Improving the wiki's coverage of merchandise

Glowsquid

Glowsquid

Shine Sprite
Retired Forum Mod
Retired Wiki Staff
'Shroom Consultant
The wiki's coverage for physical toys and other merch is lackluster. The stuff is rarely mentioned on characters page, and when it is, it's usually and short and very not-exhaustive sections. Pages about the stuff tend to be also lacking, rarely giving details on the manufacturer or release date and not mention anything specific about the play features or the other physical characteristics of the object

I decided to add a Merch section on the Ashley and Red page both because of my knowledge of the stuff and because there's not a lot of it, and it was well-received so I figured it was as good of a time as any to start a thread. I modeled it after the Transformers Wiki's toy sections because I feel it's a good format that works equally well for us.

For reference, here's what a TFWiki toy section looks like
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They don't header individual toys because otherwise the pages get cluttered hard. Of course there'll inevitably some differences in how we organize things as Transformers is a franchise that exists to push the merch with the media being subservient to it, while Mario isn't that. Some questions that need to be discussed:

  • It's obvious some characters like Mario and Donkey Kong will require split pages due to the sheer number of merch they received. How should pages be split? "Toy" vs "merchandise" is an obvious separation, but how we decide what goes in which?
  • Where should such sections be located on character pages?
 
Assuming they count as merchandise and not physical media, how are game tie-in trading card collections to be covered for a particular subject? Because it would be kinda weird to have a whole section just for "Urchin appears on a Super Mario Galaxy trading card. It is card number 42.", followed by another section for "Urchin also appears in the NSMB Wii collection as card no. 7965" etc. when these can easily find a home in the game's corresponding section, IMO.
 
Koopa con Carne said:
Assuming they count as merchandise and not physical media, how are game tie-in trading card collections to be covered for a particular subject? Because it would be kinda weird to have a whole section just for "Urchin appears on a Super Mario Galaxy trading card. It is card number 42.", followed by another section for "Urchin also appears in the NSMB Wii collection as card no. 7965" etc
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Why not. That's exactly how TFWiki does it. If the information can fit into a single sentence that's not a problem.
 
On the topic of improving merchandise coverage, something I'd like to do eventually is completely phase out the general merchandise galleries:
For pretty much the entire history of the wiki these have just been used as a "dumping ground" of sorts for any merchandise people have found, 99% of the time without any further information on what it does, when it was released, or its origins, and that latter point is important, because with no verification of where something comes from, the more risk that opens up for a product to be an unlicensed bootleg, or worse, not even a real product at all (I once deleted a piece of supposed "merchandise" that was just a thumbnail of a creation someone uploaded to DeviantArt). When that information is there, it's constrained into a single gallery caption, which obviously isn't ideal.

The clothing gallery is especially susceptible. I've deleted some of the more obvious garbage ones myself but I'm still skeptical how many of these are actually licensed by Nintendo, since they're usually just tossed in with little useful information. Not to mention that a lot of these seem very off-brand for Mario, such as a shirt parodying Scarface, blatant innuendo, and this one of Solid Snake in the style of Small Mario from SMB.

I've tried to do some of this myself by splitting some things off, making new pages, and expanding others, but it's far from a one-person job and unfortunately I just don't have the time or energy to really dig into projects like this right now.
 
Waluigi Time said:
Apologies for the double post but something else I was working on a while back was a navbox for merchandise since I feel like we could really use one, feedback welcome of course.
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Would fast-food promo figures (ie: McDonald's happy meals) go in "food" or "figures"? Or could they be their own section (I know wendy's had a warioware smooth moves puzzle)
 
Glowsquid said:
Would fast-food promo figures (ie: McDonald's happy meals) go in "food" or "figures"? Or could they be their own section (I know wendy's had a warioware smooth moves puzzle)
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That's a good question actually, I guess they should probably be moved since the actual food is irrelevant here. I'd lean towards putting them in their own section since trying to fit them specifically into one category isn't something I'd consider feasible and it's certainly not always figures that they give away.
 
Fast food specifically should have its own category, as it's a combination of both "toy" and "food"; the themed toys are used to sell the food, the food is mostly bought with the toys (and that's not including some specific instances where the promotion is food-specific I:e Super Mario meal at BK). Both are mutually associated and are used to sell and are attached to each other, meaning it would not be accurate to put it in either category (after all, you don't just pay for the food when you buy, say, a happy meal, the toy is factored into the price and vice versa). The amount of fast food chains which have had varying promotions are certainly large enough to warrant the categorization. I also don't like bringing fast food with other food-related promotions since they're fundamentally different; one uses the Mario brand to advertise a food product, one uses actual toys and the brand to sell food bundles. The context of how the brand is being used to market and sell products is different, which important to consider when we're attempting to cover how the real-world Mario franchise has been historically used to profit off its image with advertising, merchandising, etc.
 
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The marketing blitz for the movie has seen an onslaught of merch (figures, die-cast toys cars, plushes, the lot) like no other moment in the series history and though I can't really contribute as it seems none of this stuff has yet to be released in Canada, I do want to stress I think this is our best opportunity to refocus and get merchandise coverage right. It's still fresh, so the details about pricing, distribution, manufacturer etc. are still easily available. It's stuff that people is excited for, and it is something they would come to the wiki for - if we did a proper job at documenting it.

Yes it would be odd for the Mario page to only list the most recent stuff when we know there's been hundreds of plastic tat with his mug on it but it's better to have non-comprehensive coverage than to have nothing at all. We will have to cover this stuff eventually, and the longer we wait, the harder it'll be.
 
Glowsquid said:
It's stuff that people is excited for, and it is something they would come to the wiki for - if we did a proper job at documenting it.
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case in point (sorta): ever since i've added the country chart to the movie promotion section of Happy Meal, it has been updated with a good amount of information from other users. now, it would have been swell if said contributors also completed their due dilligence with proper citation, but the point stands that fans were immediately compelled to help the wiki when a spotlight was turned on the subject as it was still fresh
 
As I recently acquired the Umbrella blu-ray for the 1993 movie, I have started working on properly documenting the movie's home video releases. I would like feedback on the format, as I believe we will need a standardized format with Nintendo ramping up its TV and movie ambition.

I would also like to discuss what to do with all those pages for VHS and DVDs of the DiC cartoons as IMO it makes no sense to give them individual separate pages. My preferred option would be to simply merge them into their respective show's pages, using my format above.
 
Glowsquid said:
I would also like to discuss what to do with all those pages for VHS and DVDs of the DiC cartoons as IMO it makes no sense to give them individual separate pages. My preferred option would be to simply merge them into their respective show's pages, using my format above.
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They don't need separate pages. Also the current pages don't have too much content (if not duplicated a few times), so it shouldn't be a hassle to merge these.
 
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