WALL-E sure gets around, doesn’t he?
Late last month, this cute little robot was spotted at the Philadelphia Science Museum. This past weekend, Pixar’s latest star made an appearance at the Miami Science Museum. And this Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth Class unit was recently seen rolling around Seattle Center, where he then seemed drawn to the Space Needle.
Copyright Disney / Pixar. All Rights Reserved
But you know where you won’t find WALL-E? At least not in the quantity that Disney / Pixar officials would have liked? The toy aisle at your local mall.
Oh, sure. If you go over to Amazon.com and search for WALL-E toys, you will discover some very fun items. But the meager assortment of WALL-E merch that’s currently available for purchase simply pales in comparison to the huge amount of “Speed Racer” -related stuff that you’ll find out there.
So why can you find more Mach-5s in the toy aisle than WALL-Es? Intriguingly enough, the continuing popularity of “Cars” merchandise was actually a factor here.
Andrew Mooney, Chairman of Disney Consumer Products, speaking last Tuesday at the Licensing International Expo. Photo by Jeff Lange
As Andrew Mooney — Chairman of Disney Consumer Products — explained last week at the Licensing International Expo, ” … there’s only so much shelf space out there. And this time around, we had a really tough time selling WALL-E against Speed Racer.”
Remembering how well the “Cars” merch sold (and continue to sell), most of the bigger toy manufacturers opted to go with the better-name-recognition, more-boy-friendly “Speed Racer” franchise instead. Which then forced Disney & Pixar to go with much smaller companies like Thinkway Toys in order to get “WALL-E” merchandise out on store shelves this year.
Which is kind of ironic. Given that — back in 1995 — when the Mattels & the Hasbros of the world turned up their noses at “Toy Story” … That’s what Disney & Pixar had to do too. Recruit Thinkway at that year’s Toy Fair to quickly churn out Buzz Lightyear & Woody toys. And in 8 short months, this Canadian-based toy company was able to do just that. Which is why Thinkway wound up with two of the hottest toys of the 1995 holiday season.
Copyright 1995 Thinkway Toys, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Now before all you Disney / Pixar fans out there start crowing about how stupid all of these toy companies were to go with “Speed Racer” instead of “WALL-E” … Know this: Even though the Wachoski brothers’ big screen version of this Japanese import crashed and burned at the box office (To date, this Warner Brothers release has only earned $42.5 million domestically. Which is less than a third of what it cost to actually make this movie), all of the “Speed Racer” -related merchandise has been selling very well. Those miniature Mach-5s have been flying off of store shelves at WalMart and Target. At least for the short run.
Which you’d expect would be somewhat disappointing to someone like Mooney. But in his role as Chairman of Disney Consumer Products, Andrew has to take the long view. And in the case of WALL-E … This is a character that Mooney genuinely believes audiences will eventually connect with. More importantly, by the time the DVD version of this film goes on sale in November, Thinkway will finally be shipping the really cool WALL-E tie-in toy …
Copyright 2008 Thinkway Toys, Inc. All Rights Reserved
… the Ultimate WALL-E to stores.
Check out this video that the nice folks at Gizmodo took of this toy robot during Thinkway’s presentation at last month’s Maker Faire. With its 10 motors, infrared sensors (Which allows this miniature WALL-E to detect objects and steer around them) as well as its voice activation and follow-me mode … This is — in essence — a tiny, stripped version of the Living Character Initiative WALL-E that’s currently working the science museum circuit.
Be warned, though: The one thing that’s not tiny & cute about the Ultimate WALL-E is its price tag. This Thinkway Toy (which — FYI — isn’t supposed to ship ’til the Fall) has a suggested retail price of $189.99.
Would you pay that much to have your very own version of WALL-E wandering around the house? Or — given how typically tough kids are with toys — would you just prefer to spend your holiday dough on sure-to-be-discounted-by-then “Speed Racer” merchandise?
Your thoughts?