Five Disney Books on Amazon1. Randy Pausch - The Last Lecture 2. The Unofficial Guide Walt Disney World 2009 3. Wall-E Little Golden Book4. The Complete Guide to Walt Disney World 5. Birnbaum’s Walt Disney World 2008. Top Five Disney Albums on Amazon1. Jonas Brothers / Self Titled 2. Miley Cyrus / Breakout 3. Camp Rock Original Soundtrack 4. TMBG / Here Come the ABCs 5. Wall-E Soundtrack.
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Post by Castoro Chiaro on Aug 30, 2008 16:32:11 GMT -5
Go Wall-E, show Disney how it's done!  At this rate, I hope merchandising increases. Our Wal-Mart is sadly lacking in Wall-E goodies. I want to be drowning in the little robot! C'mon Disney, step up the effort a little! |
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Post by MidgardDragon on Aug 30, 2008 16:33:16 GMT -5
Yeah...I've never seen anything outside of some kids' books for WALL-E at Wal-Mart. Same for Target. The main stores that I've seen carrying WALL-E merchandise are Toys R Us and The Disney Store. I've honestly not seen anything else anywhere I shop, sadly.
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Post by vanessajoyce on Aug 30, 2008 16:42:36 GMT -5
I'm hoping Disney will continue their tradition of doing a second wave of merchandizing for the DVD release.
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Post by MidgardDragon on Aug 30, 2008 16:43:29 GMT -5
I think they likely will, vanessa, considering the sheer number of DVD's they're doing. I'm sure they're going all out on the DVD release.
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bkim
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Posts: 271
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Post by bkim on Aug 30, 2008 16:56:07 GMT -5
Isn't the Ultimate WALL-E being released in November? If so, I'm pretty sure that "second wave" will indeed happen.
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Post by vanessajoyce on Aug 30, 2008 17:19:55 GMT -5
Yes, I think Disney learned a valueable lesson from the "Pocahontas" fiasco . . . "do the bulk of your merchandizing AFTER a film has shown its value." The benefit to doing this is that you know the demographics your fan base is mostly growing in and you can market to that audience.
"Nightmare Before Christmas" is a perfect example of a film that can have waves of merchandizing. When it first came out in 1993, most of the merchandise was for young kids (I know, I was working at Toys R Us at the time). Now, the focus for merchandizing is teen/young adult with light Goth overtones because Disney realizes that's the group that has adopted this film as a cult classic.
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Post by bima on Aug 31, 2008 1:41:02 GMT -5
1. Jonas Brothers / Self Titled 2. Miley Cyrus / Breakout 3. Camp Rock Original Soundtrack 4. TMBG / Here Come the ABCs 5. Wall-E Soundtrack.Go, Wall-E! It's funny to comparing the classic grandeur of this soundtrack to the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus. ;D (I didn't say they're terrible, but... you know, Wall-E sure different!) |
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Post by vanessajoyce on Aug 31, 2008 1:44:42 GMT -5
Yeah, going up against Jonas bros and Miley Cyrus . . . as if Thomas Newman is in that category. ;D
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Post by bima on Aug 31, 2008 1:47:47 GMT -5
Yeah, it was weirdly funny. And it's also interesting to find how Pixar bring some 'culture' to Disney. LOL!
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Post by vanessajoyce on Aug 31, 2008 1:51:01 GMT -5
You bet they do. And it's about time too. After years and years of Eisner, Disney needed a lesson in class.
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Post by smkndofpnutdssrt on Aug 31, 2008 18:07:41 GMT -5
"Nightmare Before Christmas" is a perfect example of a film that can have waves of merchandizing. When it first came out in 1993, most of the merchandise was for young kids (I know, I was working at Toys R Us at the time). Now, the focus for merchandizing is teen/young adult with light Goth overtones because Disney realizes that's the group that has adopted this film as a cult classic. I was just thinking about that recently. I was watching TNBC with the commentary that came with it, and Tim Burton or Danny Elfman or one of those guys was saying how back in 1993 TNBC wasn't a huge deal. People thought it was brilliant and all that, but it wasn't automatically considered a classic and it didn't have a following like it does now. TNBC was one of the few movies that "came back" 10 years after it was first released. I think Wall-E could be one of those movies as well. But of course, everyone knows this one definitely will be a classic. Who knows. We might even see Wall-E merchandise at Hot Topic 10 years from now. Great way to put it. Definitely. |
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Post by vanessajoyce on Aug 31, 2008 18:12:29 GMT -5
That's totally what I see too. WALL-E is never going away because it has so much heart and soul. Heck, there are companies that are still making products for Charles Schultz's comic strip Peanuts and probably will for years!
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Post by Norwesterner on Sept 2, 2008 2:44:37 GMT -5
I think it's remarkable that the WALL•E Soundtrack is doing as well on the charts as it apparently is, given that its very short but numerous tracks wouldn't at first glance give the typical CD-buying crowd (and let's face it, we serious Soundtrack buyers are hardly a majority!) much catchy pop stuff to go for.
I finally made it over to a Toys R Us myself the other day (I make a practice of patronizing small, independent, and locally-owned stores, and only set foot inside any big boxes as an absolute last resort . . . but never Wal-mart, as I just can't abide their documented abuses of employees, and economic savaging of communities and locally-owned businesses.) I found Toy's R Us' WALL•E section tiny by comparison with other film merchandise sections the store had, and they were out, or almost out of stock, on most WALL•E items! Meanwhile they had practically one side of an aisle devoted to Pixar's CARS, which has been out on DVD for quite a while now!
I would hope that Disney/Pixar would be swifter to capitalize on the WALL•E market than they seem to have been with CARS!
I also think it's a little disappointing that the most basic book about WALL•E is also the bestseller. I think it's largely because the other WALL•E books are so hard to get! I had to hunt through several bookstores for my DK WALL•E THE INTERGALACTIC GUIDE (the best visual movie "companion" book I've seen!) and I had to buy the rest of my WALL•E books online (except for the 2009 calendar), because stores just weren't carrying them!
I just find Disney's merchandising of WALL•E to date to be very disappointing — in terms of quality, variety, and even basic quantities! If I were a stockholder, I'd be asking serious questions of Disney management and board members right now, and especially the Merchandising VPs!
I've also read a rumor from the WALL•E Group in Flickr.com, that Pixar took control of marketing the WALL•E movie ahead of its release, and it was Pixar's own doing (not Disney Marketing's) that produced both the 3-D WALL•E & EVE Bench and WALL•E On Box Theatre Displays (one of the latter of which I was very grateful to get, which you can see in the avatar pic to the left.)
So I am beginning to think that if Pixar can't rub off on Disney to the point where Disney's overall quality and market savvy improve . . . that just maybe Pixar might eventually be better off as a stand-alone company again!
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Post by vanessajoyce on Sept 2, 2008 7:56:19 GMT -5
Interesting that Pixar might be taking over their own marketing . . . I could totally see that being part of the merger agreement with Disney.
Actually, merchandizing for animated films has changed a lot in the past 15 years because of the added "legs" a film gets with its DVD release. Disney has had some bad experiences with films in the past ("Pocahontas" specifically) in which they went nuts in merchandizing when the film came out and were stuck with tons and tons of unsold junk when the film didn't perform well. One of the good things Eisner did (the very few) was to push the company to shorten the time between the film's theater release and its DVD release (Disney used to wait a year, now they do the typical 6 mos or so) and then do the bulk of their merchandizing when the DVD was released. Lots of different reasons why this works better, the most obvious being that you have a better idea of which target audience you should design products for.
Short answer is . . . I wouldn't worry about the lack of or the target of the WALL-E merchandizing at this moment. Lasseter and Catmull have been in charge for about 2 years now and already the quality and targeting of the merchandizing for other Disney lines has improved greatly. I'd personally rather have one or two really good products than 20 junky ones -- and that's how the new "king" and his "princes" are starting to run the Magic Kingdom.
Oh, and the Cars merchandizing. Yeah, that's not going to go away. Trust me, we'll be seeing Cars stuff for a long time . . . because people keep buying the stuff. It's sort of like "Nightmare Before Christmas" . . . 15 years later they're still producing new products from it.
And what we learn from that is: If we keep buying the good WALL-E merchandise, more good stuff will come out. Supply and demand.
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