IPs that failed to Stay Revelant

[MetalSkulkBane]

When people talk about long going franchises, they usually throw phrases like "remain relevant" or "timeless appeal", stuff like that. And makes me think:  single story can age, but if franchise was really large and popular, is it automatically timeless?

 In this age or reboots, remakes and sequels, it's hard to point a franchise that was once large, but now is considered obsolete. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were like most 80s thing ever. First cartoon aged, but the brand itself is going strong to this day. Maybe not as large as before, but still.
James Bond sleeping around with women should be a product of it's times, and some older movies can be uncomfortable to watch, but again, franchise itself is still going and still considered big deal.

Thoughts?

[Salamander]

Fascinating topic.  I don't know if it's quite what you're thinking of - not least since you posted this in Chit-Chat - but I think maybe some series of games were defined by the limitations of the console they were introduced on.  A lot of the appeal of the Golden Sun games was in the style they achieved on a GBA; jump to the DS, and suddenly it's not special any more.  People debate on how important the map-drawing is to Etrian Odyssey.  And people ask for it sometimes, but what exactly is the hallmark of a Sonic Advance that's not on the GameBoy Advance?

In literature, I'd also point to maybe Goosebumps?  Its modus operandi was to have barrelloads of short, episodic books with no particular relation to one another, and a lot of other 90s-era children's book series were similar; they were made to be picked up singly out of a line-up, often in libraries.  Ones I remember from my time as a kid were lines like Mystery Kids/Club and Ghost Twins; Point Horror took this still further.  And then along came Harry Potter, and now try writing a children's book series without some sense of continuity.  (Even the 2008-2009 Goosebumps revival attempted it.)

[Ricochet]

An IP can become timeless, but their relevance can remain either as inspirational value or still popular, or both. 

All of the western IPs sold by Squenix ( Tomb Raider and Thief more specifically) have something in common: they peaked as groundbreaking masterpieces at some point of the gaming's history, but struggle nowadays to keep up relevancy (despite reboots and new titles have been released) and pretty much newer franchices that heavily took inspirations by these IPs also have taken their place.

There are several factors that diminished their popularity, regardless of how old these are,but the main one is by losing own creative direction, after trying to adopt contemporary somewhat incompatible trends in the gaming industry instead of expanding from their own thing, sold to another company that didn't know how to really translate the earlier success or the main masterminds behind the franchise left,etc.

I think the most tragic attempt of an IP to remain relevant was on Richard Gariott's Ultima series :

A titan franchise from the 80's and 90s. Ultima is practically the ancestor of JRPGs (alongside Wyzardry) and Zelda, its spinoff Ultima Underworld pioneered in First-Person's gameplay and Ultima Online popularised MMO genre, the server still ongoing nowadays but the rights are basically owned by EA.

Ironically, its free fall to irrelevancy can be mainly attributed to not only EA but also to its creator; Richard Garriott. Several dumpster fire titles, starting with Ultima IX, then F2P Ultima Forever, and the latter attempt of reviving Ultima main storyline through a kickstarted spiritual successor: Shroud of the Avatar, ended up as a cash-grab shovelware. 

Lately the guy's into blockchain contributing in the development of an ultima-esque MMO that involves NFTs. As If the franchise didn't have enough nails in the coffin...

[Raya]

If you ask me for the series that failed, I'm automatically thinking about Tomb Raider series. The first games were products of its times, but after them we have worse and worse titles. When the series was acquired by Crystal Dynamics and Legend or Anniversary came out, I thought that Lara is again something big, but then we have Underworld and reboots that looks like an Uncharted knockkoff. Which is a little ironically when we look at the first Uncharted game as a next-gen Tomb Raider. Sadly, Lara Croft came from the superstar status to something that just exists. 

Beyond the games, I think Harry Potter series was also product of its times and now, especially after Rowling controversies and bad reception of the new books and movies, it came from a phenomenon status to just something being discussed only between people growing up with this books more than 10 years ago.

[Eggman Fan]

I miss Bubsy, like I don't know how, but I love that stupid bobcat and his terrible games.

Man, You some people thought that Bubsy was gonna be in Forces. If that was true, I woulda rated that game a 10/10

[batson]

On 6/1/2022 at 10:27 PM, Sonic Fan 3,183 said:

I miss Bubsy, like I don't know how, but I love that stupid bobcat and his terrible games.

Man, You some people thought that Bubsy was gonna be in Forces. If that was true, I woulda rated that game a 10/10

I don't think you can call Bubsy a franchise that failed to stay relevant because Bubsy was never relevant to begin with.

One franchise on this topic that sprngs to my mind is Masters of the Universe, aka He-man (and She-Ra). In it's hedey it was HUGE. I think the best way to put into perspective on how huge it was is that it was the thing that toppled Star Wars as the king of childrens merchandising. The amount of MoTU action figures sold in the early to mid 80's is comparable to the amount of Star Wars action figures sold between the release of a New Hope and Return of the Jedi.

He-man was worldwide super phenomenon on the scale of what Star Wars had been previously (and would be again!) or what Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, Power Rangers, Jurassic Park and Pokémon would become after.

But while every single thing out of the ones I mentioned has stayed more or less relevant (expect maybe Power Rangers), He-man can never seem to make a comeback. After the initial fad was over, that was retty much it as far as relevance goes. The franchise is still a nostalgic memory for those that grew up with it, but any new incarnation is largely ignored by the public. Granted, as someone born in 1986 I know that the cartoon stayed well known during at least the first half of the 90's due to reruns and VHS tapes (it was one of my favorite shows in fact), but there was never any mercahndise around at that time. Mattel, the owner of the franchise, has tried to re-launch it into the mainstream many times over the decades but it never quite seems to work out. The only latter day version of the franchise that seem to have actually been able to somewhat stand on it's own i terms of gaining large amounts of new fans is the Netflix She-Ra cartoon (unfortunately for old school fans though, this seem to be one of those cases where many fans of this particular new version never retroactively become fans of the older versions as well, and instead of joining the already existing MoTU fandom they sorta created a brand new fandom, similar to what happened with the fourth generation of My Little Pony and the bronies). But other that that, MoTU never gets any attention anymore. Err, well, except the controversy surounding the MoTU: Revelations show, but even though a lot of people had things to say about that show it really didn't seem to do much in the way of turning more people into fans of the franchise.