Honestly, I think it would just be a new-mold non-transforming thing if they were going to do the Illumina II. Even if they gave it a couple points of articulation, it would still be nowhere near the R&D costs of an actual proper Transformer.

 

If being angry about toys is the standard for mental illness, the whole forum should be in straitjackets.

 

The natural assumption is that a limited run toy is a higher-quality toy than retail.

Exactly. Star Saber is being marketed as a better toy than what would be available at retail.

 

And that would be assuming things that just aren't true and weren't advertised as such either. Unicron, for example, was specifically labelled as "War for Cybertron Unicron". So the immediate assumption should've been that we'd get a Unicron that was made to fit in with the current War for Cybertron lineup. Which is precisely what we received. Same deal with the Star Wars Sail Barge. They didn't give it a collector's plaque, or hand-paint it, or put it in a special case, or anything of the sort. It was put in a box designed to look like an off-the-shelf Kenner toy from the 80s.

It's "special" because the item is something they don't imagine being able to sell at retail, not because they're trying to give us a somehow above-retail-quality toy.

No it's not. You're just being blinded by the unique presentation, and unable to read beyond the standard marketing language. I mean, do you read your restaurant menus at face value when they go on about their "delicately pan seared" pork chops with "home-made, artisanal" applesauce? It's just a pork chop and applesauce by the time it gets to you. You have no actual clue how much actual work or special technique went into the prep, but there's all sorts of flowery language used there to get you pumped up. Marketing jingo is always that way.

 

Unicron costed me four times more than a titan class figure, so even accounting for a markup due to it being a limited run, I expected it to be of higher quality than a titan class figure. And while I think it's indeed better built and engineered than the titans I own, I wasn't pleased with some of the cost cutting measures Hasbro took. On the other hand, it costed me only twice the much smaller MP 44, so I never expected it to have MP level engineering.

Victory Saber costs only a bit more than I would pay for a separate commander Star Saber and leader Victory Leo, so I'm not expecting something that blows away a regular retail release. I would be willing to pay an higher price for some improvements, but so far I'm pleased by what Hasbro showed.

 

Unicron had as much mass as three Titans, and probably half the production numbers, if even that.

That is also part of the factor, in that people are used to how things are costed when economics of scale swing (mostly) in their favour. High price tags aren't necessarily the mark of a higher quality product, but more likely a much lower production run.

And then that swings back into all those piles of "useless" accessories people complain about with their Masterpieces and the like. Those are "value-added" inclusions, to make the high-costed product seem like a better deal. Cutting the accessories wouldn't drop the price tag by the $30-50 discount that some people wish for. More like, $5 at best. Instead, they make you go "well, Starscream was $100 more than I would've wanted, but at least I got the stand and all these extra faces and blast effects and episode-specific gear that would've cost me another $50 from a 3rd Party, so it's not a terrible deal..."

 

7,708! We're officially past the 70% funded mark, which is extra impressive since we still haven't seen color pics or renders!

 

Unicron had a stand, alternate faces, an alternate chins and a geared gimmick- none of those are found in the WFC lineup. It's definitely not a standard WFC figure.

The sail barge was of a much higher quality than toys released in the classic Kenner line and the modern line. It was a special release, the level of detail exceeded anything in mainline.

Unique presentation.... a facet of marketing. Unique marketing. Because its not being presented as an ordinary release.

 

Tongue firmly in cheek but - as this is a made to order 'crowdfund', isn't it by definition a better toy than available at retail as it won't/can't be offered at traditional retail?  

So definitely better than no toy or one with even further cuts to make it fit standard retail RRP.

 

Okay, let's try this again. There's a level of extra effort beyond a simple mainline release because they know it's a collectible piece that they'll never be able to tackle again in that form, but they're not pretending to go so far out of the box that the toy won't fit in with their respective toylines. They've never suggested that they'll give us Masterpiece-level bells and whistles. Expecting that they'll do so with zero precedent for it is extremely wishful thinking.

 

The precedent is Unicron. He had MP-level bells and whistles. The aforementioned inclusion of alternate chins isn't slightly extra, it's a massive step above mainline in terms of attention-to-detail. Both Unicron and Saber have been described as fitting into the mainline by Hasbro, but one is far, far more boutique than the other.

Keep in mind, Saber isn't Titan price outside North America. He's £40 more than a titan in the UK. For example, Selects Black Zarak's price had a straight conversion between dollars and sterling, ($180 became £140) whilst Saber gets a massive increase in price for no reason. ($180 became £180) So yeah, I'd say the marketing and price describe a far more boutique toy.

 

And that's what I just said. There's some extras because they're trying to make these releases as "complete" as possible, because they'll never get to revisit these projects. But they didn't paint him like a Masterpiece. They didn't engineer him like one. There was no real attempt to gap-fill, etc, etc. A lot of the bonuses that we got with Unicron probably would've been presented as stretch goals, had Unicron been marketed the same way as later HasLabs.

There's a few extra bells and whistles compared to standard off-the-shelf product, because as I alluded to above, extra bells and whistles provide that sense that you're getting your money's worth. The direct-to-consumer business model means that they have to try that extra bit harder to grab the attention of potential buyers.

Again, you're projecting your desires on the project, rather than actually looking at what they're actually selling. Hasbro has never stated themselves that HasLab projects are "boutique", or suggested that there's somehow higher standards to their design quality. I reiterate, that's just stuff us fans have made up out of whole cloth to justify the higher price tags. But again, the ultimate governing factor of the pricing is not a higher production standard, but low production numbers.

 

Not "standard" but not exactly that far out there. Rodimus has a Matrix, a bunch of blast effects, that sword from that one comic, and a functional trailer with "hydraulics". But they're both still WFC.

That being said, the paint they did do is actually very well done, the "maw" aside, and they did include screw hole covers which is something I appreciated a lot. But yes, these HasLabs are more "Special Edition" than something completely divorced from retail.

 

The screw covers were not so much a factor of "premium presentation", but a necessity to disguise the cost-cutting of doubling up a number of his parts left-to-right, and the ugly mismatched screw holes that created.

 

Yeah but they didn't have to include for a fix for that, like how they usually don't when it comes to unsightly gaps in most figures, but for this they didn't just let it go. And I appreciated that.

 

Well I'm happy as heck that we are getting this figure (hollow cannons and all   ) and I keep checking the count every day like a nut even though I know it probably hasn't changed much since the last time I checked, but that 1400 boost awhile back was so fun I can't help looking and hoping for a new surprise number increase!   

Speaking of that I'm happy to see we passed 7700. But we still need to double that to get the 1st stretch goal so I hope they post the Japan orders soon and don't wait until the very end.

 

I think it's a foregone conclusion that external vendor orders will be added in the last week (Unicron was 4 days before the end.)

I predict 2 surges in orders:

1) Hasbro puts out color renders and/ or color prototypes.

2) however it happens (before or after item 1 above) we hit 11k, it becomes officially funded, and everyone who has been waffling because of the incorrect thoughts "i don't want to fund something not guaranteed/ i don't want to pay and then get it refunded" suddenly say "oh! Now it's a guaranteed thing! Now I can join in!"

*the misconceptions in item 2 have been debunked 11,000 times here, yet people still believe them...

 

So I see a few people here and there saying HasLab should be "boutique" when in reality it is just "niche" products. Most of the projects so far have been literally big projects that didn't make it to retail because of the sheer size of the product's design and the cost that the size entails to be profitable. If we are going to compare Victory Saber to any other project it should be HeroQuest because it essentially on the same level as Victory Saber in terms of price, size, and obscurity. Both were put on HasLab because Hasbro weren't sure if enough people actually wanted them to be profitable at retail.

Another thing I see a lot is people saying that for the prices we are paying they should be of the highest quality but a lot of the arguments tend to rely on prices of figures released decades ago. I saw a video online that was trying to make the argument that HasLab Galactus should only be $80 US because 6 inch Marvel Legends figures were $10 in the 90's but $25 now so Hasbro is obviously just trying to price gouge their customers.

 

The thing is, I’m not sure why the people on the fence don’t just back it, seeing as you don’t get charged unless it gets made. Then if it doesn’t get produced,no harm to ur bank account in the slightest

 

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be backing this, but I'd really like some official color renders of it.