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Subline imprint

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Fools Walmart's buying agents every single time.

A subline imprint is a partial rebranding of a franchise—typically with a secondary title reflecting a theme or gimmick running through the entire franchise.

Examples include Battle for the Spark during Beast Machines and AllSpark Power for the 2007 movie line. The US airings of the second season of the Beast Machines cartoon were re-titled to feature the subline imprint—though not the Canadian or UK versions, nor any of the DVDs—while the Allspark Power toys occupy a loose umbrella story which occurs after the events of the movie.

Subline imprints feature either partial or major changes to the packaging design in order to make the product stand out from the previous "standard" releases. Sometimes, existing product will be re-released in subsequent waves as a running change variant in altered packaging alongside the new product in order to achieve a homogenous packaging style within a case.

In addition, there are occasionally store-exclusive "themes" with their own unique branding and packaging design that follow the same basic concept as the aforementioned type of subline imprints, except they don't affect the general retail assortments.

Game Theory

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Bulk purchasing agents find re-hashed merchandise more attractive offered under a subline imprint.

Purchasing agents known as "buyers" make purchasing decisions for hundreds of American retail stores, making their best guess what products will sell and how many while trying to avoid being stuck with the dreaded "old product" (unsold toys) when the toyline ends.

Buyers purchase many toys from early waves reasoning that even if the toyline flops these will sell eventually over the line's (hopeful) year-to-eighteen-month "lifetime." Toys in later waves (eight-ish) represent a higher risk because they have only a six-month window to sell, and tend not to be purchased as heavily. As a result, toy companies spend less money developing later waves, often heavily featuring redecos and retools, making them even less attractive to retailers.

For their part, consumers try to avoid purchasing the pegwarmers and shelfwarmers left over as a toyline winds down, but lacking the encyclopedic product knowledge known only to buyers, fans, and small children, they learn to suspiciously avoid any packaging they recognize from the last birthday/Christmas/Kwaanza etc. (again making later-wave toys less attractive to retailers.)

A subline imprint refreshes the packaging for consumers (orange may become bright green in the same layout) while assuring the regional buyers that "No, seriously, this is a new toyline, you should purchase it more heavily!" Buyers aren't particularly fooled by this argument, but the re-branding is understood to be a sign that the toy companies have invested in these tail-end waves rather than filled them with junk, making larger retailer purchases a safer investment.

Pre-dating the modern subline imprint scheme

The Transformers

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The mother of all sublines!

Though not only predating the modern concept of a "subline imprint" by a decade, but also predating the concept of individual franchises within the Transformers brand itself by a few years, the final two years of the original toyline's US run had the entire lineup cleanly divided into two sublines per year, each with its own title built around a common gimmick (listed below). Early Micromaster Patrols even sported their own unique logo (with the older name "Micro Transformers") on their packaging, as did the Action Masters. This thematic streamlining of the brand was also reflected in the official catalogs included with the toys, which up to that point had always featured an "Autobot" and a "Decepticon" side, but for those two years used those sublines as the major division line between the two catalog sides instead.

The mostly European-only continuation of the line added Classics for 1990 as well, and maintained the streamlined nature of the line with Action Masters and Classics in 1991, though the latter had no actual official name unlike the aforementioned three (but still featured a common packaging design that visually distinguished them from the concurrently available Action Masters packaging).

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers

Similarly, in the Japanese Generation 1 toyline, Takara split all of the figures based under a certain gimmick or subgroup into their own uniquely branded boxes, starting with the 1986 toys which had the two City Commanders, the two cities themselves, and all four of the original combiner teams branded under "Scramble City" to coincide with the "Scramble City: Mobilization" OVA which (vaguely) advertised the sublines' gimmicks. The "Scramble City" branding would then continue on into 1987 with Computron and Abominus, who also utilized the same combining gimmick. From 1987 to 1990, all of the gimmick and subgroup-based figures featured their own unique subline branding (listed below), but all figures that didn't fit into these categories were just sold in regular Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers-branded packaging.

The backs of the boxes from the latter half of 1986–onwards also featured the logos of the cartoons/sub-franchises they were made to advertise above the "space battle" artwork, adding an extra layer of sublines that these aforementioned sublines split out from as the years went on. These started with the "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers 2010" logo, which was placed on the back of the boxes relating to the characters that appeared in the third season of the G1 cartoon, and weren't already released prior without subline branding or "Scramble City" branding. So basically: the City Commanders; the cities; the four original combiners; the Mini Vehicles (including Outback and Pipes etc.); all of the Mini-Cassettes (including Ratbat and Steeljaw etc.); and the VSZ and "Goodbye" sets didn't get 2010 branding on the back of the packaging, but the Predacons; the four '86 Triple Changers; the later-released Minibot Wheelie; and the rest of the '86 movie cast members—that haven't already been mentioned here—all did.

By 1991, a line-wide shake up was made, uniting the line as a whole by keeping only the yearly subline titles, and removing all gimmick and subgroup-based branding, starting with the Return of Convoy subline, which followed through to the subsequent Operation Combination subline in 1992, finishing out the Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers toyline on a united front.

Subline imprints for Transformers series

"Refresh" of ongoing general retail assortments

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Fooled again… and again! Told ya!
TakaraTomy-only subline imprints

Store-exclusive "themes"

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Now this is getting confusing.
  • Dark of the Moon: Mission Earth (Toys"R"Us) and The Scan Series (Toys"R"Us; a further subline imprint within "Mission Earth")
  • Transformers: Prime: Dark Energon (BigBadToyStore in the United States) and Beast Hunters: Predacons Rising (Target in the United States; another subline imprint within a subline imprint)
  • Robots in Disguise (2015): Clash of the Transformers (Toys"R"Us; initially as a separate subline imprint, later continued under Mini-Con Weaponizers as another subline imprint within a subline imprint)
  • The Last Knight: Autobots Unite (Walmart in the United States), Mission to Cybertron (Toys"R"Us), Reveal the Shield (Target and technically also Toys"R"Us in the United States)
  • Bumblebee: Bumblebee Greatest Hits (Target in the United States)
  • Generations: 35th Anniversary (Walmart in the United States and Canada; a further subline imprint within War for Cybertron: Siege)
Cross-series "themes"

Notes

  • The Age of Extinction line also had a theme of redecoed "Silver Knight" Optimus Prime figures that were all exclusive to Target stores in the United States, but since they don't have their own logo and/or unique packaging design, they don't constitute a proper subline imprint.

See also

References

  1. ↑ The brandings "Cyberverse: Battle for Cybertron" and "Bumblebee: Battle for Cybertron" were initially used concurrently, in some instances on the packaging of different figures released within the same wave of the same size class. However, since "Battle for Cybertron" ultimately only appeared on the packaging of toys released earlier in late 2019 and early 2020, while all the toys released later in 2020 consistently featured the "Bumblebee: Cyberverse Adventures" branding, it's assumed that "Battle for Cybertron" was merely an outdated older working name that was already printed on some figures' packaging before the decision was made to change the title to "Bumblebee: Cyberverse Adventures".
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