"When should "anniversary" figures be released?" Topic

This is not WWI specific, but the WWI releases have me thinking about this topic again. What do you think the sweet spot is for "the anniversary of" figure releases? Before the conflict started so everything is in place and ready to go? The year the conflict started or, perhaps, any time the conflict was underway, such as 2014-2018 for WWI releases. I appreciate all of the WWI releases but, sometimes, I see a release and think "those should have been released at least six months ago, maybe a year ago" if you are trying to hit the anniversary market. What do you think?

Depends on what the anniversary is of, I suppose…..

One hundred years or two hundred years etc is a good time to celebrate rather than "the 273rd anniversary", for example.

If it is a particular battle, then release stuff just before the actual date. In the case of something like the First World War, this summer seems about right.

As always, it depends … it is nice to have prep time (so that anniversary battles can be readied for the anniversary) – then again, sometimes it is the anniversary itself that kicks the enthusiasm into gear.

Re WWI this means trenches, the Somme and lumbering tanks to many … so they are already doing that (a local museum just won an award for turning its gardens into trenches – before the anniversary of Franz Ferdinand getting shot )

A big attraction at the weekend's English Heritage event was a replica SE5 (again, I think the SE5 didn't fly til 1916) …

… so there is a tendency for popular perception to get ahead of events anyway (maybe it will all be over by Christmas after all)

Phil
History Live! reports on
Ancients on the Move and P.B.Eye-Candy

@Cerdic: Yes, I am talking about the 100, 150, 200, etc. milestones.

Things should be released as soon as they are ready. Why wait for some arbitrary anniversary, which is nothing but an artifact of how many fingers we have and how many times the earth has gone around the sun.

I'd like to see it with enough lead time so I could have it before the anniversary. But I guess that it depends. Non hardcore ACW people are attracted by the current anniversaries, for example I imagine anything Gettysburg specific probably peaked last year between late June and the end of July. I'm marginal on Napoleonics but I am considering picking up a few things for Waterloo's 200th. I have already noted an uptick in WW1 stuff, like new models of WW1 tanks. So I don't think that its tied directly to when something appeared, after all the tank made its debut at the Somme in 1916.

From a business standpoint I would imagine that most gamers motivated by anniversaries of battles and/or conflicts would want to game the event on the anniversary date. So if you want to get this business you should probably release the figures 6 months to a year before.

If however you are just looking to have a figure to commemorate the battle than release it on that day. Or if it is a longer conflict pick the day of the most famous battle, beginning, or end.