Wargames Update

Postponed Indefinitely

by James Elliott

The New Helen of Toy Company was started in an effort to bring back the old fashioned “Comic Book Toy Soldier Sets” that were so popular in the back page ads of comic books from the 1950’s-1980’s. These sets originally came in many forms, perhaps the most famous of which were the early “comic book flats” like the 100 Toy Soldiers Footlocker Set (which featured tiny 2D flat GI figures.) We are very proud to have succeeded in bringing back the “100 Toy Soldiers in a Footlocker” concept and even improved upon it a great deal in the process. A whole new generation of youngsters are now becoming familiar with the old fashioned fun of the Classic GI Footlocker and all the neat (now 3D) troops, real Dog Tag, Combat Tactics Sheets and Battle Games inside! The successful return of the Footlocker Set occurred so rapidly that we were initially very hopeful that our reissue of the original line of Helen of Toy War Game Sets would soon follow. However, despite months of intense efforts aimed at finding feasible ways to bring these games back at reasonable prices, we have not been able to get past the prototype stages with any of the War Games. This problem is mainly due to the fact that we simply could not locate any reliable and/or affordable suppliers of appropriate game parts and figures. When we found parts and/or figures that would allow us to bring the games back affordably, the quality was so horrible or the supplies so limited that we could not move forward. When we found figures that had the right quality and/or reliable long-term supplies available, the price would skyrocket so high that we couldn’t bring the games to market within our targeted retail price range. We finally got to the point where we looked into making our own molds in Asia from recasts of the original Helen of Toy parts and figures (which were most often made with GIANT brand figure molds in the old days.) But even this option was so cost-prohibitive that we could not even begin the process of getting these games to the retail stage without losing our entire target market in the process. Projected retail prices after making our own molds would make the games available to only a tiny, exclusive, (and very financially well off) percentage of our war game fans - and this simply was NOT our mission. Helen was never meant to be exclusive. She was meant to be accessible to all who loved her - just like the old days when, for a truly affordable price, most kids could hope to actually buy and enjoy those products for years. Wide reaching affordability was an essential goal in our plan for the New Helen of Toy Company. We are very gratified that with great planning/research, mostly-American made parts/supplies readily available, and some plain old good luck, we were able to reach that goal with the Footlocker Set in short order. But the War Game Sets were just not so lucky. At this point, we have regretfully decided that the only option left is to put our War Game development on hold indefinitely and focus all our business efforts on the products we can actually bring to market for a feasible retail price. Our Classic Footlocker Toy Soldier Sets and our new Army Men Ammo Can Sets - which have proven to be both affordable/available and very popular with our customers - will become our primary products for the foreseeable future. Our web site will soon be updated to reflect this change. Back to Table of Contents -- Helen of Toy Newsletter # 5 Back to Helen of Toy List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Helen of Toy. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com