[Jmacq1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dolemite

They just missed it...$71,625 out of $80,000.

I had zero interest whatsoever in this line, but it's still a bummer to see the little guy take a swing at the ball and strike out.

I think they were hurt by four things:

1. Their pledge period overlapped somewhat with the Four Horseman's Mythic Legions kickstarter. Given the choice between which of the two to shell out for...Mythic Legions is the clear winner.

2. There really wasn't any world-building/story to their line, and limited "army building" opportunities that a lot of collectors go for. As one-off figures these were cool looking, but the problem is that most people only need one of a one-off figure, even if they are customizer-friendly. All of the most successful action figure kickstarters so far have had a pretty strong army-building element to them, as opposed to a shoehorned-in one that's more along the lines of "Well you COULD army-build them if you wanted!" (The major exception may be the I Am Elemental action figure Kickstarter, but that had a different "hook" going for it.

3. Tied in to #2 above: There really wasn't any "opposing forces" thing going on here. "Good guy/The mechanical-looking figures" were stretch goals at best. I get the limitations of a line just starting out, but while the monster figures were reasonably cool looking, they existed in a vacuum, without anything to really fight against except perhaps each other or figures from other lines. That gives the impression of an "incomplete" product.

4. Banking on nostalgia only goes so far, and the market for "third party" toys is, I think a bit exaggerated. Yes, those collectors that buy third party toys (mostly Transformers) are willing to shell out big bucks for them, but I think overall most collectors would just as soon wait for an "official" version as pay for a "close but not quite" version (even if there's a realistic prospect that the "official" version will never materialize). Again, I can see the logic behind their idea, and I did think some of the promo-work they showed off was reasonably clever in its' 80's references (though flooding certain toy collector websites with promo-art of stuff that wasn't even on the Kickstarter may have hurt a bit too). I think it just may have been overestimating the potential market for this particular product.