Well said!

 

What? His last point was that the PWTToo logo was based off of an image that may very well be the intellectual property of Mattel. Start a company and use Megatron's headshot as a logo. Your "business shouldn't own culture!" argument isn't going to hold up in a court of law when Hasbro sicks their legal team on you.

The entire attitude of the people running this thing has been naive.
"We were frustrated at Hasbro, with those business people telling us what to do. We're artists, and now we'll do what we want!"
Well you know what? Those boardroom types? They know what's going to sell, what's going to make the company profitable. And if your artistic talents can help in that? Great. If the company thrives you, as the artist, will have more freedom to express yourself.
You know what happens when you have a group of artists who feel they don't need the business end of things? You get a cluttered, directionless product because everyone is doing their own thing with little to no direction. See 90s Image Comics. Or PWTToo.

I understand why people want the art of it all to be the most important part, but reality simply doesn't work that way. What the artist wants to express isn't always going to be what the public wants to buy. Among the many things PWTToo needs to address before trying again? They need to rethink their internal philosophy. Understand that the free reign of the artist and a utopia of creative expression isn't the best business model.
Do they need to abandon everything they want to do? No! They do, however, need a more structured and more business-conscious approach. And simply hiring an accountant isn't enough.

 

Car Wars was first published in 1981.

Battlecars, from Games Workshop, was published in 1983 and Dark Future (also by GW) was published in 1988.


That Ogre box will haunt me until I die. The logistics involved in manufacturing and shipping were insane.

For something extremely crazy here's the video we posted after spending time in the factory during the Ogre manufacturing.

https://youtu.be/YiLQwZbb0tY

You guys are making me smile.  

 

Nope, but that doesn't make it less of a valid philosophical point though.

 

They don't, I just think they do. 
I just found a Car Wars forum, AND custom Hot Wheels:

How cool are they!

 

I'm keen on letting companies keep their IP. If we start declaring certain types of "property" to no longer belong to its owners? Well then someone could take my stuff away from me. And I'd rather not have that, as I've grown rather attached to my stuff  
So when push comes to shove? I'll always back the rights of people who own something to defend their right to it.

Further? Philosophical points don't make for sound business strategies and don't turn a profit. Which is what PWTToo ultimately has to do to succeed.

 

That was awesome. My local store had the finished box for sale, but thats as close as I ever got to it.

Looks like I will be in for the Car Wars, though.....

 

Sorry that the KS didn't make the base goal.

As for suggestions I would like to point out that having an inhouse sculpter or 3D artist would help tremendously. Not only would it have saved them costs in this KS but also would have helped in keeping things real. The proto didn't look exactly like the drawing it was supposed to be based on and that is because the PWTToo artists don't work in 3D.

What happened here is that a hired sculptor got paid to make an action figure out of a 2D design. An inhouse sculptor would have told the artists, while they were working on the designs, what could and what could not be possible to do in a real life action figure for the price they had in mind. Would have helped to set limits, something this project really needed.

I bet that the 4H and the companies that have made the other successful action figure KS have tons of drawings filled with ideas too but only show the ones that were actually economicaly viable to them.

 

But philosophical discussions might. We know that a powerful way to help an organization to grow is to use action research methods. A step in the iterative cycles of that form or research is to let the participants discuss the identified problem using theories. In this endeavour it is important to let the participants get a hold of their own values and views, and for doing this philosophical discussions might be needed.

I know that PWTToo aren't participating in action research I'm just trying to say that philosophical discussions shouldn't be overlooked.

 

Don't worry, I never got a copy. I was so focused on making sure the project was flowing that when it came time for employee comps I never grabbed one. And now it's too late.

Starts later today! I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of interest there is for Car Wars support. Car Wars Arenas

 

Is that the game too? Haven't played it since like high school. Not likely ever to again, but could check it for nostalgia (stretch goal that turning key into a piece of perspex!). It was the first RPG/Wargame I owned and just loved designing cars. I remember filling up maths books with designs, photocopied counters with the latest coloured printers, laminating printouts and maps and my first challenge building a car killer with six heavy rockets linked to a ramplate...

Anyway, I was distracted looking for those other action figure Kickstarters and found Chaos of Cthulhu. Not sure about the game itself, but those dice on its own with the Mignola like artwork look fantastic enough for me to insta-pledge.

Cthulhu fans need to know about this,

coz those Cthulhu dice are awesome!

 

How? How does the nebulous idea that "business" shouldn't own "culture" help?
Look, I'm not for shutting down philosophical discussion, but I don't see how trying to argue this point is relevant. This isn't anything particularly deep, after all. It's an independent toy company trying to get funded. Let's not make it out to be more then that.

It's a very simple situation, really. How they've been going about things was flawed. People have been offering concrete suggestions about how they can improve. From improving their Kickstarter to improving how they interact with their potential costumers and backers to reassessing how they look at the business side of all of this. That's the discussion that PWTToo is going to have to pay attention to if they want to have a second, successful, go at this.

 

I just saw your sig LordGiga, and now I Want Autobot and Decepticon dice too!
I actually bought that lame Star Wars Lego game, just for the dice. I don't even play games anymore, just think some random dice look cool, lol.

 

Sorry, should have been more clear. I was talking about philosophical discussions in general not the "culture" issue in particular. I have a tendency to always ending up in philosophical discussions. But that is cause I find it so interesting, it is a way of getting under the skin of the person I'm discussing with and to get a deeper understanding and sometimes respect of what they are basing their views and opinions on. In that respect philosophical discussions with customers could give a company interesting data.

 

That allspark.com post -- Why Did the Play With This Too Kickstarter Project Fail? | The Allspark -- deserves a read. Very well-crafted and offers strong suggestions on how this could perform better when relaunched.

Over on my site -- Spotted Online ? ?Why Did the Play With This Too Kickstarter Project Fail?? -- mazintotoro points out that some heroic characters may have helped. I had not even considered that . . . and he's right. Villains/monsters are just not as cool as they are when paired with a heroic character.

 

Well, the pretty much had to open with one mold and it's repaints/remolds, and since they picked Desolataur and company, they are going to be a monsters in the beginning. I think the only heroic characters in the initial offering are R-Mix, Atomic Splatterpus and the two blue BMOGs. That's 12 villains vs. 4 heroes in the initial offering.

I should point out though that Muscules and the Strikers were heroes in the Lost Protectors series, even if they remind us of Decepticon toys from the 80... and Skull-F was a good guy.

 

There is an inherent problem with the second suggestion in that article:

Laudable in theory, but...

Which is more likely to make me cut my spending in some other area in order to be able to afford figures in a new line: articulated 'homages' to Masterforce and Classics Pretenders, with a new mythology added in to encourage me to buy other stuff in the line, or a new mythology with nothing recognizable?

If you're not into Masterforce or the Classic Pretenders, insert "MotU-style snakemen" or "Stranglehold" as appropriate. If none of those appeal, maybe you would have pledged $900 if all of these were completely new characters, with a well-explained mythology up front. But I wouldn't have, and I'm sure some other people wouldn't have either.

I'm not saying "we" are right and "they" (or "you") are wrong. I'm saying that part of their current action figure-purchasing target audience (including myself) would remove themselves from the picture with the removal of the homages even as (hopefully) a new target audience is engaged. (If they completely remove all homages for the next go-around and succeed, then congratulations to them. I'll be disappointed I didn't get what was offered during this Kickstarter, but oh well. First world problems and all that.)

The huge number of unlockable rewards gives us an insight into their process. The figures in Level X+1 require only a few new parts besides the ones used for the figures in Level X. (I would make a guess that the additional funding for each set of heads included had a cushion toward the next set of figures, but have no evidence of that.) It was actually very sensibly and practically arranged, but the emotional component ("The heroes aren't until level 10? The guy I want isn't until level 17?") was left out.

 

They ultimately lost sight of what 3rd Party Transformers collectors want. That is Transformer toys. Ditch the changing limb gimmick, give us the Pretenders we had as kids give them a decent scale toy with a modern edge was all they needed to do.

Along with that, rather than constant un-lockable stuff they should have moved it to retail and away from kick starter once they got the start they needed. I simply do not trust Kickstarter or a any 3rd Party company directly (iGear thought me that one), I trust TFS, Captured Prey, Tony, etc because they have great customer service and are established people I know I can buy from who will fix things if something goes wrong. The longer this line stayed in kick starter and more things "unlocked" the less trusting I got.

Maybe next time, keep it simple, go for 1 toy but show the wider plan if things go to retail and go well?

 

I honestly wouldn't give the all spark article much of a read. It is clear that guy had been banking on the KS failing and it's obvious he is no fan of third party products. That article went up five minutes after the Kickstarter failed.