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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 30, 2018 11:26:06 GMT -5
So in the late '70s there were something like 20? 25? Bi-monthly (ish) Richie Rich titles. Richie Rich Billions, Richie Rich Gems, Richie Rich and Cadbury...
So what possible financial reason was there for such a glut of Richie Rich comics? Since Harvey dominated the Kiddie Humor market wouldn't they eat each other's sales, rather than cutting into Marvel/DC/Gold Key? I can't imagine there were too many insane Richie Rich collectors who needed each and every issue....
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Post by MDG on Jan 30, 2018 12:26:36 GMT -5
They wouldn't've published them if no one was buying them. (Or maybe it was some kind of money laundering scheme) (That should be $cheme>)
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2018 12:38:11 GMT -5
Weren't a lot of Richie Rich titles digests (like Archie) & available everywhere?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 30, 2018 12:42:26 GMT -5
One has to assume that they were selling well. They weren't adverse to cancelling the titles that didn't sell (Richie Rich and Jackie Jokers for example).
Anecdotally, I think they were selling really well because you used to see a ton of them at yard sales in the 70s and into the early 80s.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 30, 2018 12:42:38 GMT -5
So in the late '70s there were something like 20? 25? Bi-monthly (ish) Richie Rich titles. Richie Rich Billions, Richie Rich Gems, Richie Rich and Cadbury... So what possible financial reason was there for such a glut of Richie Rich comics? Since Harvey dominated the Kiddie Humor market wouldn't they eat each other's sales, rather than cutting into Marvel/DC/Gold Key? I can't imagine there were too many insane Richie Rich collectors who needed each and every issue.... I remember those days well, because I was working in a book and magazine store that stocked just about everything, including tons of comics. Couldn't believe how many RR titles there were, and I don't remember them selling well, but our clientele did not include little kids and their parents, anyway. Harvey may have looked at them all as one giant aggregate title. It didn't matter which of the ancillary titles were selling in a particular month as long as they were selling a limo-load of RR books. They could always cut any real dogs and try other spin-offs ( Super-Richie, Dollar the Dog, Jackie Jokers, Vault of Mystery e.g.) based on then-current fads, etc. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 30, 2018 12:51:29 GMT -5
My Grandmother was a yard sale fanatic. And I used to go with her a reasonable amount, mostly in the late 70s. By volume the comics most likely to be found at yard sales were Richie Rich (the rest of the Harvey line was more rare. Sad Sack was probably second), Archies of various sorts, Mad Magazine, DC and then Marvel. I suspect that people tended to hold on to the DC and Marvel books while the Harvey and Archie books were considered impulse buys and weren't held on too by collectors. Gold Keys were more rare still and I don't remember ever seeing any of the other publishers.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2018 12:55:40 GMT -5
Weren't a lot of Richie Rich titles digests (like Archie) & available everywhere? I still them today (see notes) and in the 80's to the 90's ... they were plentiful in grocery stores, drug stores, and Mom and Pop Stores too. And, believe me they being sold by little kids back then those days. Notes: They were popular when Albertsons were opened back then and couple years ago ... Albertsons went out of business in my area and some selected supermarkets still carry them and I rarely shop there unless I have to. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 30, 2018 12:59:46 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm sure they were popular. But it surprises me that 20 Richie Rich titles would have sold THAT much better than, say, 4 Richie Rich titles.
Or maybe they were right. Would Marvel have done better in the '70s if they cancelled half their line and replaced it with 17 new Spider-Man and Conan titles?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 30, 2018 13:03:11 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm sure they were popular. But it surprises me that 20 Richie Rich titles would have sold THAT much better than, say, 4 Richie Rich titles. Or maybe they were right. Would Marvel have done better in the '70s if they cancelled half their line and replaced it with 17 new Spider-Man titles? Keep in mind that a standard practice in the business at that time was to try to crowd other publishers off the newsstand. Martin Goodman did it a lot (after he got better distribution) when Marvel would release a butt-load of reprint books that nobody actually wanted. The idea was to flood the newsstand with your product so there wasn't room for the competition. Whether it worked or not, I don't know. But it may explain a bit of the Richie Rich phenomenon. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2018 13:04:42 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm sure they were popular. But it surprises me that 20 Richie Rich titles would have sold THAT much better than, say, 4 Richie Rich titles. Or maybe they were right. Would Marvel have done better in the '70s if they cancelled half their line and replaced it with 17 new Spider-Man titles? Well Richie Rich was a Saturday morning cartoon staple in the late 70s and early 80s and by the time Spidey hit TV in the 70s & early 80s (live action and with his Amazing Friends on Saturday mornings) Marvel had 5 Spider-Man titles monthly (Amazing, Spectacular, Team-Up, Super Stories, and Marvel Tales), so I am sure that played into the number of Richie Rich titles out there too, what is now referred to as media synchronicity for IP, but then was simply exploiting the popularity of a concept when it hit the small screen by flooding the market with product. -M |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jan 30, 2018 13:18:02 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm sure they were popular. But it surprises me that 20 Richie Rich titles would have sold THAT much better than, say, 4 Richie Rich titles. Or maybe they were right. Would Marvel have done better in the '70s if they cancelled half their line and replaced it with 17 new Spider-Man titles? Keep in mind that a standard practice in the business at that time was to try to crowd other publishers off the newsstand. Martin Goodman did it a lot (after he got better distribution) when Marvel would release a butt-load of reprint books that nobody actually wanted. The idea was to flood the newsstand with your product so there wasn't room for the competition. Whether it worked or not, I don't know. But it may explain a bit of the Richie Rich phenomenon. Huh. It seems strange though. How much was Harvey competing with Marvel and DC in the late '70s/early '80s? It seems like different markets. Although looking at Mike's Amazing World, Archie had *A* *Lot* of titles, too - even just spinner rack titles, ignoring the digests. Looking at December 1979 (to pick a month at random) Richie starred in 10 comics while Archie was in 8 - as well as being cover featured on Betty and Veronica and Jughead. AND there were 3 Archie digests. It might be that Harvey and Archie were really fighting it out for rack space? |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2018 13:20:09 GMT -5
aw. . you made me think of "Irona"  |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 30, 2018 14:15:59 GMT -5
Harvey and Archie were geared mostly to grocery store newsstands and, as the 70s wore on, those started shrinking and space tended to go more to adult magazines. That is where they competed with DC and Marvel. Since they were mostly bought by parents, for young kids, rather than just read by kids hanging around the newsstand, the grocery stores tended to carry more of those. By the same token, you had a ton of Dell puzzle magazines in those same store, many with the same type of puzzle. It's not like they carried 20 issues of each. They might get 20 or 30 units, covering multiple Archie or Harvey titles. Spread that across different grocery chains and multiple states and it adds up. You would see a bunch of Harvey titles, more than just a bunch of Richie Rich, as there might only be 2 or 3 copies of each title. Kids didn't follow them issue by issue; they would just grab a new Richie Rich comic. Didn't really matter which one.
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Post by rberman on Jan 30, 2018 17:13:36 GMT -5
Would Marvel have done better in the '70s if they cancelled half their line and replaced it with 17 new Spider-Man and Conan titles? I think of Spider-Man as a perennial Marvel hit for obvious reasons. Was Conan big for them as well, before X-Men took off? I was too young to know about Conan or his appeal. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 30, 2018 18:47:58 GMT -5
Keep in mind that a standard practice in the business at that time was to try to crowd other publishers off the newsstand. Martin Goodman did it a lot (after he got better distribution) when Marvel would release a butt-load of reprint books that nobody actually wanted. The idea was to flood the newsstand with your product so there wasn't room for the competition. Whether it worked or not, I don't know. But it may explain a bit of the Richie Rich phenomenon. Huh. It seems strange though. How much was Harvey competing with Marvel and DC in the late '70s/early '80s? It seems like different markets. Although looking at Mike's Amazing World, Archie had *A* *Lot* of titles, too - even just spinner rack titles, ignoring the digests. Looking at December 1979 (to pick a month at random) Richie starred in 10 comics while Archie was in 8 - as well as being cover featured on Betty and Veronica and Jughead. AND there were 3 Archie digests. It might be that Harvey and Archie were really fighting it out for rack space? Not as much as they were 10 or 20 years before that, but certainly still some. 7-10 year olds were still buying comics at the time and still watching Saturday Morning Cartoons. So the crossover was there. And even if Richie Rich wasn't directly competing against, say, Master of Kung Fu for a given buyer, they were still competing for rack space. Every space on a spinner rack taken up by a Richie Rich comic was one less space for something else from a rival company. |
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