Every year
around Christmas store advertising picks up. Christmas
is the busiest time for in the world or retail. Most
stores go from being in the red (negative) to being
black (positive) on the day after Thanksgiving. So I
concentrated my search to November and December –
for now.
There are store ads/sales for Jem dolls all year long,
but other then the Christmas time most store flyers
do not include toys. It’s a slow and long process
to locate these ads, so I’ll slowly be adding
other months for 1986, 1987, and 1988 years.
I included Barbie and the Rocker ads too; so you can
see how close in price and how many sales there were
for both Jem and Barbie. You will notice that 1986 had
a lot more advertising for Jem then 1987. One reason
for that is because the manufactures pay a percentage
for the space giving to each toy in the flyers –
the manufactures give the retail stores co-op dollars.
It’s really hard to say if all the stores stopped
pushing Jem or if Hasbro stopped paying co-op dollars
to advertise. Either way there was very little advertising
for Jem, and closer to Christmas 1987 there was none.
At the best time of year to make sales, Jem was abandoned
by Hasbro and the retail stores. I have to assume this
is because Hasbro was already thinking about canceling
the Jem line. But there may have been less advertising
for Jem in 1987, if Hasbro or the stores saw the advertising
for 1986 as ineffective.
You will notice that Toys R Us, Children’s Palace,
and many other stores are not included, that is because
there were not advertising in the local paper. I will
have to take my research on the road, to find ads for
stores that were not advertise in the local paper. I
have included the dates of the sale, the price, and
item names (include odd names and misspellings.)
1986
Week of
Nov.
2
Nov.
9
Nov. 16
Nov.
23
Nov.
30
Dec.
7
Dec. 14
Dec.
21
Dec.
28
Black & Co.
11/13-??/??
11.99 Jem Doll, 10.99 Holograms, 19.99
Back Stage Case
Bergner's
12/7-??/??
8.99
(-1.00 Rebate)
Barbie and the Rockers, 19.99 (-2.50 Rebate)
Cafe
Hills
11/30-12/7
8.97
(-1.00 Rebate)
Barbie and the Rockers, 24.87
(-2.50 Rebate)
Cafe, 58.28
(-5.00 Rebate)
Van
