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All I can see is someone cosplaying as a female Magneto. Just throw a cape and helmet on her and have some of those metal do-dads floating around and we've got ourselves a deviantart image that can get about 1000 hits an hour.
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Feb 5, 2016 09:11
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Jonny 290 posted:how the gently caress is dairy queen still rolling all of their food tastes like it was fried in 10w40 I heard someone who ran a DQ one time say that the company no longer allowed new dessert-only franchises. You had to be a DQ Brazier-styled store. I believe they said the only reason they were allowed to run their store as a frozen only for so long was that they were grandfathered in before the policy changed. Granted, that was years ago, though, and the policies might have since changed. Slaughterhouse-Ive posted:I think records are a little different than magazines though. If you collect records you're just a sperg lord. If you collect magazines you're a hoarder You think you're going to be on the toilet for a while and want something to pass the time and not bring your tablet or phone with you, a magazine is a viable alternative: Once you're done with it, you just throw it out and it doesn't even matter if you got urine or feces on it or not.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:52
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TacticalUrbanHomo posted:Oh, last month I saw a blockbuster. Are you sure that wasn't Blockbuster Pizza? They just went with that name because they moved into the same location and they only needed to replace the lighted letters from VIDEO to now say PIZZA. (It might have also been a Blockbuster Beers, Blockbuster Vapes, or Blockbuster Apple)
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Feb 11, 2016 13:58
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I don't know if it's a very common thing. I think I've seen a few businesses that have taken pre-existing business signs and names that were once located where they're setting up a totally different business and just added an extra word, is all. Pretty sure I've seen some former video store storefronts converted to a Blockbuster _______ and Hollywood _______. A former A&W store that someone would change to be a A&M's. Stuff like that.Houle posted:I feel, unfortunately; Netflix is one of them. All these cable packages are putting out their own mimic but with newer content. Netflix model probably will be known as a pioneer as network studios splinter the whole market until you are basically paying the television equivalent to see your favourite shows and movies by having to subscribe to every major studio separately as they reside that Netflix makes a lot of money and if they just host their own content they can charge and release what they want while promoting new shows and their television and phone packages. Yeah, I can sort of see this, too. I have to admit that I really find it hard to care about a lot of Netflix programming at all, too. About 6-7 years ago, it was amazing to have streaming content at all, but lately I'm sort of finding there being such a large selection of stuff I don't want to watch and other options like Hulu and Amazon seem that much better.
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Feb 11, 2016 15:38
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I should just have an obscene throw-away, but authentic, e-mail for stores that ask for my email address.
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Feb 13, 2016 12:35
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Sheep-Goats posted:I use billgates@cum.fart for pushy clothing websites but in person I'm not spergy enough to do that to some poor cashier. I'm plenty spergy enough, but I just lack the will and courage.
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Feb 13, 2016 12:40
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I have to admit, I don't use Yahoo for searching because Google gives me better results, but their overall 'everything else' is pretty good for reading random articles and current events and horrible user comments to innocent stories.
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Feb 16, 2016 08:35
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Whatever happened to Hannspree? At one time I though they were a pretty popular monitor maker, i have one of their TVs I like well enough, but they used to be a brand I saw in various office stores and online outlets almost all the time. Now I don't really see anything of them in the US market.
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Mar 5, 2016 22:33
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I do sort of wonder if the rise of the cheap Chinese scooter and three-wheel cycles have affected the middle-age/older Harley crowd? Dumb thought, but bear with me: You can go grab a scooter that's anywhere from $500-$2000, from 49cc-500cc, and it's a twist and go. You can buy them from several places, too, and not just Harley dealers. Compared to getting a full-on motorcycle, they're cheap enough for them to be considered almost disposable as a temp bike for a season or so to give you a little experience, a chance to figure out if you REALLY want to drop $10-30K on a 'real' bike, get a chance to figure out what you want in a bike, etc. But say you go the scooter route: Maybe that gets rid of that itch. If you're only riding that $1500 scooter around 2 weeks a year, were you really going to ride that $15K Harley around any more? Further, I see a lot of older people who are more interested in things like the Spyders, and I sort of get why: They might appear safer, they seem more stable, and maybe even a bit sportier and sleeker than a traditional Harley style bike which might be more appealing to a later Baby Boomer/Early Gen X crowd.
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Mar 7, 2016 06:05
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GameCrazy was a separate chain from EB/Gamestop, if I recall correctly. Honestly, I sort of preferred Gamecrazy. At least Gamecrazy had an in-store disc-buffer so you weren't buying games that were scratched to hell, and I think they were doing retro games a few years before they closed. I sort of wonder if Gamestop is uniquely positioned to just reinvent themselves as a major game RENTAL store for at least a few years should digital distribution take over to a large extent and they're stuck. Since the gradual death of the traditional video store chain, game rentals seem to have taken a hit in my region and I think that's shifted focus to Gamestop and others that deal in preowned. They already have the inventory of games, and if they succeed in buying enough retro games, they could maybe change the economy of the current retro game market. Gamestop stops their traditional game sales/trading format and shifts to a monthly rental plans ala Gamefly, except offering B&M locations in addition to a mail rental system. Pay a flat fee every month get 'unlimited' game rentals.
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Mar 9, 2016 17:24
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Sperglord Firecock posted:In other chains that are going down the drain, Family Video I sort of thought Family Video was diversifying itself pretty well, though, to cope with the diminishing home rental market. wiki posted:In addition to the brick and mortar store front, Family Video has branched off into other markets such as real estate, 24-hour fitness centers, and cable television.[6] The company also sells new and previously used items online.[7] Family Video expanded into the Canadian market in 2012.[8]
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Apr 5, 2016 10:12
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I sort of think shipping has gotten a bit worse on items in the last few years. A few years back, ship-to-store and home delivery used to be pretty quick even with the basic options. I ordered something from Wal-mart of all places in the late afternoon on a Wednesday and got it less than 24 hours later on my doorstep. Meanwhile, I've ordered stuff from Amazon lately that has taken them 3-4 days before they've even shipped it out.
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Apr 6, 2016 17:29
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KiteAuraan posted:So all I get from this is that American's are fatties who don't buy none of that thar sportin' faggotry. I just don't know if the sporting goods superstore is a good model in the US unless they sell a ton of guns.
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May 4, 2016 06:01
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There was also a large Gen Xers population that openly disliked Blockbuster for a long time, too, after the mid-90s or so. Blockbuster was quite often viewed with a lot of contempt because they were big corporate video store that didn't care NC-17 versions of films (even though they did get around this sometimes with 'unrated' releases) and they weren't the same sort of curated selection of a college town indie video store, they were too slow to upgrade their stock to DVD, they were monsters for dumping (literally) their VHS collections when they finally did because they needed the room for all the new DVD stock they were rebuying and didn't want other local stores to buy up their VHS stock.
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Jun 27, 2016 07:19
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For a while didn't Target and Toys R Us run their online stores through Amazon instead of trying to set up their own independent online stores?
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Aug 31, 2016 23:08
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Sort of nostalgic now for how big a deal the Sears, JC Penney, Service Merchandise and Radio Shack catalogs used to be. I remember how they were such a big deal they used to sell them at the stores, but you'd get something like a coupon for a discount about equal to the price of the catalog.
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Sep 4, 2016 05:48
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two forty posted:But there's nothing to replace it with since no one makes a truck that isn't bloated and full of electronic poo poo so I guess that explains the demand, and why she keeps it. This is something I've wondered about to with some cars in a certain window of time: They're just new enough to have a lot of nice little perks and benefits, they don't stand out, but they're still old, popular and generic enough where parts, repairs and upkeep are manageable.
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Sep 16, 2016 19:17
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What companies still exist, but more or less as a shell of their former selves or in just name only? I saw some Altec Lansing stuff in a store recently and remembered that I thought they used to be a fairly big, respectable PC audio brand about 15 years ago, but looking at their wiki it seems like they've changed hands a few times and been sold to various companies for relatively little money.
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Sep 16, 2016 19:46
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canyoneer posted:Warner Brothers Stores. A chain of stores devoted to a cast of cartoon characters that were last culturally relevant in the 1960's that enjoyed a recent, short-lived surge in popularity Disney Stores I thought similarly saw a boom, then bust, about 15 and 10 years ago.** But with the WB stores, I thought part of the story was that they were shuttered in part due to the AOL/Time-Warner merger of the late 90s/early 00s. Something about how the combined assets of both companies put them in a position where they ended up just dumping that division of the company for some specific reason. All in all though, regardless of the reason, had the WB studio stores survived another few years they probably could have taken advantage of some of the various IP stuff connected to WB and Turner, like Matrix around the time of the sequels, LOTR, Harry Potter stuff, the Cartoon Network and Adult Swim thing might have had them get some anime and AS related stuff on their shelves when they were really new and popular. Within another few years they probably would have been able to have some Batman stuff with the revival of interest with the Nolan films. **edit: Sort of, I guess. The store chain was handled by "Children's Place" and wiki states that: "Between 2004 and 2007, the company owned and operated 335 Disney Stores through a subsidiary Hoop Holdings/Hoop Retail Stores LLC. In June 2007, the company began negotiations to sell the rights back to The Walt Disney Company. On March 26, 2008, Hoop Holdings/Hoop Retail Stores LLC and related subsidiaries of TCP that operated Disney Store retail locations filed for bankruptcy.[5] On May 1, 2008, 231 Disney Stores in North America once again became the property of Disney, operating under the Disney Consumer Products arm.[6]" So, not quite that they all shuttered, but it looks like they lost about 1/3 of their locations. JediTalentAgent has a new favorite as of 06:40 on Sep 20, 2016 |
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Sep 20, 2016 06:36
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I know Disney is probably far more protective of their IPs than WB when it comes to their animated characters, but I never quite saw anywhere near the sort of airbrushed Mickey and Donald stuff that I see of the Bugs, Taz, Tweety, etc. I wonder if it part because the Disney characters are mostly sort of blank slates (outside Donald, Scrooge and Goofy) that only exist to fill roles in a story, while the WB characters have really definable personalities and attitudes no matter the role they play.
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Sep 20, 2016 07:33
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I think even today Looney Tunes stuff will have an audience with kids if only because they're relatively short bursts of entertainment that don't require a commitment of hours for a single story. Dragon Ball Z should have followed the same logic of Goku and Vegeta going: Saiyan Season! SUPER Saiyan SEASON! SUPER SAIYAN 2 SEASON! SUPER SAIYAN 3 SEASON!!! FREIZA SEASON!
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Sep 20, 2016 16:59
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Barudak posted:Sony Pictures is in trouble, but the rest seem to be doing ok as far as I know. Theres no way Suicide Squad was a failure when it made more than the studios projection and the studio gave the director a next big budget project and are in talks to make another Suicide Squad. As is ever the adage in Hollywood, if you lost money on the first one why would you make a sequel; see the harry potter films where WB tried to claim they all lost money despite having made 8 of them. There was another thing I was reading about the success of movies with different production companies would result in films that were very successful losing money or not making as much as it seemed just due to contracts with producers and actors. I think one example was given that a studio would actually see almost as much or MORE money from a film making $100M at the box office as they would if it made $150-200M because of the contract with the producers and actors. I posted this in a Suicide Squad thread, of all things, a while back: http://www.hollywood.com/general/star-salariesthe-backend-deal-57162216/ But here's a quote from the link: quote:Travolta took a dive on this year’s “Battlefield Earth.” He lowered his usual fee ($20 million) and did the film for $10 million. He was to get a $15 million bonus if domestic gross passed $55 million (sorry, John.) And if it was to be a big hit, his back-end would have been 50% of the gross (really sorry, John) So, essentially, if the movie made $54M the studio/production company would make more than if it made just $1M more? By further extension, the 50% of the gross going to Travolta doesn't seem to list a specific amount. I'm assuming $100M is a good bet, so by that logic studio/production company/whoever might have stood to make more on the film if it makes $1 less than that threshold. Keeping in mind, that's gross, right? So that would/should that be literal box office earnings BEFORE figuring in expenses and so on?
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Apr 18, 2017 04:19
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Azathoth posted:I have an aunt who loves garage sales and is somehow kept informed when all the ritzy suburbs have theirs, so she goes up there and loads up whenever someone has a kid. More than half the stuff she buys still has the tags on it because people with more money than sense don't realize just how quickly babies grow. May not be fully on the parents, though. I think another thing is that I know a lot of non-parents who will buy 'practical' gifts for babies/children as birthday and holiday gifts, too, for better or worse, which most times turns out to be clothes. So you get people who will gift a bunch of clothes to other people's kids that the parents are sort of stuck with and eventually end up donating or selling or throwing out. You don't know what toys the kids have, you don't know what is acceptable, but no one's going to fault you for a pair of shoes, a shirt or a jacket you think would be great for them. Maybe it's too small by the time they get it, maybe it's too big and by the time they grow into it it's been forgotten, maybe it's something the parents really don't want to put their kid in.
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May 6, 2017 07:43
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SHY NUDIST GRRL posted:At the good will I work at a supervisor, who I think is a few years younger than me, was agonizing over throwing out VHS of good movies. And I was talking about how that format has been dead for two decades the movies still exist who gives a poo poo. Apparently he owns a VHS player because he likes owning a physical copy of things. I hadn't really considered it. I get really nostalgic for old media (games, VHS, DVD, etc.) if see it in a resale shop AND it still has labeling on it that it used to be a video store copy from a local, long-closed, video store. More so if I can deduce it was actually something I rented at some point years ago. I have mixed feelings about collectors of things stripping those off because they almost feel like they add some personality to an otherwise sort of mass-produced item.
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May 7, 2017 08:51
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CopywrightMMXI posted:On the subject of pizza, my local Papa Murphys has a sign on the door saying it's closed until further notice and they only opened last year. Their business model never really made sense to me. It doesn't help that it's about 50 metres from a Sobeys, where you can get a pre-made pizza for 1/2 the price. A nearby Papa Murphy's I think similarly opened and then after about a year had a change in management/ownership that I think saw them closing down for a short period while that change happened. I'm not sure if they were a franchise store or what, though. I don't know how that plays out with a franchise store, either. I'm sure every single chain that let's people buy a franchise has different rules in place in regards to operations that sort of determine at what point the main company will step in to fix issues that require a change in management, at what point they're going to tell a franchise owner they're done running the franchise, etc.
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Aug 10, 2017 10:30
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I sort of wondered for a while if Sears could have rebranded itself as a Home Depot/Lowe's style home improvement superstore, plus an auto department. It'd be in keeping with some of their stuff, but they could ditch jewelry, most electronics, clothing, home goods, etc. Focus on the home improvement/construction side of things, it sort of takes them out of competition with Amazon and Walmart. I guess a question might be if cutting out several departments that didn't matter in that model would have given them the floor space or the room to add on for larger lumber, plumbing, masonry, etc. materials.
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Aug 11, 2017 04:10
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A Pinball Wizard posted:I found a copy of burning crusade for $1 at a Walmart a few months ago, but when I tried to buy it they said the UPC wasn't in the system anymore so I couldn't. Several months ago when Wal-Mart was doing their whole clearance thing they had a lot of PC software for like $1-20 each for everything from PC games, to AV Protection, to desktop publishing, to video editing software. I tried to buy a few things that interested me but the transaction would not go through because the 'key activation' process at the register would not work for ANY of them so the clerk told me I couldn't buy them and put them back behind the counter. Amusingly enough, they managed to sell me something around the same time that had a similar problem and they called up a manager to override when that step was going on. I got charged for the product, sat on it a few weeks and then when I read the receipt when I opened it I noted that the activation didn't seem to occur. I don't think I even bothered to try installing it because I figured I'd be be getting a "This is not a valid key" from the install.
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Aug 31, 2017 20:22
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The mainstream Lego craze seems to be more a recent thing. While they were popular enough toys in the 80s/90s, I think with the Lego Batman and Star Wars games and toys about 12 years ago their popularity started to skyrocket with the then-growing geek-chic culture craze that was starting to take root. But they've started to become more reliant on licensed IPs for their sets, too, which can't be good when they have to spend a lot of time trying to come up with sets for movies/etc. without knowing how popular they're going to end up being, either. A film can make a $1B, but that doesn't mean that the toys are going to sell all that well. Dimensions came out during a time when the market was sort of getting saturated with everything from the continuing hype of amiibo, the long-running Skylanders and Star Wars Disney Infinity to a revival of plastic instrument games vying for shelf space and attention, so I don't think it caught on the way it would have a year or so earlier It also probably can't be good for Lego with the first two major expansion/story sets for the Lego Dimensions game were for films that I don't think really excited the game and movie audiences, either: Ghostbusters 2016 and Fantastic Beasts.
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Sep 13, 2017 02:53
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I'm sort of surprised with all the retro-inspired sets they put out, they never did a Stargate SG-1 set for Dimensions. Granted, it's not got the pop culture nostalgia of Goonies, GB or Gremlins, but the series ran for years and is still on in syndication. (There is a very cheap looking non-Lego Stargate building block set, though.)
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Sep 13, 2017 03:35
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Zebulon posted:M-Tron, Ice Planet, and Blacktron were the poo poo. So was Aquazone and Space Police. I actually lost a lot of my interest in LEGO when they went to licensed sets, particularly when their space lines took a back seat to the Star Wars licensed ones. A rumor I heard years ago that Micro Machines started to phase out their other space/sci-fi related lines of toys in the late 90s similarly in promotion of the SW license.
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Sep 14, 2017 19:00
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Gann Jerrod posted:As far as I know, Moviepass had three methods for profitability. I posted this a while back in another thread, but I'll repost here with some added thoughts and edits: MoviePass maybe needed to be set up like a better Netflix/Fandango type system to succeed? I never got a chance to use it, but it seemed too complicated. Maybe if instead they did a prepay $25/35/$45 a month and they'd work out deals with theaters in advance for 3/6/10 'free' shows a month by logging in with your account and they'd do all the behind the scenes ticket 'sales' through that system with the theaters directly at that moment. No being X-meters from the theater, show your phone, have money deposited to your account, do X-Y-Z, etc. You show your ID and they swipe your MoviePass card and it authenticates you at the door. Now, none of this is revolutionary, but it's a relatively maintainable price point with an understandable sliding scale. It's a small enough operation to attract movie fans, it's got a clear dollar value assigned that maybe helps them sell it to theaters and audiences. Even if they have to pretty much give theaters 100% of the average ticket per plan. After we get people into this, we maybe expand with a: "Okay, you can preorder concessions, too. For an extra $50 a month, when you attend shows on your MP plan you can get a large drink and popcorn on each visit when you swipe your MP card at the concessions counter that same day." People on the 3 a month plan aren't getting a good deal out of that, obviously, probably just coming close to normal concession prices. But the upper two tiers would probably be much better deals, knocking your out of pocket concession costs down to potentially about $5-9 per film, making people more interested in upgrading to the more expensive plans to get the most benefits and bang out of their movie going. Theaters still get most/all of the money, but MP maybe makes up some of those loses with the user data and ad revenue on their site, because you're going to possibly get millions of views and transactions a week, and that will draw advertisers. Maybe down the road, further expansions: MoviePass tossing streaming rental service: "Well, for an extra $20 a month, whatever movies you've used MoviePass to see in theaters, we'll let you have a 'free' 24 hour streaming rental of that movie during the first month of digital release for qualified films, even extended cuts."
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Aug 9, 2018 18:56
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There's going to be scene like It's a Wonderful Life "AMC will buy up all your shares of Moviepass for 50cents on the dollar!" (AMC pulls out a couple of wrinkled twenties)
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Aug 14, 2018 23:56
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