Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne takes a look at holiday promotions.
 
I must admit that it rather bemused me that our best-selling item this week was the Halloween Collector Pack for the King of Tokyo game (see "King of Tokyo--Halloween"), especially since I wrote for Halloween last year that seasonal releases need to come out earlier in the season for which the manufacturer designed them.  In this case, the expansion arrived only a couple of days before Halloween and still managed to outsell any other game release this week, thanks mainly to the interest in King of Tokyo and the still remarkable power of TableTop.  Incidentally, TableTop demonstrated its ability to move product yet again with the Betrayal at House on the Hill episode.  We ran that in the store on the iPad and within less than an hour sold our last copy.  Now, if Wizards of the Coast would just get the game back into print so we can take advantage of the interest generated as we move into the Christmas season.  And maybe Wheaton and company could take a look at the Grandpa Beck's line of games?  That's a nice little line of games that could certainly benefit from some additional promotion.
 
I expect to keep selling the King of Tokyo Halloween Pack during the Christmas season, during the Valentine’s Day season, during the Easter season.  I expect to sell it for Memorial Day, for the Fourth of July and for Labor Day.  In short,  I expect to keep selling it year round, though I have to admit, I think it would do a bit better if it didn't have the Halloween theme.  In short, after a number of years of Halloween- and Christmas-themed displays of games, I have come to the conclusion that people buy games because of the seasonal promotion, not because of the seasonal theme.
 
As we have done for the past five years, we put up a display of games that fit well the Halloween theme: Betrayal at House on the Hill, Zombies!, Resident Evil, Last Night on Earth, etc. with the display up for four weeks, we sold one copy of Zombies! and one copy of Betrayal at House on the Hill (due to TableTop, as noted above).  We sold a heck of a lot of stuff on Halloween, but due to the Halloween party we throw at the store every year, not due to someone coming in saying, "OOOH, I want to play a horror-themed game.  Show me what you have."  Those Nightmare Before Christmas Yahtzee sets are still sitting here, despite the Halloween theme.
 
Same thing with Christmas.  We sell lots of card and board games for Christmas, just not Christmas card and board games.  Several times, we have tried selling USAopoly's Christmas-themed Monopoly variants, which we wound up having to mark down (YMMV, other stores have done quite well with them) and Christmas card games, such as Christmas Card, which we wound up marking down and giving away to customers when they made a $50 purchase.
 
We will keep decorating the store.  It's fun and our customers like, or at least tolerate, it.  We'll run Halloween, Christmas, Easter events, just not focus on Halloween, Christmas and Easter products.  Wait a minute!  You say Chessex and Koplow have some red and green Christmas dice?  Well, there's a Christmas product I can get behind.
 
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.