Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-34275138-20180523181530/@comment-31004482-20180524224250

Ah, and thus some interesting new light has been shed. Thank you Makucha888!

TLDR: I'm not surprised that Just Play lost the license considering how they've mismanaged the line since pretty much the beginning, but I'm hopeful that season 3 will usher in a new line of merch that will (hopefully) be produced by a more competent company. If we express enough interest to the people directly involved with TLG itself, maybe we can even convince them to focus more on merchandise for the fan-favorite characters we so desperately want.

Long Rambly Rant: Somehow, I'm not too surprised to hear that Just Play lost the license. They never could seem to get their act together with the Blind Bags; i.e. never releasing some figures in the sets that they were supposed to have debuted in, releasing old stock TLK figures in the place of the new TLG design advertised (as with Timon's first run), their many other model inconsistencies, and continually delaying releases of certain figures or entire sets for MONTHS at a time. Their distribution overall was also terrible, with some merchandise never even releasing in the US. I had to go to eBay to purchase my Makuu/Beshte, ReiRei/Bunga, Jasiri/Kion, and Pride Lands and Outlands sets--from GERMANY. It was also a painful process to even find Lion Guard merch from Just Play at most of my local retail, with distribution ranging from very slim (Wal-Mart) to better, but still very selective (Target / Toys R Us). At first I blamed my local retail chains for just not ordering enough stock/variety, but in hindsight it now seems that maybe Just Play just didn't distribute their merchandise very well at all. Maybe they were trying to be strategic by having store/region exclusives, but if so, it was a poor strategy. I have no doubt that if the Jasiri/Kion set had been released in the US it would have sold like crazy, and even the Makuu and ReiRei sets might have sold reasonably well (as such, the only unique "villain" characters we got aside from Janja were Mzingo and Ushari, and Cheezi in the Blind Bag series).

Maybe all of this led up to Disney deciding to pull the license from Just Play? At least from where I'm standing, it seems that a general mismanagement of pretty much the entire line probably cost Disney a lot of potential revenue. Then again, TLG stuff has been drying up even within the Disney Store itself. I know that it's common practice for Disney Stores to rotate their lines based on what's the most current/popular at the time, which is fair enough, but they seriously missed the boat on releasing a Jasiri plush at the very least. But who knows? Maybe when season 3 kicks off, we'll see a resurgence of good TLG merchandise--and hopefully done by a company that can manage the license a lot better than Just Play did. Maybe we'll even get our beloved Outlanders/Army of Scar, and proper Zira, Nuka and Vitani figures/plushes. The best we can do is show our support for the show, and express interest in the merchandise we want to those involved with TLG themselves--through the official Twitter or by whatever other means we have of communicating with them.