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How does SQUARE ENIX determine what character merchandise to make?

What do these characters have in common?:

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Aside from being recognizable popular FF characters, they along with many others have little to no merchandise devoted to them.
Yes, some do get a small figure or keychain made, but where are the PAKs, statues, and busts devoted to SE’s huge list of popular Final Fantasy characters?

Why is this? They tend to release multiple figures and merchandise of certain characters:
(not my picture. and yes there are duplicate products,but you get the idea)

Of course this is because of popularity of certain characters and most likely promotion for game releases. But let’s take Cloud for instance. They recently released another PAK Cloud.
Of course he’s popular, but this Cloud is the Remake version. Instead of say, make a PAK for Ashe for The Zodiac Age, they decided to make another Cloud to promote a remake that is very far from releasing.

Speaking of XII, another example is Fran from FFXII. Aside from a very small toy and keychain, it wasn’t until recently that SE released a figure for her:
Never part of the original Play Arts set either. It’s a bunny girl in a metal bikini. It sounds like something they would release multiple figures of by now. The Judge on the other hand has been made into multiple figures and statues.
Even a mini bust version of him will come (along with the other judges) with the pricey special edition of the remaster. But they’ve made the judge several times because he looks cool and is the logo. I bet no one even remembers his real name. There hasn’t even been a Basch figure.
Unless you count this:
I find it hard to believe that making more Gabranth
not his real name
is better than making at least one Terra with her magitek armor.

Before SE started to solely making their merchandise, other companies made figures for them. During that time you would not only see various types of merchandise, such as big figures for Final Fantasy monsters but other characters would get figures made as well. These are the only big figures made of Lulu and Kimahri and they were made by Kotobukiya:
When the HD Remaster of X came out it was just Tidus and Yuna PAKs. That’s it.

Stepping away from FF for a minute, we go to another popular brand: Kingdom Hearts.

That brand has been more Soras than anything else, if we only count figures made by SE. Now, SE will release this:
A figure that was never made during the release of the original Birth by Sleep despite them making three figures for Crisis Core. In this case though it could be even more tricky to release figures due to Disney.

So for those of you that like SE characters and like to collect figures/merchandise/ etc.(and anyone else that might know) I ask again: How does SE determine what character merchandise to make? Sometimes it feels like there's a logic to it and sometimes it feels like they say "screw it another Cloud".

Sure I like Cloud, but I'm disappointed that many of their characters are not represented in their merchandise.

Discuss
 
I imagine they design a lot of characters with merchandise in mind like those dumb necklaces.
I imagine they can tell by the importance of the characters, maybe character polls.
Though they did make a figure for Hope which I saw today so maybe they miscalculate sometimes
I also have no idea who that first guy is, lol
 

raven777

Member
Aqua getting her own PAK figure now isn't a too big of a surprise since she recently got her own game released.
The rest are also pretty straightforward with the character popularity and the game releases.

FFXII is just overall very unpopular FF in general in Japan and the characters are as well, so it's no surprise that it doesn't get as many figures. They did release new PAK figures like Gabranth (who is one of the most popular I think) along with Balthier and Fran. Ashe is probably the only one that is a bit of a surprise not making it yet... but I guess it's probably the next down the line in terms of if they do any more FFXII PAKs.
 
Though they did make a figure for Hope which I saw today so maybe they miscalculate sometimes
Well he was made along with the other XIII cast when XIII released, so popular or not it madesense at the time.

I also have no idea who that first guy is, lol
Hah. That's Bartz as others have said from FFV. He usually looks like this:
and is a popular character in Japan apparently.
 
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