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Sphero Discontinues Its BB-8, R2-D2, and Other Licensed Disney Products (theverge.com)
Sphero's hinted that it's getting out of the licensed product game, but this week CEO Paul Berberian confirmed that the company is clearing out its remaining licensed inventory and won't be restocking the supply. From a report: That means the company won't be producing any more BB-8s, R2-D2s, Lightning McQueen cars, or talking Spider-Mans. The listings for all the toys list them as "legacy products" that are no longer in production. App support will continue for "at least two years, if not longer," Berberian says. The Disney partnership lasted three years, but ultimately, the licensed toy business required more resources than it was worth, Berberian tells The Verge. These toys sold well when released with a movie, but interest waned over time as the movie became more distant, he says. Still, the company sold "millions" of BB-8s, although company data shows that the toys weren't used much after initial play time and eventually sat on shelves.
Space Ballz!
Mobesticles?
Just like the current design but two of them, and with more of a 'neck' and mushroom shaped head above :)
Just buy all of them and throw away the white males.
This is also Disney's business plan for the Star Wars.
I don't know which ones identify as white males. They are dolls.
This is Sphero, so it's just the bots. Cool toys for the modern age, even if you didn't like the new movies (BB-8 was still a cool concept). All the action figures that sold so badly Toys-R-Us went bankrupt are someone else.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Cool toys for the modern age=plastic junk that kids play with for 10 minutes and then end up in a landfill
It was never that great of a movie. Its special effects wowed audiences in the late 1970's and early 1980's and it story just held onto the nostalgia, so the kids of the time still have fond memories of it.
Sense then the High Effects movies become very common, and the latest (and prequel) movies just couldn't lean on effects to cover its other faults, because there was so much competition in the big budget high effects movies.
I think a lot of the toys sold, was from parents who think their kids would relive the Star Wars adventure they had as a kid, While in reality today's kids are interested in different stuff.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
underrated post
they wouldn't..
unless there is some spying on children and their toys going on.
I still think the old Star Wars special effects are a TON better than the new ones. Probably because they were carefully built and filmed models and not just CGI effects thrown together overseas in an animation factory.
Not a huge far of the genre in general, but Star Wars went downhill when they replaced Kirk with Picard
This is not unexpected. How long do you think a toy like that will last with a sealed-in battery that cannot be replaced without cutting the plastic? Sure, they're collectable, but the value diminished when you find out that they no longer work, and will NEVER work again.
Sorry, they don't sell them to micropeened incels. You'd fail the purchasing test.
Damn. That's why I come to Slashdot. So much information from people who are on the front lines of these issues.
All toys like this, those that depend on a smartphone app, will eventually become display only or garbage. The back end servers/apps that make these toys work will eventually be retired or will become unusable as development stops. (anyone really think something like the bb8 app on your phone used to control the thing will get upgrades for the next version of android? Or a version in 5 years?)
Get the Tshirt!
Yep. Now go take yourself out like the Supreme Gentlemen Rodgers. Then your parents no longer have to be embarrassed by their incel kid.
I promise, someday you'll recover from the trauma of seeing a space movie that didn't have enough people who look like you.
Well, that's about 90% of Christmas toys, isn't it? But they're great for geek manbabies.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
App support will continue for "at least two years, if not longer," Berberian says.
My first question would be what do they mean by "support"? I'd be shocked if they were providing any meaningful support as I use the term now. Not like they are going to get ongoing revenue from the apps unless they are some sort of game with in-game purchases. Given that they are selling these ultimately to children who generally don't control the credit card I can't imagine them bothering with any meaningful support.
These toys sold well when released with a movie, but interest waned over time as the movie became more distant, he says.
Were they expecting something different? That's how licensed content works as a general proposition.
company data shows that the toys weren't used much after initial play time and eventually sat on shelves.
In other news water is wet. Have these people ever actually watched children? This happens to approximately all toys. Children get them, play with them, get bored with them and move on to some other toy.
I resemble that remark!
I still think the old Star Wars special effects are a TON better than the new ones.
Evidently you haven't seen A New Hope recently because the effects have not aged well and I'm being generous when I say that. You might appreciate them more for what they are and what went into making them but they look quite clumsy compared to the current state of the art. Some of the effects in the original trilogy have held up pretty well - particularly in Empire and RotJ but others definitely have not. The ewoks were a fail both from a story telling standpoint and from an effects standpoint. They just look absurd - it's like watching Sesame Street as an adult.
What about the trauma of seeing Carrie fisher sail across space? Who is going to help us recover from that? I'll never get over Nacho Grande!
Space Ballz!
Where is my Mega-Maid model?
LOL. "The movies became more distant" is an interesting ambiguous choice of words ...
A longer time ago, true.
More distant from the Star Wars that we used to know, also true.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
You underestimate the fragility of the mind of an alt-right incel. Seeing someone female and non-white sends the mind into panic.
I am glad I got my own bb-8
I identify as a female and non-white and also a Jedi so I am safe.
Taco Bell? Those wounds run...pretty deep.
Oh wait - that's Macho Grande! Taco Bell it is...
It was enormously influential. Which is to say, everything it did well was copied a million times, and when someone today watches it for the first time they have already seen those same ideas in hundreds of more recent movies. Sometimes done better. To understand why Star Wars was so regarded just think what the state of sci-fi movies was in 1977: A joke. The domain of low-budget B-movies, cliche characters and wooden acting. What Star Wars has then was groundbreaking, but today it is just routine and unremarkable.
I still think the old Star Wars special effects are a TON better than the new ones. Probably because they were carefully built and filmed models and not just CGI effects thrown together overseas in an animation factory.
The motions of the original X-Wings were a bit off putting to me, but the other effects (particularly interior ones) were pretty good.
But the story well sucked. Its strength was on actually caring about the movie.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
My son was given a BB8 for Christmas last year. It seemed like a great toy, except it came with no controller whatsoever. Control was done by communication with a smartphone or tablet.
This was - supposedly - not a problem as he had an iPad that we gave him some time before. Except that only newer iPads could control BB8 - older ones did not support whatever communication method was used, and could not even install the software. So we installed it on my personal smartphone as it was the only one in the house at the time that could run the software (even the newest iPhone in the house couldn't run it).
Except of course there are times when I want to use my phone as - gasp! - a phone. I couldn't let him run around all day with it as a toy (nevermind that letting him do that would eventually result in him sitting down and playing games on my phone instead of playing with BB8).
I know there are people who like to give cell phones to their young kids, but that is not part of my parenting philosophy.
Oh, and before you point to the "smart band" (or whatever they called it), take a closer look at it. That band just communicates via bluetooth with the phone or tablet, and then the phone still drives BB8. It doesn't take your android or IOS device out of the equation, indeed it makes it work a little bit harder.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Yes, actually. I hear they are making a line of dolls that will cry white tears.
"although company data shows that the toys weren't used much after initial play time and eventually sat on shelves."
These are children's toys, why the fuck are they tracking this. I'm pretty sure that some countries/states has laws against doing this to children.
Why even live?
I guess that explains why they didn't sell at all, since all the nu-Star Wars fans are incels and femcels.
Just for future reference, press releases from The Verge aren't worth posting. You can tell because they intentionally avoid explaining who or what Sphero is, or why anyone should give a shit about them. Your commenters were gracious enough to let me know that I should really just continue to ignore their existence, but frankly they shouldn't have to do that - you should have just declined to post the press release.
And if any "advertising partners" from Sphero are reading, your business plan is so hilariously transparent that you may as well have advertised the battery life of the product as "just long enough for us to cash out".
Excelsior,
A.C.
Ewoks weren't effects. They were little people in suits.
Ewoks absolutely were practical effects.
Which one looked more realistic? Ewoks or jar jar
Honestly? Jar Jar. The character was an abomination in a variety of ways but from a pure FX standpoint Jar Jar looked WAY more believable than a bunch of awkwardly moving midgets wearing teddy bear suits. At no point was I ever able to suspend disbelief that the ewoks were anything other than small humans in suits because they moved EXACTLY like a little person wearing a costume.
Heck, back in 1977 when I saw Star Wars (no "A New Hope" cr*p!) the special effects were relatively laughable.
Your opinion was not shared at the time. I saw the movie in theaters in 1977 too and the special effects were excellent for the day. I'm not sure what you think was substantially better among late 1970s movies. The special effects were considered state of the art in 1977. Hell it's what made Industrial Light and Magic what it is today. It won 6 academy awards including Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound and of course Best Visual Effects. Say what you want about the movie overall but you cannot say it's special effects weren't state of the art at the time of its release. My point is that the state of the art has advanced considerably in the last 40 years and it shows.