The first 3 of the following 5 charts so the demographic characteristics of the buyers of Mission Impossible during the first two weeks of its release. The last two charts show the sales and rental history of the title over its life, up to the 51st week (week ending December 23, 1996). Some commentary is attached to each chart.

Early Buyer MIssion Impossible households are slightly more likely to have cable television subscriptions than the rest of the VCR universe. But they are much more likely -- almost twice as likely -- to have children at home than the average VCR household. This characteristic is part of the Disney buyer profile. Interestingly, however, Early Buyers of Mission Impossible also are much more likely to have more personal computers in their homes than the average VCR household. This may be a feature of those households that strongly like this film.

Early Buyer Mission Impossible households are underrepresented in the second tier markets -- markets 50 to 100 in size -- and slightly overrepresented in both larger and smaller markets. This characteristic of the Early Buyers may be more determined by their income and PC penetration than by the video or its distribution around the country.

Early Buyer Mission Impossible households are strongly underrepresented in low income categories and strongly overrepresented in upper income categories. These features have something to do with the typical Disney buyer, but they may also be strongly determined by the characteristics of households with computers at home, which tends to be a significantly upper income market.

Mission Impossible sales started off fairly weak, but built toward the pre-Christmas weeks. We record the peak week for Mission sales as being the week of December 9, two weeks before the holiday. Since then, sales have dropped off.

The Purchase chart above and the Rental chart below are on the same scale. Note that Mission Impossible has been a very strong rental title since its release, especially compared to its relatively weak sales results. While sales topped out at about 800 thousand units during the week of December 9, rentals topped out at about 4.5 million tapes rented in the week of release and hit 4 million turns again just before Christmas.