I really think bad advertising shot the Rancor in the foot. I couldn't justify the price without the extra, though I really, REALLY wanted to. LOL If they had said from the start what the tiers would have been, I could have seen it funding.
Like ARAH with Joe and G1 with TF, Disney and Hasbro cannot move away from OT. Mando is all the rage currently, but look at what happened when Kenobi dropped. The money will always be with OT until that generation dies, and most of these franchises will also die as the children of the 00s do not care about these properties as people in there late 30s through 60s. Look at original 64 Joe, that generation is going away, while some of us care about the 60s Joe's, ARAH is what G.I. Joe is.
The price was what killed the Rancor as it was being compared to the other big figures HasLab had already released/funded; the Sentinel getting into people's hands during the Rancor campaign and Galactus's campaign ending a couple months before. The Rancor was smaller than both of those figures by a large margin, was made up of less pieces, had no electronics, had less articulation, and had fever extra figures and accessories. Yet it was still the same price as the Sentinel and only $50 less than Galactus. I don't know if Disney asked for a larger cut of Star Wars merch profits so the price had to be inflated to be profitable for Hasbro but the price never seemed justified from a consumer standpoint.
That's how I felt when it was funding. Like it wasn't going to be worth the price, though if it had unlocked everything, I would have totally gone in. The Hellcharger was the one I absolutely thought was overpriced.
Any guesses on when (or if) the next Haslab is announced? Recent success record hasn't been all that great; seems like Hasbro is pulling back from this sales model a bit.
There's been 11 funded and 4 failed (that are recorded on Pulse, 5 failed counting Cookie Monster). Of the 4 that have failed, 2 were Star Wars, 1 was Marvel and 1 was a game. I think it's more likely that Hasbro has been re-evaluating Star Wars and Marvel in terms of what might fund as a Haslab rather than thinking they're pulling back from the sales model. If I recall correctly, there's supposed to be Haslabs announced for DnD, Transformers and I think I heard rumors of a Vintage Collection Star Wars Haslab coming sometime this year.
They teased a new Star Wars one at Celebration like... a week ago. With it being The Ghost I see it being timed for funding around the time of Ahsoka airing in August. Reva's saber (and the general output of Star Wars merch) suggests to me they will want it to be topical while at the same time making it a Vintage vehicle and something that has been around for ten years already and is just reappearing in a new show means it might not fall on its face.. at least not as hard. So yeah, my guess is that is being presold by August and we will get an announcement... sometime before then. Then I would guess with that going for three months Transformers comes sometime around October-December. Also agree with Fenrys that outside Star Wars, Haslab has been going pretty well. Though Marvel did the two obvious things and failed on the third one for being not what anyone wanted so there's probably a lot of thinking going on from that team too.
There's also the fact that sometimes multiple Haslabs run at the same time (which isn't exactly a good strategy in my opinion, but it is what it is).
-An Avengers Haslab was teased two Fan Streams ago -TVC had one teased last week -Rumors of D&D Haslab I think we're a bit off still from a TF Haslab, I don't think we'll get another one till the 40th as they usually don't announce one project till the previous one is at the end of its production.
Admittedly, I totally spaced on the Avengers one. If I recall correctly, there was some sort of investor call or meeting that had some tease at both a DnD Haslab (thought to be a movie tie in at the time) and a ROTB Haslab.
Oh that's super interesting, never considered an RotB Haslab, that could be cool but I'm starting to question those ones as now were building quite the back catalog of Haslabs to do and we don't need another scenario where we had several projects at the same time gutting each other.
Like I said, I could be misremembering, but I vaguely recall some sort of powerpoint slide or something indicating future haslabs for both.
There really isn't a "usually" with HasLab projects yet, especially TF HasLabs. Before Deathsauras we all thought they would space out TF HasLabs by 2 years since Unicron was in 2019 and Victory Saber was in 2021. Next thing you know they surprise us with Deathsauras a little over a year after the VS campaign. I could see them doing another TF HasLab soon so it is out for the 40th anniversary rather than have the campaign start during the 40th.
Next Haslabs is for SW is probably the TVC version of the Ghost. The Next Marvel attempt will be Avengers based. Then G.I. Joe (Classifieds) is next, followed by a TF and maybe a 2nd Joe project (ARAH 3 3/34"). The D&D project could be on hold as the movie failed.
Not yet and it is kind of hard to even think of what they could do for one as with Power Rangers they seem to just do whatever they want at retail right now. Maybe a ZAP Titanus or Zeo Megazord due to their sizes or maybe they are holding off on the Green Ranger helmet to do it as a HasLab that comes with a shield and armbands.
While it certainly wasn't a box office success, given the critical reception and viewer satisfaction, a series on Paramount+ has been ordered for eight episodes, and a sequel is reasonably possible, I'm not sure how it really otherwise qualifies as "failed" (again, while the box office gain exceeded the budget, it wasn't enough to truly be counted as certain profit in terms of movie profit) Options for a HasLab (at LC scale): -Command Center -Power Chamber -Lightspeed Aquabase Ops center -Lightspeed Rescue Jeep -Ninja Ops -Dino Thunder base under Tommy's house -SPD Delta Base command center -Rita's palace balcony and monster workshop (Dark Dimension room as an unlock)
Rita's palace suddenly gets me spending waaaaaaay more money on the LC monsters than I currently do, which is zero.
