I think that faces the same Rancor problem of 'where do I put this?' It's a huge footprint, it'd be over 3' wide by 3' long I think and there's not really a great way to display it vertically.
True, granted, they could fudge the scale a bit in places. Plus I'd say it's probably one of the most iconic visual aspects of Star Wars.
While that's true, I feel the X-Wing is far more iconic than a Rancor, and would at least fit better as a centerpiece among collections
I think that about a lot of the haslabs, just too big, but such considerations didn't hamper the 5-foot sail barge. I think it has to do with better/cheaper lightsaber options from other sources, and the fact that it's from a c-list character no one knew before 20 minutes ago. The SW team doesn't seem to fundamentally grasp the fact that SW stuff won't automatically sell anymore just because you put "Star Wars" on it. That might have been true in the past, but money is tight, the market is saturated with tons of SW stuff (as well as other cool non-SW stuff), and they simply no longer have a license to print money. They *gasp* have to actually make a compelling value proposition to their potential consumers. They've gotten lazy b/c that's never been a consideration before. They should ask the Joe folks for some lessons.
That is what I meant. Disney killed their ability to do those figures and a few more and as a result they can't
This, so much this! If I were them I would play it safe for now and make something like the Cloud Car for Black Series. However, have them able to split into their own separate vehicles like the Hasbro 2010 version and each car transformable like the 90’s Hasbro Expanded Universe Cloud Car.
Today is the first day that I've seen the Reva Saber with a net gain of zero backers; it actually gained another few backers by yesterday early evening putting it over 1300, and this morning is back to 1298 when several canceled, the first time I've seen that since I started watching this campaign. While I doubt the saber was going to enjoy all that much consumer crossover with the HISS tank, there is definitely a sense of only so much room for this stuff. Yeah, it cannot feel good to be them. I do wonder if they were backed into a corner on this by the licensor, Disney insisting they support the show with a new Force FX Elite saber that they knew couldn't get the sales and they talked Disney into letting them put it to the consumer. It's still a lot of lost money in R&D and marketing on this disaster, and it still feels like they really don't know their customers at all to even take it to that level. I dunno about either of those being home runs just because Disney Parks recently did an adequate Sandcrawker and the big AT-AT already exists, but absolutely agree they'd do a sight better than this toilet-flush of an entry.
Definitely not good for the Star Wars teams. We already knew from the sales call last year that Star Wars selling poorly but then to spend money on two big projects and not make anything from them has surely put them in a very bad position.
Current Star Wars situation reminds me of the slow deterioration of the Jurassic brand under Hasbro's watch. Went from business as usual under Kenner for The Lost World to a drastic swap in scale to fit price points instead in JP3, to churning out redecoes as filler lines to keep the license on standby, to the aborted Joe-scale and/or literal Joe crossover stuff with promise, to handing off the merch to a D-team by the time we finally got Jurassic World and the line looking like shit, costing Hasbro the license entirely. Hasbro isn't at the World stage of development with Star Wars, maybe hovering between JP3 and redeco placeholders, but it's not great, and these two HasLab failures aren't going to look good to The Mouse.
How much did they spend though? It's not like they already made the tooling for that thing. So they spent the time and effort to make a digital render, big whoop. The whole point of these projects is that they take a year to make because most of the work happens after the campaign is over. Campaign fails, 95% of the cost/effort never happens, no big deal. These dud campaigns likely hurt their ego and status to the higher-ups, but I doubt it does anything to the bottom line.
yep. Disney wants their new model "family" friendly lineup. Only what the mouse says will get made. Hence also no more Cara Dune. Gino pissed off the mouse, they axed her. Now no more figures. Funny how in demand she became after getting fired. They think slave Leia is offensive and sexist. So that's out. Guess that's why I am glad I stopped collecting Star Wars. Kathleen Kennedy has been worse to the franchise than Lucas' prequel trilogy and Jar Jar Binks.
I think more can go into it than that, but it varies. Like the HISS had that very large... breadboard? (where does Hasbro keep getting these terms) to show off with much of the engineering in place, just some smaller things left to tweak. Other HasLabs have had similar partial progress made on them. I have paid zero attention to the saber so no clue how far they've gone with that one, and the cost is probably insignificant to Hasbro, but would still exist. EDIT: Yeah there you go. Given all the details and electronics implemented, it's going to be more sophisticated than some proof of concept kitbashed together, too.
A fully working prototype isn't the same as a production piece though. They had a fully working prototype of Unicron at SDCC2019, but that was 3d printed and hand painted. None of the tooling (which is one of the more expensive aspects of production) had been finalized yet. Could be (and likely was) a similar situation for Reva's saber.
Considering that I know many fans who were brought into Star Wars because of the prequel trilogy, hard disagree. Many of them prefer it over the OT, and they have every right to enjoy what they enjoy. I do agree that the current Lucasfilm has forgotten that this brand is designed to sell toys. They really need some kind of brand coordinator who actually collects SW merchandise. Edit: I legit thought this was the SW discussion thread, haha!
Where do we put any of our stuff? The problem for the Rancor was that it alone wasn’t worth $350, and the tiers certainly didn’t make up the difference. most fans weren’t going to back it for the Rancor alone at that price, and getting a Gamorrean Guard, a figure every BS collector already had, certainly didn’t make it worth that price? Second tier…some cheap display accessories. Still not there. Salacious Crumb and Luke Skywalker — neither are worth a premium price because you know a new Luke will be made eventually and at some point Crumb is going to get made in some form. There was not a single tier item that made the total package worth $350. nothing about that project was premium except the price.
It still costs a lot of time and money to make the prototypes for these things. I am not sayin "poor Hasbro is losing money", what I am saying is that from the executive level they have watched the Hasbro Star Wars team work who knows how much time and money on two big projects that have not seen any tangible profits. On top of that the Star Wars products aren't doing well at retail. I just feel sympathy for the team since that must weigh on them heavily since it makes it more likely for Hasbro to change up the Star Wars team, i.e. possible layoffs.
They used the electronics from another saber and handcrafted a prototype handle. Still doesn't mean they spent any real money. Zero chance they did the tooling in advance of the campaign.
The amounts of money that Hasbro deals with in a daily basis is in an order of magnitude more than we consumer plebs can really imagine. I say this because I'm absolutely convinced the money that went into the lightsaber and Rancor is the equivalent of me accidentally dropping a few US pennies and a nickel on the ground and shrugging my shoulders and moving on. Nothing more than one off prototypes. How many prototypes for toys that are successful ultimately get scrapped or shelved that we DON'T see? A Haslab failing isn't a problem financially. I see it more of a PR failing as collectors might lose faith in the brand if they feel they aren't being served.
