Bandai character sales 2000-2004
On their official site, one can see a chart showing the breakdown of proceeds made by each of Bandai's major character brand names (Gundam, Sentai series, Kamen Rider, Sailor Moon, One Piece, etc.) for every fiscal year starting from 2000. Gundam is the franchise listed in the first row. For every year shown, Gundam is #1 in sales by a fair margin (the larger number in the second-to-last row is for miscellaneous properties). This is true even before the huge success of Gundam SEED essentially created a new generation of Gundam fans in 2002-2003.
The figures for Gundam:
Fiscal 2000 (the year ending March 2001) - 16 billion yen
Fiscal 2001 (the year ending March 2002) - 20 billion yen
Fiscal 2002 (the year ending March 2003) - 27.2 billion yen
Fiscal 2003 (the year ending March 2004) - 32 billion yen
Fiscal 2004 (the year ending March 2005) - 25.1 billion yen ¶ 7:51 PM
sources from Gunota