3 Things For Which I Am Thankful

Since this is the season in which we traditionally give thanks, not that we shouldn’t do it the other 11 months out of the year,  I wanted to point out four things (aside from health, friends, chocolate, etc) that make me thankful:

1)      WOTC finally pulled the plug on Kaijudo. Yes it was a good game. Yes, I know at least one store did really, really REALLY well with it. However, for every store doing good with it, I can point to 25, including us, that did not. Not for want of trying though, either on WOTC or on our part. We received more promotional material for Kaijudo than we did for Yu Gi Oh, Pokemon or Cardfight Vanguard combined. We ran events almost every week that the same 4-5 people attended but product sales were infinitesimal. Now, I hope, WOTC will take the promotional dollars it poured into Kaijudo and spend them promoting Great Dalumuti, Gullotine, Acquire or some of the other great boardgames in its catalog. Unfortunately, even now I can hear some marketing genius at WOTC say, “You know, if we just did this with DuelMasters…”.

2)      The Bits ‘n Mortar program.  Bits ‘n Mortar doesn’t get nearly enough publicity as it ought but this consortium of small RPG publishers still has their program in place, allowing registered brick and mortar retailers to give a PDF of their products to customers when said customer purchases a hard copy of the RPG.  We have customers who purchase Crucible 7 and Arc Dream RPG products specifically from us on a regular basis specifically because we participate in this program.

3)      Munchkin (and Steve Jackson Games). The base Munchkin game still sells reliably week in and week out over a decade after it first released.  Unlike some other game lines (cough-X-wing Miniatures, DiceMasters-cough), Steve Jackson Games manages to keep the almost the entire line in stock through distribution and, although they have run special sets through Target and Barnes and Noble, I have not seen them participate in any deep discounting or “Buy One, Get One Free” silliness such as appeared on the Target website last week.

And since ‘tis the season for giving:

4)      The “TableTop Bump”. Though the TableTop bump was more like a hiccup in season 2, it seems to have returned for season 3, though not to the levels of season 1. Most stroes reported Tokaido hard to find and our sales of Forbidden Desert increased significantly with the uploading of last week’s episode. Seemingly any TableTop show with either  Anne Wheaton or Felicia Day proves especially strong in selling the featured game as they play off Wil Wheaton so well.