Nope.

 

On another note, the troll posted a screen shot on stuff i said on here and called me a dummy. I did post how I never backed or paid for any of these figures to begin with, so to call me a dummy when I didn’t have a horse in the race is pretty pathetic.

 

I must of missed it when I was looking at his profile. Either way, I hope all the people who were scammed get their money back. I hate scammers and it stinky to know that too many dishonest people walk amongst us.

 

I’d like to hear from the artist who designed the box and card art.
That was a brilliant touch to add authenticity to the project and probably cheap AF.
The artist is clearly a BW fan and was most likely happy to be attached to the project so I doubt he’ll have been paid that much. Two hundred at most out of 40k to legitimise the scam is money well spent.

It’s just baffling when a conman has the skills to make something of quality, does all the work to bring it to fruition and then bolts at the end.
The only ingredients missing here preventing these figures from becoming a reality are honesty and decency.

 

Idea: those couple of folks who got the shoddy samples could 3D scan them and sell the files for a good mint so that an actually good factory can clean them up and mass produce them in the less-than-$100 range.

That way folks can actually get a good version of the figure in quality materials and paint, and the gains from the *ahem* effort will tower over the peanuts that the guy could've actually made. As Inferno once said, "Feeeel the buuurn!"

 

A KO of a scam figure? There's something oddly endearing about that concept.

 

I know, right? Like what if it sold really well and then the guy couldn't do or say anything or he'd be exposed for the fraud. Sweeet.

 

How many people actually got one though? I know the guy with the broken leg one got his but any others? Maybe he can have someone scan it and produce it?

Sorry for offending some one with my one comment that I guess had a passing political statement in it even though I wasn’t meaning to be political or pick a side. My apologies! 

 

It’s just one of the forum rules so if a mod sees anything political it’s instantly removed. I recall reading it earlier and it definitely wasn’t offensive.
………

My ‘model kit’ has arrived in the U.K. so, as long as it’s not held up in customs, I could have it by the weekend and then I’ll know what kind of quality we have to work with!

If I had a 3D scanner I’d be all over that idea. Is that sort of thing easy to come by or commission?

 

So I'm just a lurking spectator here, but here's what's always struck me as interesting about all this:

People keep saying that the $200 price tag was too high. And it is compared to normal third party stuff. But to me it kinda seemed too low to be credible, especially when coupled with the quantity. 200 pieces doesn't sound like enough to get economies of scale on the injection molding, so that's gonna cost a pretty penny, but at the same time it's way too many for one guy to assemble and paint to a high level of quality on his own in a timely fashion.

Like ask a miniatures or modeling hobbyist how much time, effort, and money goes into assembling a custom piece -- even one that doesn't have to transform. It's a ton. I'd be impressed if you could assemble and paint one of these things in less than 4 hours -- assuming you were trying to do a good job, and are doing this on your own without factory tools and resources. If we assume he was doing this as his full-time job, that means he'd be able to complete 10 per work week, and it would take 20 weeks to get through the batch. When you factor in material costs, and the time required to deal with logistics and customer service, and oh yeah sculpt and design the dang thing, all of which are things many companies pay people to do as full-time jobs... it's hard for me to believe this can be a worthwhile, profitable endeavor for an American at $200 a pop. I could be way off base. But it never made much sense to me.

So then the question to me is: Was this a scam from the start, or a dude who didn't realize what he was signing up for?

Obviously we've seen this evidence that he's run this grift before, which suggests scam from the start. But what I don't get is: If it was a pure scam, why send out the shoddy copies?

The shoddy copy feels like the result of realizing how much time it would take to do this properly, and trying to cut corners. But that only makes sense if you intend to actually send everyone all their orders. If you were just a scammer, wouldn't you make a couple nice copies and send those out, so the buzz was "yeah, these things are fine, just be patient"?

 

I completely get where you are coming from. A few years back there was a highly-regarded customizer (Rumblefrenzy or Frenzyrumble -- something like that). The guy had an extensive portfolio and his work was beyond amazing, even put up some tutorials on how to put rivets on panels and such. Awesome stuff really, and he'd take commissions. Which were not cheap. And it would take a good long while too. But once you got your piece back it was plastic Gold.

That is, until he started depending on it for his livelihood and life-obligations and unforseen tribulations got the better of him. Then all of a sudden he couldn't complete one commission before starting another and eventually he could neither finish the job nor refund his benefactors and he became persona nongrata. Sucks and I feel for the guy.

Did I misinterpreted this one? I thought the guy was airbrushing his own maquette as a template and the "factory" producing the parts was going to apply that color pallet prior to assembly...? So the dude was gonna try to paint all 100+ pieces himself? I understand Rumblefrenzy running out of steam after YEARS of making one-of-a-kind one-off statues as a full time job, but it's logistically unfathomable for this guy to commit to that kind of volume after his "day job."

Anyone that's done any kind of cold-casting will attest to mold degradation -- your last piece is never going to look as sharp as your second. But this wasn't even assembly-line air brushing or even mass-drip-drying. It just looks like he gave up halfway before the cake came out of the oven.

If it were me realizing that my eyes were bigger than my stomach, I would tell everyone the truth: "sorry I'm overwhelmed, I'll get to these eventually, maybe five at a time and will contact you in the order each purchase was received to see if you still want it, and in the meantime here's your money back."

In any case, money was exchanged but goods/services were not rendered. Seller is in breach of contract.

 

The scam route could have been born out of a failure at a legitimate attempt. Failing to pull off what he originally intended but then realizing the scam makes lots of money regardless and then just rinse and repeat.
FYI his werewolf creatures or whatever were on BBTS at the time this thread was conceived, so that did help legitimize him to me, though I'm sure he pulled one over on BBTS as well to a degree.

 

I hate to say it but BBTS has been kinda my last resort place. It takes forever for them to fill preorders (which I'm actually ok with b/c it gives me more time to save up) but they've been burned with several upstarts that fail to deliver.

Not their fault, of course, they're just the distributor. I do like that they don't actually charge for whatever until it's in the POL so I do still use them from time to time.

 

Haven't tried this myself but it looks promising: Photogrammetry with MeshRoom

Honestly, I would love to develop 3D printed protos and then cold cast for smoother textures and crisper details to pop through a tabletop plastic extruder. Having something like this Meshroom thing (and someday the technical experience) at my disposal, I could make some seriously groovy maquettes.

I don't see why an established mold-injection facility couldn't do the same with the loose infernus components.

 

Yeah I wasn't bagging on bbts at all, just crazy how even the big boys can have one pulled over on them. (As a side note I've had nothing but good experiences with bbts outside of some longer fulfillment times, but I'm never in a rush for figures anymore and just happy when I know I'll be getting one in the near future).

 

Yup. Pretty much where I stand with them. I dunno if they have anyone that watches these boards but they might have to release some kind of statement soon for those who placed the warewolves orders.  

 

my guess is that he sent out the shoddy copy hoping it would be “good enough” for the person that received it and that word would get around that he was delivering on the product.

since he was making ; figures every 2-3 weeks (by his prior claims and dates of his posts) he’d be able to ship out 7 or 8 and stall the process until everyone was out of the refund window. Or that by shipping a few, he’d buy enough credibility and good will to get people to buy his multiple “delay” claims until he could get one more preorder going. I posted a few weeks ago that it was getting really close to the refund cutoff date for early preorder folks and that his 3-4 per batch schedule would leave a lot of people on questionable ground.

One of the red flags for me was when he put all of his prototypes for sale a few weeks ago. Right as he was “shipping” the first and second batch. Sounded like someone moving on (giving up and/or starting new scam). That was when Instarted doubting it all again (week later, he’s gone)

 

I hate to say it but seeing how s h itty of a painter he is, if I was one who ordered infernos and got this pos, id be wishing I had just gotten a Levi figure or bag of beads. The paint job is so horrendous that I wouldn’t even want to see that turd when opening the package up. Wonder if anyone local to him ordered an infernos and can confront him to get their money back. I’d show up to his house with that pos and ask him if he really thought this was $200 worthy.

 

I think the simple explanation is that he just doesn't want to spend the (as you mentioned) at least 4 additional hours making more than one high quality figure (I assume he makes one high quality copy of each figure for himself, but that's it). The whole point of a scam is to make money without putting in the legitimate legwork. And as we've seen, even the sloppy copies are enough to obscure his intentions. Honestly, I think his scheme was only undermined by his carelessness in regards to concealing his identity and location. If his connection to past scams was completely unknown, most people would be willing to accept his BS excuses about having unexpected production issues and that he would fix them in the next batch.

Also, you can see this was his same M.O. back in 2017 with the Tremors Kickstarter, if you read the comments you'll see lots of people who never got their figure interspersed with people who got a piece of crap figure:

TREMORS FIGURES, Fan Made by Beast Toys

 

So I purchased some of his resin prototypes off etsy(in addition to the regular figures).

Scorponok arrived in a padded envelope, stuffed inside another padded envelope. Interesting thing about the name of the address on the inside envelope... Joshua Smith