[Condiment King]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kang

I'm just now catching up on this thread and all things HasLab for that matter. On a certain level I like the Haslab concept, nice way to embrace the crowdfunding thing and a number of their prior toys look really cool to me (in fact, normally I would not pay the current after market price of Jabba's Sail Barge since I usually drop the bigger coin on vintage stuff, but that one is cool enough to actually be really tempting).

As I think about this Ghost Rider, my first thought was, this version seems a little too niche to me versus some of the prior projects. I honestly didn't even remember this version of the character, I think Cosmic Ghost Rider was the last thing I read with Ghost Rider in the title and that came later (and I grew up with the original).

But then I thought...isn't that one the great benefits of crowdfunding? Obviously from the discussion here, as well as the over 5,000 backers that have signed up to date, there are plenty of people who want this. And yeah, that's in spite of price that I think is keeping that number down. I mean, $500 for the massive and detailed Sail Barge, versus $350 for basically a car and a guy plus some flame bling (cool looking as it may be)?

And the "we'll tempt you with more stuff" add-ons seems kind of lame to me. Either you have a cool product to begin with or you don't. Who actually needed Yak Face in the mix to continue with the Sail Barge example? Plus there's already an awesome looking Goblin Queen PVC statue that can be had new at retail currently much as a new figure would be nice.

This feels $250 to me, they should have set the target at 5,000 backers, blown it out of the water quickly hitting their target, thrown in a bonus figure or two as a thank you, and end up moving a truckload of these (and making up some of the profit on volume versus markup) and then moving on with the added benefit of heightened enthusiasm for future projects.

Haslab is/should be a great thing, it’s a chance for collectors to obtain dream items that just wouldn’t be feasible for mass retail, but it feels like Hasbro are trying to milk collectors for all their worth whilst in return giving less and less back. I personally think this particular project isn’t Haslab material, but I guess im influenced by having zero investment in the character of Robbie Reyes. For those that are willing to pay the price then fair enough, it’s none of my business what you do with your money, but I will never feel like this isn’t a rip off, and if it is successful and gets backed, it gives Hasbro a green light to continue offering sub standard products for high end prices.