There’s an interesting article up on Playthings.com, “Back in the Fight,” which provides a fairly in-depth look at the state of the action figure industry. I’ll write up something longer about it later, but for now, I highly recommend you check it out. Michael Crawford contributes some quotes to the piece.

Here’s one eyebrow-raising tidbit that surprised me–and I’ll admit I appear to have been flat-out wrong on this issue; such are the results of paying too much attention to one part of the elephant (though I think the industry’s reluctance to release these numbers deserves a bit of the blame):

NPD’s Frazier pegs online accounts for about 4 percent dollar sales in the action figure/accessories supercategory versus 70 percent at mass/discount and 20 percent at toy stores.