How to Kill Your Hot Game in One Easy Step

Sales of the Adventure Time Card Game Decks and DiceMaster boosters are demonstrating how easily the lack of product for a hot game can dampen interest in said hot game. 

When the first two Adventure Time decks, Finn vs. Jake and Lady Rainicorn vs. BMO, released, we could not keep them in stock and neither could most other stores with which I spoke. Demand hit such levels that sales on the secondary market hit levels of $50 per deck and higher. Unfortunately, both decks had sold out by the time the For the Glory booster packs released and, our order, which I thought would be enough for only a few weeks, has lasted until now.  The Princess Bubblegum vs. Lumpy Space Princess decks which arrived this week, despite our promotion of them on Facebook, the store website and in-store, have been met with a collective yawn by customers. Even  Cryptozoic’s plan to launch an Organized Play for them sometime in the (hopefully) near future, has not generated much excitement, save for the two or three really big fans of the game. Casual fans haven’t shown much interest, though that may change when OP details get released (and if we get decent promotional material for it).

Similarly, WizKids DiceMasters has really died off here and at other stores as well and, once again, it is the lack of product that has done so. In this case, it is just the plain “We cannot get the product” consistently that is putting paid to DiceMasters. Though DiceMasters is a great game with a wonderful price point (99 cent boosters, anyone), it is truly had to sell a 99 cent booster when you cannot get any. 

Similarly, though WizKids did publish workarounds to compensate for the lack of starters, customers do want the official starters rather than using generic six siders in their pool and not having them has really hurt sales because I really need a starter to sell to a new player, not directions to hand to them on how to make a starter pool out of dice they already own. In fact, the DiceMasters situation is worse than the Adventure Time, since we, at least, have had the Adventure Time boosters available to sell to customers