You Licensed Who?...For How Long!?

bytheQ

251 followers

Updated 9 years ago

I have been buzzing around the internet of things for the last 2 days having a whole lot of fun for one little person. I 'm doing research and collecting content for my Web project....everything MARVEL_US

I have always loved Super Heros. Comic books, cartoons, now movies and TV series. My favorites were the Marvel characters. Ya...I kinda' had a crush on Superman but he was so DC. I liked the bad boys much better. My plan was to pay tribute to my good buddies and life long pals from MARVEL with a fun filled website dedicated to all creatures MARVEL.

I clicked my way through various sites researching monetizing possibilities. It turns out there is no shortage of Super Stuff for sale. You can deck your kids' room out in a hundred different Marvel themes to say nothing of the truck loads of "licensed" CRAP! available for purchase. I was absolutely gob smacked at the sheer volume of useless and TASTELESS merchandise on the Web featuring my fearless friends. You know what? It made me feel sad and mad at the same time. I didn't like it at all.

My fond memories and the characters themselves had been disgustingly exploited. The action figures are embarrassingly cheap! Undiscernable features slopped with a dash of color that inevitably misses the mark making it all the more cheesey and ridiculous. As if my Supes hadn't been shat upon enough already it turns out you can buy an Avenger's training potty so the next generation can pay the same homage to our heros as we apparently are.

Everything and anything just churned out on a mill. Those pathetic items are tagged with the name of a timeless Marvel character in an effort to justify the laughable price. The kid in me felt sick. It prompted me to do some research on what had happened to the company that it would throw its classic reputation away with such a disturbing lack of integrity.

Understandably a company is driven by profits I get that. I also believe there is great value to be had in integrity. I had to find out what went wrong with the company's vision so I did a little digging.

From what I have determined "MARVEL" was stripped of its' integrity when it was sold to Ronald Perelman in the '90's. As he put it they..."sought to reap full value from the stable of enduring and beloved super heroes through licensing arrangements and other media outlets." The financial success from the licensing arrangements (pretty damned liberal) attracted the attention of members of the financial industry.

Marvel began making acquisitions and shuffling things around under Perelman. He split the company into holdings and issued half a billion dollars in bonds. The greed motivated purchase of Heroes World Distribution turned out to be the acquisition of his undoing and the near loss of MARVEL altogether. Hell!... It was the near destruction of the comics industry altogether.

He failed miserably at managing the distribution channels and lost massively in sales revenue. Perelman's dabbling for dollars in the distribution network managed to disrupt and destroy business for many other companies as well. Trust me I could go off on a real tangent here about what I've learned about the corporate shenanigans under Perelman. What I had really set out to determine though is who is responsible for the wholesale rape and pillaging of the MARVEL characters?

Soooo...here's the deal. Ronald O. Perelman in his billion dollar wisdom gave Isaac Pearlmutter the opportunity of handing over 46% of his Toy Biz company to MARVEL in exchange for a perpetual royalty free license to produce any and all toys based on MARVEL characters.

Toy Biz nailed down rights to not only action figures but every kind of toy. There were many small companies that had previously existing agreements with MARVEL that produced kites and bikes and various types of toys. At the time Toy Biz was not interested in producing those things but strictly focused on action figures. That lost market was a crazy loss of revenue for MARVEL not to mention the smaller companies no longer able to produce the merchandise that was buttering their bread.

Remember the term "PERPETUAL ROYALTY FREE LICENSE TO PRODUCE ANY AND ALL TOYS"? That ridiculous never before heard of deal could not have been awarded to a worse company. Toy Biz's accountant was a real tight wad. Toy Biz had no real property but leased a modest HQ in New York City and a warehouse in Arizona.

Here's the kicker, though, and the reason the market is flooded with cheap SUPER CRAP. Toy Biz manufacturing is outsourced to China and they focus their sales efforts on mass merhandisers....'nuf said! Super un-cool huh? Not a surprising tactic in corporate America but MARVEL?...I was stunned.

Now I have to completely rethink how I am going to approach my website or if I have become too disheartened to go down this road at all. I know this is a pretty lengthy rant but not nearly as lengthy as it could have been given all I have learned. I will go back to my lessons in WA again and stew on this awhile. Don't you just hate disappointment?