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If you want to sell a toy at a us based big box retailer, it pretty much has to be a licensed product.

Either you are hasbro and target reserves multiple shelves for you, or you are making Disney characters into rubber ducks or sponge bob character keshis.

Beyond that, there's a pay to play option. Roblox and Mr. Beast (I assume, I do not have insider knowledge despite having worked for onr of those entities) go the pay-to-play route, paying for placement on store shelves and breaking even on sales in order to cement a brand.

If a brand operating under that model does well enough for long enough, they might graduate to the normal licensed toy model, or get bought by hasbro.

The toy isles at most big box retailers are sad. They are devoid of joy.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · 2 months ago

lmao, I said "isles" and not "aisles"

What a loser.

iideacocarl

@bass4dking@mastodon.social replied · 2 months ago

@ajroach42 Sounds like it is time to revive the noble role of Art Patron. If anyone out there has a good heart and disposable cash, here's your chance!

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · 2 months ago

@bass4dking I'll take a patron, if you've got one.

iideacocarl

@bass4dking@mastodon.social replied · 2 months ago

@ajroach42 As a very amateur musician, my full- time job (with understanding bosses and family) allowed me to serve as my own "patron" for many years. But if I run across one, I'll definitely point them your way.

Keep up the good work.

aschmitz

@aschmitz@ostatus.lardbucket.org replied · 2 months ago

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · 2 months ago

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · 2 months ago

This is a related problem to something I've talked about a lot (diy/community media) but it's specifically a manifestation of the kind of illusion of choice created by consolidation.

An increasingly small number of firms with increasingly overlapping interests are the arbiters or modern culture.

They also control a majority of the discovery mechanisms through which culture is disseminated. It's not just store shelves, after all. It's what plays on the radio, what gets auto played or playlisted on Spotify, what appears on television or on your streaming services, and which games you're allowed to play on your own consoles (and for how long!)

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · 2 months ago

I used to call this a discovery problem.

I'd frame it as a combination of consolidation in media companies resulting in an increasingly small and bland monoculture coupled with ever cheaper production resulting in a long tail so long that there is no viable mechanism to sort through it and find anything worthwhile.

This is a somewhat naive framing because I failed to take into account the number of people who would seek to interpose themselves on that long tail, promising to make sense of it. Little gatekeepers overseeing tiny content fiefdoms all peddling ever more extremist content. (Focus on the Family, Newsmax, NRA TV, etc )

I failed to predict that the increasing homogenization of mainstream culture would present an opportunity for opportunists and grifters to impose themselves as the new arbiters of culture.

@cy@fedicy.us.to replied · 2 months ago

Have you heard the term "monopsony?" It's the problem that when there's only one buyer, you can have as many sellers as you want, and they all have to sell the same thing. Like how Barnes and Nobles sells books, but upstream it has a monopsony, as the only bookstore left in the entire continental USA. (Thanks Reagan.)

Monopsonies are one reason I think there's so much fake diversity in what we have today.

Sean Kleefeld

@SKleefeld@mastodon.social replied · 2 months ago

@ajroach42 I made much the same mistake myself. I've since wondered if that oversight on my part stemmed from a lack of business acumen or an overabundance of optimism.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · 2 months ago

So, in practice you now have a mainstream culture so homogenized and safe as to be unappealing to basically everyone, and thousands of niche cultures, many of which are being explicitly manipulated.

And in the middle you have the death of consensus reality.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · 2 months ago

All of these things that I'm talking about in this thread—toys, media, culture—have been commercialized and weaponized to the point that they're basically useless for their original purposes.

It's nearly impossible to make a living as a creative person unless you are a one in ten thousand success story, a legacy holdout from the time before mass media essentially killed itself in the name of profit seeking, or an outright grifter.

If you are already successful or you can attach yourself to someone who is already successful then you have an okay chance of remaining/becoming successful. (This is the case for outfits like Dropout and people like Mr. Lobo) But even previous recognition or an existing audience might be insufficient if YouTube or Facebook or google or Instagram or Amazon decides that your audience isn't going to find out about your newest work.

Sorry, computer says no.

Sorry, our new business model demands that we bankrupt the people upon whom we've built our success.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · 2 months ago

It's against this landscape of #enshittificaton and scrounging for the last half acre ( https://vod.newellijay.tv/w/83McEYqJpCqn1UmWXqGWq2 ) that I am building our #CommunityMedia projects, and attempting to imbue them with #revolutionaryJoy

We make toys of our own original characters, most of which are cc-by-sa, or of public domain characters. We help other people make their own toys. (And we do it with direct recycled plastics and soon with biodegradable plastics.)

We make television programs (like the one I linked above) and podcasts to tell stories that are otherwise missing from the airwaves or to celebrate our community or just because we want to. We help other people make and distribute their own television.

We make video games and publish comic books and just generally try to provide an alternative to all the various kinds of media that are currently produced by four or five companies who would gladly see this nation fall to fascism if it meant making a buck.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · 2 months ago

But, because of all the things I discussed up thread, it's hard to fund these efforts.

It's hard for people to find our work. It's basically impossible for us to get it on the shelves at a big box retailer (not that I'd want to anyway!)

It's hard for us to reach people and it's hard for us to get paid, and this is by design!

I've been thinking about this problem a lot, and trying to figure out what to do about it. I have some ideas, but they're pretty wacky.

I'm going to start with video Discovery, because that's where I started this thread. I might make it through some other topics eventually.

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