Marvel released it’s Q2 financials today and publishing seems to be holding its own:

Marvel’s Publishing Segment net sales increased $7.8 million or 31% to $32.9 million in Q2 2007 principally due to continued strength in Civil War and the Dark Tower publications in the Direct and Mass Market channels. Operating income in the publishing segment rose to $14.7 million with an operating margin of 45% in Q2 2007, compared to operating income of $10.4 million with an operating margin of 41% in the prior-year period. The improvement in operating margin principally reflects the benefit of operating leverage resulting from sales of high margin trade books.

The toy division did not and profits slipped sending stock down a bit

Marvel Entertainment Inc. which licenses comic book characters, reported lower-than-expected quarterly profit and cut its toy sales forecast for the second half of the year due to possible lower reorders from toy maker Hasbro Inc. (HAS.N: Quote, Profile, Research). Shares of New York-based Marvel, which has a stable of more 5000 characters including Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk and X-Men, dropped almost 8 percent in morning trade. They had slipped about 11 percent since the beginning of the year before Tuesday’s losses.


Hasbro’s line of Marvel toys has widely been considered a disaster by toy insiders — instead of sticking with the industry standard size, they went smaller size, pleasing neither collectors nor the children who allegedly play with the figures.

1 COMMENT

  1. According to what I’ve read about the Hasbro panel at Comic-Con Hasbro has learned from their mistakes and going back to a approach similar to ToyBiz’s both in scale and character collection.

    Apparently, they’re also redoing the Spider-Man 3 movies figures and the FF:ROTSS figures for the DVD releases.

  2. I think hasbro did a good job for the most part but two of there lines the ghostrider and spiderman 3 figures where not really geared toward kids of the 2007 era or collectors which is why you can pick up ghostrider for $3.00 in walmart. Instead of $20 or $30 on ebay.