Post
by Buffdaddy » Fri Jan 10, 2020 6:21 pm
Adventure Force is one of Walmart's in-house brands, that they slap on various toy companies' products for putting on the shelf. I don't know what the criteria is, but assume that you're not a huge name in toys (Hasbro, Mattel, etc) or that you're not offering a huge product (Xshot's Fast Fill soaker and Bunch O Balloons, for example, are too big to try to force under a different brand).
Walmart looks for certain products they want, that they can get in their packaging with a certain range of overhead, and the lesser toy companies have to go through that route to get on the shelf. Granted, Walmart stores are a huge distribution deal, but it's their terms. The Nerf aisle has seen this for the past few years, as, aside from scattered products here and there, it's largely been Nerf and Adventure Force on the shelf. Some years, Buzz Bee has more products on shelves, some years, it's Prime Time Toys or Zuru Xshot blasters being rebranded and put on the shelf (sometimes just with stickers over the original logo in the mold).
Prime Time Toys has made somewhat of a killing, as their ball blasters have been the chief competitor to Nerf's Rival line, and they have several dart blasters on shelf as well as large packs of "wafflehead" darts for cheap (200 darts for $10, and sometimes 500 for $20). It's one of the driving forces behind Nerf branching out and trying different things like the cheap Alpha Strike line, or a new dart type in Ultra, to try and combat how successful this partnership has been.
Buzz Bee has had various smaller blasters on the shelf under the line, as well as different dart types like their suction darts. In terms of water blasters...the last few years have been more Prime Time Toys models than anything else. So seeing Buzz Bee get the nod this year is nice.
