Originally Posted by
bowspearer
And yet you can't deny it is a factor. Population growth in the Western world is at a serious low right across the board - of course that's going to affect the primary demographic of the toy market for all companies and all properties when there are less kids compared to, say, a generation ago. Why does stating a simple matter of fact like that offend you so much?
Certainly that's a factor, but I think the article has hit this on the head. Even if you factor in the lack of adult collector focused figures in parts, unexplored avenues of nostalgia cash-cowing and the way these very chains have decided on some very non-collector friendly case assortments, you're still only talking about what last I checked, was only a maximum of 30% of your entire consumer base.
The fact is that unless you're really terrible at maximising your returns with that demographic, no matter how much you make the most of that 30%, losing kids means you've still lost 70% of that demographic.
While it might be nice to think otherwise, there's no way that adult collectors form a large enough group to carry the toy industry at its current size if it ever came down to it.