Company Profile - Bandai 40th Anniversary

Bandai - celebrating a legacy

Bandai UK celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, marking four decades of innovation, reinvention, and evolution with a raft of product launches and activities that reflect the company’s roots – and where it’s headed. Toy World’s John Baulch and Rachael Simpson- Jones paid a visit to the Bandai UK team at its Richmond office to find out more.

Left to right, Kirsty Mackenzie, Fredrick Wolff & Nic Aldridgs

Bandai UK turns 40 on 29th April, having been officially incorporated in 1982. The company’s original director, Michael Loveland, played a pivotal role in the formation of the UK operation four decades ago. Tasked by the Japanese parent company, founded in the 1950s, to set up a UK subsidiary, Michael and his brother Nigel successfully established the operation with its first UK office in Guildford. Michael went on to become Bandai’s European marketing director, was part of the team that first brought Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the UK and European markets, and was also instrumental in Bandai becoming the original distributor of the Nintendo range of electronic and video games. Sadly, Michael didn’t get to see his company reach its 40th anniversary milestone - he passed away in May 2021 - but his legacy lives on in the UK team.

The Bandai UK operation has much to celebrate. The 40th anniversary of Bandai UK coincides neatly with a number of other 40th celebrations: Gundam, one of Bandai’s biggest own-brands, celebrated its 40th anniversary recently, as did Pac-Man, and two members of the UK team (who will remain anonymous) also celebrated their 40th birthdays at the beginning of March.

The landmark comes only a few years after the loss of Saban’s Power Rangers from Bandai’s portfolio, a brand with which the company had enjoyed a long and prosperous master toy relationship for some 25 years. At its height, around 80% of the business was based upon Power Rangers. That’s a heck of a lot of eggs to have in one basket, and the team acknowledges that since the licence moved to Hasbro, Bandai has had to reinvent what it does and rediscover what it is. That its anniversary should fall at a time of such strong growth, and impressive performance across its entire portfolio, is testament to how successfully the company has done both.

“Rather than just being a Boys’ toy company, Bandai is now a multi-category toy company with presence in Girls’, Boys’, Collectibles, Pre-School and Science: we’ve expanded further, spread our focus and balanced things out across the categories - and we’re seeing that approach pay off,” says Nic Aldridge, Bandai UK’s managing director. “In February, we were the No.15 toy company according to NPD, which is a great achievement so soon after we said goodbye to Power Rangers in 2019.”

Following such a ‘titanic shift’, as Nic describes it, the reinvention of Bandai began by homing in on two things: the areas in which the company had always been strong, and the rough diamonds. The business largely sits upon four pillars – Toys (Bandai’s Red Label), Collector (Blue Label), Third Party Distribution and Own Brands – and Nic was keen to nurture each one. Banpresto, one of its core Collector brands, was one of the aforementioned rough diamonds, and with a little polish is now achieving a monthly sales value that is equal to its annual turnover from four years ago.

Nic’s contacts in the industry were leveraged to reinvigorate European distribution deals, and the company’s own-brand Tamagotchi was successfully relaunched in July 2019, racking up over 200k unit sales in 2021. The Tamagotchi range has now grown to include the Original, the newly launched Pix and a range of licensed versions. Tamagotchi has also, in a roundabout way, reinvigorated consumer appetite for other Japanese brands including Digimon, which was soft-launched a couple of years ago and sold over 30k units in 2021 through Bandai’s Collector channel retailers alone.

The growth of Tamagotchi has led to other exciting licensing collaborations which are in the pipeline for the months ahead. We’re sworn to secrecy on some of them, but we can mention classics such as Star Wars as well as Demon Slayer, a Netflix anime property the Collector community is particularly keyed up about.

Shortly after coming in as UK MD, Nic also brought in Sea Monkeys and National Geographic - brands he admits may have had a few at Bandai scratching their heads – but which have proved to be steady, consistent sellers, year after year: Sea Monkeys sells 100k+ units a year and counting. This stability paid dividends when Covid-19 struck, causing parents and caregivers to seek out toys that are educational and offer plenty of play value for bored, locked-down kids. A good toy, as Nic says, will always be a good toy – and good toys sell, year after year.

Of course, if we’re talking brands, then CoComelon must stand out as the current star of Bandai’s portfolio. The company was named European distributor for the Jazwares range based on the smash hit pre-school property in June 2020, and though the team expected big things, it’s fair to say the CoComelon range’s performance has surpassed even the loftiest expectations “Watching it rise, we thought CoComelon had the potential to be a top performing Pre-School property, and luckily it has done just that and is well set in terms of longevity,” says Nic. “No one could have predicted the demand we saw in our launch year, just as they couldn’t have predicted the supply chains issues that subsequently arose. Like so many others, we just didn’t have the inventory the demand called for. We’re in a much better position stock-wise for this year, though.”

The pandemic has also helped boost Bandai’s anime properties. Netflix now offers over 200 anime series and films, including global IP Dragon Ball, which has been driven hard across VOD, TV, toys and more. Anime isn’t niche anymore. It’s not just for grown-ups, or that particular group of kids at school. As an entertainment group, Bandai aims to immerse itself in the entire lifecycle of properties such as Dragon Ball, Naruto and My Hero Academia by offering product – toys, collectors’ items, apps, video games and more - across all the age ranges, by extension retaining consumers for much, much longer.

The Collector market is a topic Nic has spoken about with Toy World before, and one he remains keen to highlight. (First, some housekeeping: at Bandai, collectibles and collectibles are two different things. The small sub-£10 toys most readers would call collectibles fall under the company’s Red Label division, while the bigger and more expensive collectibles - think Banpresto and mid- to highend McFarlane - fall under Blue Label. It’s the latter we’re discussing here, and what Nic is referring to when he uses the term ‘Collector’. Right, onwards.) As understood and appreciated by Bandai’s more specialist Collector channel retail partners, a good presence in this space guarantees repeat visits and purchases from dedicated fans always on the lookout for the latest launch. These fans become a local community providing guaranteed repeated monthly footfall, and the shops they visit become hubs where consumers know they’ll be able to find exactly what they’re after – and this should be what toy retailing is all about. Nic’s biased, of course, but he firmly believes that traditional toy stores should be active in the Collector space, even if just in a modest way.

However, Nic admits that many toy shop owners still aren’t approaching the Collector market as they arguably should be, and Bandai is trying to rectify this by assisting those who want a slice of the action, but just don’t know how to get it. Toy Fair 2022 saw the team invest a lot of time and energy in its stand’s Collector area, explaining to retailers how its brands and properties can be made to work for them. Team trips to various Forbidden Planet stores and other specialist kidult/collector retailers are all part and parcel of the job. Immersed in two levels of floor-toceiling collectibles, toys, merchandise, comic books and more, visitors get a proper sense of just how big this market is, and Bandai wants to help more retailers tap into it. The team is also building out Bandai’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, so they provide more of a home to Collectors seeking updates and a place to share their love of their favourite properties. Away from the Blue Label side of things, it’s also going to be a big year for toys. Miraculous continues to dazzle. The aspirational superhero property, which is aimed at a slightly older audience than other fashion doll brands usually are, is to benefit from a Q4 movie launch, Ladybug & Cat Noir Awakening – a boon, timing wise, for the latest introductions to the Playmates toy range Bandai distributes. Miraculous is huge in France and Spain and its meteoric rise to the top is now being mirrored in the UK, where it’s expected to become a Top 5 Fashion Doll by the end of 2022. The toy range really taps into the beauty of the Miraculous characters, with their striking red and black costumes and accessories proving particularly popular at the 26cm end of the doll spectrum, and the collectible Kwamis (pets) are also flying off the shelves. Nic says around 10k units a week sell through a leading grocer alone.

In 2021, Playmates was also once again awarded the licensing rights for action figures, vehicles and ships, role-play and other toy categories for all Star Trek properties by Paramount (formerly ViacomCBS), including Star Trek Prodigy, the 11th series in the franchise and the first to be aimed towards a younger audience. Toys for Prodigy will arrive in 2023 and be distributed by Bandai. Warner Brothers, meanwhile, is preparing to welcome what might be its strongest movie slate yet over the coming two years. The Batman, the latest in iteration of the Dark Knight’s story, launched at the beginning of March, while DC Black Adam launches later this year with The Flash and Aquaman 2 following in 2023. McFarlane’s The Batman Action Figures have, according to Bandai, become a firm favourite among fans who appreciate McFarlane’s sculpts and attention to detail. They’re proving so popular, in fact, that major toy retailers are stocking the brand for the first time - and seeing great success with it.

It's clearly an exciting time to be part of the Bandai operation, and the UK team continues to expand. Kirsty Mackenzie came on board as head of marketing in 2019, and Fredrik Wolff took up the role of sales director in September last year. The business grew by some 130% in 2021, despite the installing of a new ERP system, the setting up of a new warehouse, the well-documented shipping issues and Covid, and yet more growth is expected this year, around 30%, necessitating further expansion of the team. If he doesn’t bring on more people, Nic laughs, Kirsty and Fredrik are likely to have something to say about it. (The pair, seated at the table with us, nod in agreement).

The growth of Bandai also presents the UK team with an opportunity to onboard ever more passionate team members. Last year, the company appointed a brand manager for its Collector division. He knows the market inside and out, back to front and upside down, and that passion – that love, it’s fair to say – is being seen and felt in everything he does. By his own admission, he’s living his dream job. It’s difficult to put a price on having true enthusiasts like this in your team, but Bandai attracts them like honey attracts bees.

“Internal advocates understand the Collector channel like us mass toy folks never will, and that knowledge helps us to help retailers,” says Fredrik. “By drawing on this love and passion, as well as immersing ourselves in what these guys live and breathe, we can better guide our retail partners and advise them on what would work for their consumers.”

While its team and product portfolio continues to expand, Bandai itself is focusing on drawing together as a company in a way that will knit everything it does into a much tighter, more cohesive community. Already we’re seeing that with the UK office, which houses Toy, Collector, Amusement Locations and Video Games under the same roof, and each team is now starting to work more closely together. Kirsty highlights several brands or properties which straddle a number of categories, including Dragon Ball and Pac-Man, which multiple teams are working on from a variety of angles. Just before the pandemic, Kirsty and her team developed a major campaign to coincide with Bandai Namco Entertainment’s latest Dragon Ball game, a movie release and new mass-market toys. Funding from Japan allowed Kirsty to plan a huge takeover event of four different shopping centres nationwide, in which consumers would find a Dragon Ball branded inflatable cube containing game stations where they could play the new game, win prizes, meet costume characters and more. Two were held – and then Covid struck. Still, those two events were a huge success and have certainly paved the way for more, not just for Dragon Ball but for other brands and properties too.

“It was great to see people come and enjoy these events,” Kirsty says. “There was some scepticism before launch that consumers would actually turn up in decent numbers, but they really did. Parents brought their kids dressed up as Goku, the main character, and there was such passion in the air for the Dragon Ball brand that the excitement was infectious. Hopefully we’ll get to do more of these moving forward post-pandemic.”

Bandai has also set its sights on becoming a more global business. At the moment, the majority of the company’s business still comes from Japan, but there have been moves to improve the balance between Japan and the rest of the world. It’s clear that much stronger movement in this direction will happen over the next couple of years. It also means that areas of the business which are working well could be adopted elsewhere. Formats such as Anime Heroes, for example, brings toys for all Bandai’s most popular anime properties under one convenient umbrella - the same properties that are supported by other divisions outside of toy such as Video Games. Bandai’s shift to a more global mindset can also be seen internally: at a recent awards ceremony, a member of the UK team was presented with an award for her work on raising the profile of Tamagotchi. This is an accolade that the Bandai UK team is immensely proud of.

In many ways, losing Power Rangers was the catalyst for Bandai’s transformation, freeing up the company’s various teams to explore new avenues and exploit previously unnoticed opportunities. As the old adage goes: when one door closes, another opens. And in its 40th anniversary year, the company has more open doors than ever to walk through. There’s a lot to celebrate - and celebrate it will. In addition to the stereotypical and ‘terribly British’ party, complete with plenty of food and lots of drink, Bandai will also be throwing open the doors to its ‘vault’, its catalogue of rare, discontinued and otherwise highly sought-after collectibles, figures and toys that fans nationwide will be itching to get their hands on. Some will be sold, others will be given away in competitions, across 40 weeks of announcements designed to get consumers celebrating just as much at the UK team will be. The company has also unveiled a corporate rebrand complete with a fresh-look logo that will reflects Bandai’s roots for the next 40 years – and, hopefully, beyond.

“Obviously there’s a lot to be excited about within our business right now, but we want our consumers, licensors and retail partners to be just as excited about what we’ve got going on,” says Nic. “It might have taken four decades but I feel that there’s serious change afoot at Bandai - and I want everyone to share in that.”