TakeAway: Subject to the product life cycle, popular high growth products will eventually decline into obsolescence unless they are regenerated.
Baseball cards were following this pattern until Attax breathed fresh life into the age-old favorite.
Attax seized a new favorite pastime – fantasy baseball – adapted it for baseball cards, and recaptured the hearts of America’s youth.
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Excerpted from WSJ, “Topps Takes Trading-Card Game, Runs With It,” By Gregory Zuckerman, March 23, 2010
Attax, a sports-card game created by Topps, combines a once-popular kids’ pastime—collecting baseball and other sports cards—with a present-day “fantasy” games twist. Kids can build teams and compete against each other.
Since their 2007 launch, Attax cards, have sold over 100 million packs and now account for about 25% of revenue and profits for Topps …
Prior to the launch of Attax, Topps performance had been slipping … as some kids shifted to videogames and other diversions. Many adult collectors also moved on. When the economic downturn hit … there was worry that sales could fall as weekly allowances shriveled.
But … a 26-year-old Topps employee was tinkering with a revamped sports card, one that aimed to capitalize on the success of fantasy sports games enjoyed by many adults … The Attax game began with soccer in the U.K.; a baseball set is timed for opening day … they were an instant hit …
Last year, Topps tested its baseball cards in the New York market. By the end of the summer, the cards … had sold out of most stores, sending some parents and children on desperate searches.
To introduce the game, Topps set up demonstrations at minor-league stadiums and Little League parks in the New York area, a tactic it plans to expand this summer …
Like traditional baseball cards, the Attax line features glossy player pictures. But rather than list dozens of statistics on the back, the new baseball cards have just three ratings for each player’s ability at pitching and batting.
In games, one player puts out a pitcher, face up, and another a batter, face down. The first player then decides which of several pitches to throw. If the rating for that pitch bests the batter’s rating for those types of pitches a strikeout results; if not, it’s a home run for the player with the batter card …
Fads come and go, of course, especially among fickle youth. And some children call the baseball Attax cards too simple, because each at-bat can result in just two outcomes, a home run or an out. That would make the excitement harder to sustain …
For now, though, interest seems to be building …
“It’s been a monster,” says store manager of a store called Attack of the Baseball Cards … “It’s given kids a reason to collect cards again.”
In recent years, the store manager resorted to running seminars to teach kids the basics about baseball cards, such as how to flip and collect them, trying to revive interest. Now he expects to sell as many as 200 packs of the new cards a week, up from 100 last summer …
Edit by TJS
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Full Article
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704534904575132144292424072.html
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The Homa Files 