Playmates Toys has canceled (at least for now) the Allura, Pidge, and Hunk figures, following the disappointing sales of the current Voltron paladin figures



Truth is, female figurines (and male figures who are not classically chiseled) are treated as hard-to-sell by the oversegmented toy market, so it’s possible those were always a long shot, anyway. See also @ptw30‘s post on this topic, too.

I’m not here with the marketing-savvy, other than a general understanding of market segmentation. I am here with the data, instead, and it’s… interesting.

First off, there’s a huge hurdle whenever we (as fans) talk about whether a show is – or is not – popular enough on Netflix. Currently, Netflix isn’t included in the usual ratings bonanza whatevers that rule broadcast television, which makes sense, ‘cause that would mean Netflix releasing data. Not going to happen.

Netflix data is about as complete and in-depth as you can possibly get short of showing up at someone’s house and recording them watching. The data model is apparently just a masterpiece of complexity down to the tiniest details, like “episode and timestamp where paused” and “how long paused” and “how often replayed” and whatnot.

That’s how Netflix could snark like this:

Anyway, some enterprising souls were digging around elsewhere and realized that when it comes to Neilson ratings, there’s another set of data with a statistically significant correlation. The correlation is close enough that using the secondary data will give you a pretty solid sense of Neilson’s collected data.

The theory goes like this: a consistent percentage of viewers, when seeing a new show, will promptly open up wikipedia to see what they can find out about the show, the characters, or the episodes. While this isn’t a one-to-one, the proportion is apparently pretty steady, enough to see trends.

And, since Netflix is treated as a quasi-form of television viewing, it stands to reason that the same secondary data set can be applied to Netflix shows. That lets us extrapolate a sense of the ‘ratings’ a show might receive, were it on broadcast television (albeit released all at once).

I bring you… Wikipedia’s API. Images and analysis behind the cut.

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