AMC Pushing Popcorn (Before it Pushes Up Daisies)

[Jon Dent]

I heard Dr. Strange and Jurassic World got a trailer in the Super Bowl but I must've missed it.

[Mike Blakesley]

Ah! You’re right about Jurassic World. I didn’t see Dr Strange though. Also I heard there was a Top Gun ad that doubled as a Porsche ad so I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

AMC isn
't going anywhere, unfortunately! Their stock was going like gangbusters at $72 a share. But now it's back down to about $18 a share...

[Scott Jentsch]

The movie ads that I saw in the Milwaukee, WI market:

• Jurassic World: Dominion
• Nope
• Ambulance

[Stefan Scholz]

Harold H Sez: "The popcorn thing seems to me to be like a good brand
licensing its name to someone else to sell a product. Like the RCA brand."


Several years ago, I bought a set of dinner plates on e-bay that
came from the cafeteria in the old RCA plant at Camden New Jersey.
RCA_Plate.jpg

Very nice plate, which looks similar to the ones in Germany of the same time used in corporation cafeterias. It was a protected model from the Nazi board of beauty in work or so, as mine are marked with, but bearing the respective company logos. Well that's history.

But RCA is a different thing. That's been a great industrial company, for yours governed by professional engineers, and no economist or legal specialist, unless mandatory by legislation. Therefore the "Sarnoff" company had a very careful way of doing their business, interested in extremely long term stability. They had a fully filled cash box, which the engineers thought to be mandatory for crisis times, for failed products or for a competitor wanting to outbuy the stock. Important for stability. At the end of that era, and that's not been tooo long ago, the management seeking hope in of their founders, the General Electric. GEs mgmt saw the potential of a billion dollar filled cash box, vs a stock market value of the late 1940's as RCA had barely been traded. The purchased the company on credit leverage, used the cash to pay back the credits, and sold off, whatever was profitable to sell. Slashing the rest, and selling/ leasing the trade name internationally, the RCA disappeared within short time, with good profit for GE.
Officially it was claimed, that none wanted wooden paneled TVs or VCRs, in reality the range of RCA home equipment hasn't been a major seller for long. They were extremely strong and unmatched in commercial electronics, communications, solid state component innovation, military and space technology, too important in these commercial field to actually fail. The consumer field was easy to get rid of, or just keep the brand and re-sell imported products.
Eventually the same story, the German AEG-Telefunken went.
That's totally different with AMC or other stock market oriented exhibitors. They are there to provide shareholder value, shareholder value and shareholder value. They must offer some kind of profit, or they're let off by investors. So, a management must provide ideas of how to regain that shareholder value for the nearest future, and I assume the idea of selling corn (and may-be genuine sodas) for the couch-potato might sound nice. In a price driven world, with highest ever since 1950 inflation these days on both sides of the Atlantic ocean, this is just a straw in rough sea. People have to save money, wherever they can, to pay for the day to day living cost. And I feel will not buy a "fancy" brand corn, they can make at home in a frying pan for cents, or buy at a local store in different varieties at a low price.

[William Kucharski]

There's no secret sauce to making popcorn. Coconut oil, salt and fresh kernels are all you need. Are people going to pay a premium many multiples more than what Orville Redenbacher costs to get AMC popcorn outside of an AMC theater?

No, but at the same time when at the grocery store they might grab that box of AMC microwave popcorn rather than the box of Orville next to it.