Part of me wonders why this hasn’t been supplanted by now. They had smegging branded toothbrushes in the store today.
It’s not like we haven’t cracked the code of YA literature and non-threating fantasy.
But I suspect it’s more that it was one of the last major franchises before the hyperbalkanization of media.
Today, we’re spoiled for choice. You might find some great series about a 17-year-old vampire coming of age during the Long March, but your friend is reading an equally great series where the 14-year-old Princess of The Gryphon Riders uses her powers to solve Kessler Syndrome. You have no shared memes.
There isn’t a new franchise around with the same “broad cultural currency” and that’s why people remain in its gravity well.
i can’t imagine we’ll get back to the era when big releases meant midnight openings at every major store with blocks-long queues. Not even a new iDoohickey does it anymore. Yeah, GTA6 will have a few, but it will never be the same “trample the store clerks” energy.
They’re also tiny. I had one land on my arm recently and it was maybe 7mm in the lobgest dimension when fully stretched out.
So big “u wot mate?” energy with the tiny waving pincers.