Toys to Retirement Weekly Wrap-Up #43
Hello friends,
If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, you probably have a bit of stress right now. I’m no exception, due to all of the uncertainty around Walmart and Amazon with the toy category. Regardless, there will always be a way forward. This is my sixth year on Amazon, and I have not yet seen a year where something nuclear occured like this CPC fiasco.
You know what they all had in common?
They were never as bad as they seemed, and there was always a way to adjust.
With that being said, let’s dive into the week.
Walmart Announces CPC Deadline
First things first, Walmart announced that all CPC documents must be submitted by September 25 or listings risk being unpublished. This is our first official communication on when things will start going down. Does this mean everything that is going to be requested has already been requested? Not sure, that would be great if so because I’m seeing minimal LEGO requests and only about 10% of my catalog total.
Speaking of LEGO, I experimented with submitting the same CPC documents for both the CPC and testing report request. I have heard that if LEGO was going to be an exception to the requests, this would be the workaround. Unfortunately, on first attempt, it was rejected.
Hopefully more news on this in the near future.
Additional CPC Info
If you’re curious about how I’m approaching the recent Amazon webinar news, you can check out my reaction to it here:
Analyzing Some of my Holds
Although I want to keep pumping out LEGO theme analysis videos, it seems only right to pause them until we have more certainty on the brand. Instead of this week’s analysis, I dove into some of the holds in my inventory I have been digging out of my storage unit. There’s something in here for everyone, and different strategies I talk about throughout. You can see it here:
![[VIDEO LESSON] Analyzing Some of My Holds](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ZEXb!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F49158ccd-797f-4663-b8c2-c9517b572d5e_500x500.png)
Another Mario Movie Already?!
Not a big Mario fan so I’m out of the loop when it comes to lore, but seems like Nintendo is already cooking up another Mario movie for the big screen.
Expect most, if not all of the previous Mario movie merch to be discontinued, and reveals for toys from this movie to happen in the near future.
Might be worth holding our Bowsers a little longer? Hopefully no reprint!
Hasbro MSRP Increase
Once again, Hasbro is milking tariffs as an excuse to raise prices. $24.99 has been MSRP for, what? Maybe a year? And now they’re jumping to $27.99 for standard figures. Unsure what deluxe and fan channels will be.
More details here: https://marvelousnews.com/252-37497?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
More important than ever to focus on strong characters with evergreen demand rather than side characters who are only flavor of the month. People will start getting priced out and the ‘main’ characters are always going to sell better long term.
