[caitlindevi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darth Revan

Right, we made these companies (who refuse to listen to fans who've been into Trek for 40+ years), completely ignore our suggestions. The playmates line would have been successful if they had listened to somebody like me who knows a lot about Star Trek and also generally what sells. If Kirk Spock and Khan had been from the original series, they would have sold more, The Wrath of Khan is a great movie but the ship was from TOS as was the communicator. Plus the 2280's in Star Trek didn't have the bright happy colors like TOS and TNG did, the earlier TOS movie era was mostly a Red/Maroon & Beige hellscape with a few muted blues and greys here and there. They could have at least tried something like these two pictures.

So Let me see if I'm getting what you're saying here.

Your issue is toy companies have been ignoring what fans what for 40 years, but then you say doing the characters from probably the most popular Trek movie in Movie accurate costumes isn't what people want.
Then suggest doing uniform colour changes based on uniform colours that weren't used in those films...

And you think the fandom wouldn't be up in arms about that because you 'Know a Lot about Trek' and 'Know what Generally Sells'?
Why aren't you producing these toy lines then?
Claiming you know more about Trek than the people at Playmates whose job it is to literally know their stuff and talk directly to the people at Paramount/CBS and/or the production teams/actors, is a smidge egotistical.

That is unless, of course, you are a member of the production team or actor on Trek where you knowledge would be superior.

If knowing what generally sells and knowing a lot about the thing the toy line is about worked all the time, toy lines would all be massively popular.

Saying 'Here are the bridge crew at $10 each' is just not going to happen and here are just a couple of big reasons why

1- Production costs - Figures cost money to produce. That cost keeps rising, thats why figures prices get higher.
Yes if more of each figure is made then the production costs for each can be lowered and then they can be sold for cheaper. But unless you're HAsbro or mattel producing figures in the 100,000s of each is just not happening.
Even production runs of 5000 of each figure for smaller companies is rare these days. Thats why the costs you pay seem high, Its all relative.

2- If you do the whole bridge crew in the first wave...then what?
The line would then have to be lesser known characters that fewer people would want, wouldn't sell and lead to shelf warmers, lost sales and lost money.
Spreading the main bridge crew out between waves helps, but then if people only want the bridge crew and not the non main characters you're left again with poor sales figures and shelf warmer as well as people complaining why the figures people want aren't included in that wave.

People are going to complain whatever.
Constructive critisim is helpful and can be acted upon, but can't always be, depending on the sales/marketing strategy being used.