Acclaimed Flop: Those who have played the games have nothing but good things to say about them, but unfortunately, the sales figures remain pitifully low due to Invisible Advertising and (in the case for Tail Concerto and Solatorobo) perceived apathy from Bandai Namco themselves.
Doing It for the Art: The biggest motivation as to why the series is able to exist up to today, as CyberConnect2 wants to constantly expand on the world and its origins despite the lack of financial gains from the greater market.
Fandom Life Cycle: The series has historically been a solid Stage 1 due to how Tail Concerto and Solatorobo: Red the Hunter were Acclaimed Flops, with fans pointing fingers at publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment for failing to market these games effectively. CyberConnect2 has since begun to handle publishing themselves with the Fuga: Melodies of Steel sub-series, and while those games are still obscure, they have experienced critical success and a gradual increase in sales. Thanks to Fuga revitalizing interest and the advent of social media making knowledge of the series easier to spread, Little Tail Bronx overall has slowly begun teetering towards Stage 2.
God Does Not Own This World: In full effect in regards to Tail Concerto and Solatorobo, and is one of the primary reasons why the Fuga series exists, since CyberConnect2 can't do anything related to Waffle or Red without Bandai Namco's explicit approval. Tellingly, the announcement for the Tail Concerto costume pack for Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 gives copyright credits to Bandai Namco Entertainment.
Invisible Advertising: Possibly the biggest hurdle holding this series back, as none of the games were ever given proper advertising campaigns, even moreso overseas. While CyberConnect2 tried desperately to get Fuga into the public eyes (to the point where they almost bordered on Misaimed Marketing territory), Bandai Namco would usually do the bare minimum for a game's Japanese release before outsourcing the Western distribution responsibilities to other companies like Atlus or XSEED Games, giving off the possible impression that they WANTED this series to fail.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Want to own a physical copy of Tail Concerto or Solatorobo? Good luck, as their pitiful sales resulted in them becoming some of the rarest games to ever exist for the PlayStation and Nintendo DS, with prices reaching at least $300 for a loose copy. Want to play Little Tail Story? the servers were only active for a year with no community-made alternative to keep it running, and trying to find good quality gameplay footage is nigh-impossible. Curious about Mamoru-Kun? Hope you're fluent in Japanese and know where to find the actual stories themselves.
In terms of PAL releases, Tail Concerto was only ever launched in France.
Little Tail Story was only released in Japan.
Mamoru-Kun does not have any of his stories translated for any form of western release, partially due to him being designed specifically for Fukuoka prefecture’s disaster preparation program.
Orphaned Reference: Believe it or not, the franchise's name could be this, as Tail Concerto was internally known as Little Tail during development.
Screwed by the Lawyers: The line of who-owns-what seems to be a bit muddled, as while CyberConnect2 has made merchandise off of Tail Concerto and Solatorobo and included the full cast front and center on their 25th Anniversary poster, they are barred from making direct sequels, remakes, or re-releases to those games without Bandai Namco's say so, and even Fuga involved a lot of Writing Around Trademarks as they were forbidden from referencing any pre-established characters, yet somehow, locations and terminology (like "Caninu", "Felineko", "Nono" and "Titano-Machina") are fair game. Further complicating matters is the casual reveal from Hiroshi that Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2's first DLC pack will be tied to Tail Concerto in some capacity, implying that CyberConnect2 had to reach some form of agreement with Bandai Namco.
Stillborn Franchise: Averted. While Tail Concerto's sequel Tail Capriccio did end up getting canceled, the Little Tail Bronx franchise as a whole was able to persist thanks to CyberConnect2 fighting tooth and nail with Bandai Namco to get Solatorobo greenlit despite the commercial failure of Tail Concerto. Once the indie game scene began to really take off, CyberConnect2 realized they can cut the middle man out and continue the franchise themselves with the Fuga series (to a point).
Tail Concerto was supposed to get a direct sequel titled Tail Capriccio. Reportedly, a Bandai Namco producer tossed the pitch in front of Hiroshi Matsuyama without reading it before telling him "We're not going to make a sequel to a game that didn't sell".
Plenty of different prototypes made during Solatorobo's production all had radically different story ideas and characters. Who knows how the series might've turned out had they went with those ideas instead?
Before Fuga was settled on, Strelka Stories was initially conceived to be the third game in the Little Tail Bronx series, and would've directly connected to Tail Concerto as opposed to Fuga fitting more in line with Solatorobo. The development team's inability to find a publisher to help fund the game combined with them working on Asura's Wrath and the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm series caused Strelka to be shelved.
for the Tail Concerto costume pack for Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 gives copyright credits to Bandai Namco Entertainment.