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Dear Mr. Parkes:

Hello from the Philippines!

I'm currently writing a blog about my musings on why Gundam is a big franchise today compared to Macross (the draft for which is here), and Ollie Barder of Forbes, who gave vital input and refining, redirected me to you.

Specifically, I want to learn as much as I can about the performance of Macross as a franchise, particularly with merchandise, and how it compared to Gundam from the early '80s to around maybe 2008 during the release of Frontier. I realize that concrete figures are hard to come by (though I'd pop if somehow you have those), but there are still things I've yet to fully understand conceptually that may need your insight.

Besides helping me explain Mr. Barder's answers marked 5 and 6, my other questions are:

1. How much wider was the variety in toys between Macross and Gundam?
2. During Robotech's TV run, how well did merchandise of it perform financially?
3. What, do you think, did Bandai eventually do correctly that others who held the Macross franchise did not?
4. Other than the obvious, what other factors did you think contributed to Macross' slowdown and stagnation as a franchise relative to Gundam?

Thank you for taking the time to answer this! I know this is a lot of effort for "just a Reddit post" but the longer I wrote that write-up, the more I felt that I had to hold myself to a certain standard of accuracy and consistency. It's why I'm asking around for help in people more knowledgeable than me, and I'm grateful for the answers you'll give me.

Thanks again!

Truly yours,
Mark Joseph I. Argoso