Left Behind

I was looking for the office supplies in the local "hypermarket" (really just a small department store that also sells groceries and hardware) when I walked past this. On its face, it's not all that interesting, but it reminded me of the toy industry of days past. Back in the 1970s and '80s one might expect to see the same thing; the young boys who were interested in these sorts of toys (or their parents) would take all of the figures of men and dragons and leave the female figures behind. Maybe someone would buy one or two, but for the most part, they'd languish on store shelves until someone decided that they needed to be moved to the bargain bin.

Manufacturers responded to this fact by making adjustments to the assortments of toys to a case (and thus, their manufacturing) to favor the toys that the target audience seemed most interested in, and with fewer of the ones that sold fewer units. Which makes sense, when one thinks about it. The side effect of this was that the female figures, which were generally less popular, tended to be less common.

But in the 1990s, there was something of a breakout in the secondary market for action figures and the like, especially in complete sets. This meant that the once-overlooked female members of a set of toys were now in high demand. And as collectors rushed to stores to pick up the new toys that were being produced, manufacturers responded by keeping the female figures rare. This practice, called "short-packing" squeezed retailers; in order to be able to meet the demand from collectors, they needed to buy more cases of toys than they otherwise would. This left them with a surplus of the more common figures, which often went unsold, because kids were often less interested in them, due to the market chasing adult collectors; people who had full-time jobs and a willingness to speculate that a set of plastic people and animals would appreciate in value at a rapid clip.

Eventually, the toy collector/resale market crashed, replaced by another fad, and toy manufacturers stopped tailoring their business models to the secondary market. And eventually, more balanced assortments became the norm again. But gender-role stereotyping in children's play is still a thing, and perhaps that explains why a squad of neglected Daenerys figures were hanging out in a box, wondering where everyone else had gone. Whether history will repeat itself, I can't say. But I did detect the hint of a rhyme.