I don't think there are public sources on that. Just lots of statements about how a literal majority of Avatar and Titanic were repeat viewings, how bigger budget movies need repeat viewings, and how Hollywood's shift to superhero and fandom oriented franchises was because they found they could get many more repeat viewings.
Repeat viewings give films legs, but are less likely to impact opening weekend. Fewer and fewer films stay in theaters for any length of time and Titanic and Avatar are two of the most notable exceptions, even when compared to a typically successful blockbuster. For the estimate of three viewings per person on average, it would imply 2/3 of the box office take is repeated viewings, and that's just implausible given the theater going habits of modern Americans. It also flies in the face of every studio's marketing strategy - if they only needed 3% of the audience to show up, they wouldn't be making four quadrant films (Four-quadrant movie - Wikipedia). They would more likely ape the modern tv model which tends to narrowcast to specific demographics as a viewership of 10 million is now considered a major hit, something that would have been cancelled immediately in 70s even though the US population was only 2/3 as large). Regardless, my point was not that merchandise can make the film profitable, but that a gaming focused HasLab can succeed regardless of the film. Sure a specific movie themed prop or toy would likely live or die with the film, but D&D as a franchise has existed for decades without mass media tie ins. A HasLab needs only to appeal to 10,000-20,000 backers out of an estimated 13+ million active gamers.How Many D&D Players Are There Worldwide?
Yeah. I probably spoke out of turn. The point I was more committed to was about converting die hard fans into buyers for premium product. (Which, in a retail sense, probably most stuff over $30 without an action feature.) I think we're mostly in agreement there. A Haslab doesn't NEED a ton of backers but it does need motivated backers. That said, with inflation and customer sticker shock lately, I can see where Hasbro might want to start setting its minimum production floors higher. A low floor generally means a higher base asking price in crowdfunding. A higher threshold for funding can generally allow you to maintain or lower prices. Dan Yun said Galactus would be over $500 today. Last I checked, aftermarket Galactuses had trouble selling for an amount that would clear that after selling fees. I don't think they can really pursue much in the way of higher prices and they may need to pursue lower ones. The exception I see is Ghostbusters. Even with the new Spirit Halloween 1:1 pack for $250 (or less with a coupon), most people feel like they got almost too good of a value on their pack. And almost everyone spent another $125 on a wand. And a lot of people spent hundreds modifying or upgrading their packs from stock. I only spent a couple hundred on upgrades and I see a lot who spent a lot more. I think there's a premium roleplay market for Ghostbusters that could allow for Haslabs well over $500. It needs to probably be all inclusive next time (no separate wand purchase) and probably not in direct competition with the 84 Spirit pack. Slime Blower? Maybe. Real Ghostbusters or video game pack? Maybe. A deluxe set of everything else you need for a stock costume like PKE Meter, trap, radio, belt gizmo, etc? Maybe! A lot of these people aren't habitual toy buyers and a lot are still prepared to spend a lot on Ghostbusters prop replicas. If you offer something that doesn't require a separate purchase next time, I think you could probably get away with over $500 if it's 20 pounds of goodies in some form and there's no separate purchase required this time. For most stuff, I think they need to freeze or lower prices. That probably means smaller stuff like Victory Saber/Deathsaurus and/or higher backer goals. Like I say, a higher minimum lets you freeze or lower the price. And since they CAN get to 20-30k conceivably, bumping the minimum up to 15k to keep the price lower seems reasonable. I think you'd generally have an easier time moving 15k at a lower price than 8-10k at a higher one right now. Except Ghostbusters. Like I say, those guys are still spending big money. And I think they struggled to hit 20k last time. So that makes sense to me as a high price, low target project. You just have to throw in whistles and bells that make them feel like they're getting everything in the box and won't need to spend another $350 above Hasbro's price on upgrades. One of those cases where, IMHO, if you have to raise the price $100 or $200 to get it perfect out of the box, you can do that because those guys will spend $500 doing it themselves through upgrades if you don't. So they'll legitimately look at you charging a premium for a premium product as saving them money because they'll keep spending money on upgrades if you don't spend the extra money to make it perfect to begin with.
Even though the economics of making them is exactly the same, I think customers view cosplay items and props are differently from toys and may be more willing to pay higher prices (though that didn't help the Reva saber, but I think that's a different issue). In the case of Ghostbusters it probably also helped that there are a lot of people with jumpsuits out there and the fanbase was starved for product for 30 years. The same is probably true of games like D&D and HeroQuest, though I don't know if that means people would be willing to spend more or spend less. I'm also no sure what you could sell gamers outside of miniatures and models that would justify a HasLab price. I'll be very curious to see what they come up with. As for economy of scale, I agree that they could sell these cheaper if they made higher quantities, but I have no idea just how much cheaper. For factories that normally have runs 10x larger or more, I don't know that it would make a significant difference. I have to assume a company like Hasbro has crunched the numbers and they certainly know it better than I do. Take the Hellcharger. That failed pretty hard at $350. What would have gotten it funded? $300? How many backers would it have needed in that case? 20 thousand? More? No idea. I also think fans have not fully incorporated recent inflation into their price expectations. We want 2023 toys for 2019 prices, but that isn't happening. It doesn't matter how much the production costs have increased - fans don't see those numbers. We only see we're spending more on food and gas and have less for toys. And as it is collectors are complaining about cut corners (and have been for years). So many have invested in the current line and scale, I'm not sure it would benefit them to cut back further. In short, I am not surprised by the long gap we've had between projects. After the Hellcharger, Heroquest, and Reva Saber failed in quick succession, I imagine they needed to step back and reevaluate.
I think the Hellcharger would have funded at around $200, personally. There's a lot that wasn't obvious or intuitive there. Having two Robbie figures probably partially baked into the cost never made sense or motivated people IMHO because Hasbro almost never does secret identity figures to begin with. Many of the figures didn't directly relate and so you had people who only wanted the tiers or only wanted the car. Finally, I don't think it was necessary intuitive that Hasbro probably assigned a "retail value" of over $25 to Mephisto. I really, really think they should have just had a stripped down car with Robbie for $200 at whatever backer goal they needed. And gone much smaller with the tiers. parceling back out things from the base package. Robbie head and chain accessory at 12k. Fire effects at 14k. Regular street racing tires at 16k. Maybe even parcel out the electronics and working trunk as tiers if it keeps the base price down. I think it's difficult to do 1:1 with modern Kickstarters without having different tiers of backing and ala carte add-ons. But, ultimately, without that, everything about a product needs to be priced as low as possible and related to one another. If you did a hypothetical Optimus Prime Haslab (I know they won't), don't do Bumblebee or Blaster as tiers. Keep tiers small, cheap, and closely related. Stuff like Optimus Prime stickers or an energon axe. Tiers shouldn't be what motivates someone to back and they shouldn't be high value IMHO.
Considering that most of the recent inflation is the result of corporate price gouging and resource mismanagement there's no reason for consumers to adjust their price expectations on luxury items like toys. You mentioned folks are spending more on food. Baby food prices skyrocketed during a shortage because Abbot Labs was investing $27 billion into stock buybacks instead fixing dilapidated food processing units in their factories. Egg prices should have increased by 13-25% to cover the loss of hens to bird flu, increasing prices for chicken feed and transportation. Instead we saw egg prices sore up 260%, while egg distributors like Cal-Maine saw profits increased by 718%. Many companies that were profitable prior to covid used those profits to fascilitate larger corporate loans which they then used to finance stock buybacks. These companies nearly went bankrupt during the pandemic, and are currently passing the costs of their financial mismanagement onto the customer. Every time I dig into inflation costs the root almost always seems to be terrible and unethical decision making at the executive levels. Unfortunately companies like Hasbro and Mattel aren't exempt from this. I fully support any collector that rejects the current pricing models on non-necessities. $25 for a deluxe Transformer or $18 for a Star Wars Vintage Collection figure isn't the result of increasing labor and material costs regardless of how many times brand managers like to mention that particular talking point. If it was something like materials and labor then prices should be going up across the board. Instead we only see these insane price increases with US toy companies that rely on big box retailers. In comparison BossFight Studios has increased the price of their deluxe vitruvian hacks figures by $2. In early 2020 I bought JoyToy's Crossfire Kwai and Ling figures for $35 each and today I can buy JoyToy's Warhammer 40k Ravenguard Intercessors for $35 each. The same goes for model kits from companies like Eastern Model and Nuke Matrix. By comparing the Ramen Racer and Spirit of Vengeance we can see how much padding Hasbro added to their project. Another factor is that Hasbro chooses to make everything to the 4+ safety standards. In the collector market that only serves to increase costs without increasing value. Bobby Vala articulated an excellent point about how meeting the 4+ standards would increase the costs of his Action Force line while his customer base doesn't care one iota about such things.
I'm one of the first to call out gouging and I think it's happened here. The problem is that once a few people in the supply chain do it, everyone else is along for the ride. Hasbro's profits aren't up and weren't up at the start of the inflationary cycle. But if they get charged more for freight and plastic, etc. they're going to pass those costs on.
Next GI Joe Haslab tease? https://twitter.com/HasbroPulse/sta...0?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet
https://twitter.com/HasbroPulse/status/1654515072356548609?t=ydRXv3vXM3X3JRPD-3ztAQ&s=19 Interesting that the post mentions the HISS Tank running on Dark Energon at first
You don’t think they are doing a more detailed Megatron HISS Tank as a crossover HasLab? That would be very weird.
I doubt it, especially since the Destro says that the Dark Energon crystals were unstable, so they switched to more conventional engines. Still curious to see a cross IP thing mentioned in one of these posts.
A Classified sized HISS tank that transforms would be pretty cool but on the heels of a regular HISS tank and with the regular one seemingly not moving much, I just don't see it.
That Dark Energon mention is intriguing. it feels unlikely it is relevant to the Haslab, the most likely answer to us is its a meaningless easter egg, either to Transformers generally or that Megatron but... I mean its a decision made knowing everyone is going to read into that and despite the above logic I am certainly reading into it. Plus unless I am misreading these teases it sounds like the Cobra thing is the HISS Tank and this is GI Joe finding out about it to bring their own counterpart so... Cobra considering Dark Energon for the HISS again seems unconnected... unless it prompts the Joes to use Energon for their own thing. Well, I have many questions and I suppose that future interest is good for marketing
I think the relevant takeaway there is that Mole Rats are miners who have been harvesting Dark Energon from mines. That's really more of a clue about the upcoming Mole Rats figure. As far as the fudgee bar referencing Quick Kick, I don't know. I think they might just be fudgee bars because they're an in-universe food. The key IMHO is them being FROZEN (even on Cobra Island). Longfellow wrote Paul Revere's Ride, which could be a reference to this Joe sending a warning. He also frequently wrote about cold and snow and the definitive biography of him is "Cross of Snow", after a poem he wrote. There's a famous race held in honor of his birthday called the FROSTBITE run. Frostbite with Snowcat, I think.
That makes a lot of sense, do not actually know anything about GI Joe but apparently I enjoy following Classified reveals now. Thanks
Well, the unredacted version would be the name of the project. I just mean the number of Xes might not mean anything.
