My pledge went from $900 to $1 over the course of the month. I was obviously very interested and still am so I stayed in for updates. But, as they made some boneheaded mistakes and didn't answer a lot of peoples concerns I just lost all confidence in them as a company.

It's possible they may pull me in for one figure on the second go-around, but I'm more likely to wait for retail if that ever happens.

 

True, but it wouldn't have hurt. It's just one more thing in a list of things that hurt the overall perception. Perception is always important, but it's doubly so when you're crowd funding.

 

Exactly. Right, the Jetstrike motto, I had forgotten about that, ha! And the silly bios. Ridiculous. Dedguy nailed it, a lot of it felt juvenile.

Even a lot of the "head shots" artwork looked more like "doodles from the margins of a notebook" than well-thought-out concept designs.

 

No, it wasn't. It was "Play With This Too- Lost Protectors" by Play With This Too.
The Kickstarter itself was promoted as the Play With This Too Kickstarter name on all the front page news updates. All the threads, including this one, used the Play With This Too name, not the Lost Protectors name.

I'm not suggesting they change the Play With This Too name, but arguing that the line was known as Lost Protectors above Play With This Too is just silly.

 

Someone needs to send Trent a message and let him know the world is ready for another BMOG kickstarter.

You are assuming that 450 want 3 or more figures. Out of the five available, I only wanted two. I know I'm not the only one.


I also just don't agree with the pricing. After I plegded for the two, I thought about it and thought about it and I realized that two figures after shipping and conversion would cost me at least $150. They are not $75 figures to me.

 

Based on the numbers actually reached, when the $250, $200, $150, and $100 pledges drop to $55 (since only one figure is being offered), the total drops to $50,040, all things being equal (if my sums are right).

(Of course, all things are not equal; with an extremely simplified product line, more people may have been on board. But it would need to be at least 182 more people, or 115 if all of them wanted a BMOG and extra drone pair. Mind you, both of the extra drones would have been the same mold as the one that came with the base figure.)

 

Ok, I do not really see where you got 50,040.

400*55 = 22,000

Am I missing something here?

 

Yep. Because I didn't explain adequately.  

I started from $71,625, and worked my way down, subtracting $195 from the $250 pledges, $145 from the $200 pledges, and so on.

Of course, I probably should have subtracted $845 from the $900 pledges, which is an additional drop of $13,520, bringing us to $36,520, meaning we need a total of 427 (without BMOG/drones) or 270 (with BMOG/drones) additional pledges to reach $60,000.

 

Ok, you should probably subtract $4945 for the guy pledging $5000 as well.

And then there is the issue with international backers and shipping.

 

Quite possibly.

I hadn't even thought of that, to be honest.

But my point wasn't that we would only need "X" more people to pledge, so much as that we can reasonably calculate that we need at least "X" more people to pledge before the math gets fuzzier. (How many people put in additional money beyond the base pledge for extras? How many people pledged $110 in the $55 tier so that they could get two figures that weren't in a $100 bundle? As you said, how many people had to add shipping for multi-figure pledges? It gets messy very quickly.)

 

I actually agree with you. It seems pretty rare for a campaign in this category to come close and not make it. Its also worth noting that.....

1. The final total of $70K was exactly average for this type of campaign, and would have successfully funded 10 of the 17 campaigns on the list. That extra $10K above 'average' hurt them.

2. There are really three variables here - the funding goal, the number of backers and the average pledge per backer. PWTT performed almost exactly average on the final total and the average pledge per backer, but its the number of backers that hurt them.

3. Even if they had achieved the 'average' number of backers for a successful campaign as well (1049) and kept an average pledge per backer of $176.42, that would still only have resulted in $185,064.58. This would have successfully funded the campaign, but only unlocked...
- Head Shots vol1
- Scepters vol1
- Two Snakemen
- Head shots vol2
- Play in the Dark vol1
- Head Shots vol3
- Two Muscle Men (just about!)

I wish I could have jumped in on that Ogre boxed set. It was massive. I might have to keep an eye on the Car Wars KS too. As a big Dark Future fan, everyone keeps telling me that Car Wars did it first.  

Mythic Legion was an anomaly in a lot of ways. I didnt look too closely, but that $1050 pledge level must have been incredible, because for most of the campaigns on the list the most popular pledge level was for a single figure, which is understandable from an unknown company on KS. To convince a majority of backers to pledge over $1000 on a KS is seriously impressive.

Agree with this. Its too schoolyard humour to appeal to the target audience of 'mature' collectors. I didnt even read the bios, but skipped over the Skull-fcker name with a roll of my eyes. It just alienates me as a potential customer.

This was a big factor for me. I might have got one of the 'monsters' in a double pack with a 'Protector'. I was never going to get more than two of these as a starting point, and those two would have 'one good guy and one bad guy' to taste the line. As it was, I wasnt enthusiastic about the bad guys enough, and final cost, shipped, killed any further interest for a figure that I was luke warm on from the start.

 

Their bottom tier design choices were quite lacking. It was literally Monster, Monster, and Monster that looks kinda like Skeletor. This is the biggest reason I didnt back them.

They really should had done... Robot, Human, Monster. It would had appealed to a much wider audience and would not had costed more than the rewards they went with, since the robot could easily just be the human torso with a robotic head.

Another thing I found puzzling was that the stuff they were heavily advertising was part of very extensive stretch goals, they talked about Barbaricles for almost 2 months and it required them getting over double the goal.
It's kinda like they knew their base choices were lack luster and were trying to get people to buy them to get a chance to unlock something they actually wanted.

 

That is exactly why I ended up buying nothing.

 

Yep, that was my first exposure to the company, and it was equally negative. I've only been increasingly confused and irritated by them ever since. They're quite unique, because I'm otherwise thrilled with every new 3rd party that steps into the game.

 

not only that, i accidentally skip over posts without avatars. i just do. and when your skimming a thread, having a nice recognizable avatar of someone you know posts quality or at least has something to say, or in this case the company, would make it easier to scan for quick updates. i mentioned the lack of an avatar as well in my criticism.

 

crap! I didn't submit my post last nite:
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I think what we are reading here are those trying to justify themselves for "supporting" something that wasn't kickstarted. 

PWTT had a proto as much as that Megaman had a proto. I just think they got caught up in the hype an action figure could kickstart over $300k as did all of us wanting it (as well as those not wanting it). I bet we all assumed they'd reach most of the stretch goals easily. It felt like this kickstarter was based on the high goal working backwards rather than trying to attain the minimum to kickstart. After the successes of the other action figure lines on KS we all forgot what a kickstarter really was. (btw is someone able to list all the figure lines that have been through KS?- I only know of like five, and each has been a whooping success.)

What we usually don't think of is that we are likely the only toy collectors around. We are the same people that spend shitloads of money day in and day out on toys, be it a particular line, scale or brand of toy (and by toy I include other memorabilia/pop culture stuff like props, statues and art collectibles etc). And there are a fuck tonne more toys all the time, far more than the rate our collector base is increasing. Each month we are deciding what we want to spend on. I mean why else would we be visiting these forums?

To add to that, these toys are also rising in price exponentially, while our pockets are lined the same each month. $300 is your one Hot Toy, or couple of Transformers, or a few Lego sets. What do you choose? I chose Hot Toys Falcon, that Megaman, a couple 3A dolls, a fancy pants batman, and a handful of Stormtroopers & Mythic Legions. I wasn't planning on kickstarting anything actually, until those orcs were unlocked, and those Stormies were surprisingly not Hot Toys. They were supposed to be...

Whatever we are spending, eventually some toy gets cut. And I reckon these last few months have been particularly heavy for Star Wars fans with the new Disney licensing deals, 1/6 fans having their dolls rising in price and robot fans with MP's and the 3P explosion. Even the smaller action figures are getting an import boom. So the new unknown always gets overlooked first.

And I remember Phil giving tonnes of advice to 4H.
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Prolly got other things to say when I read thru all this...

 

First up, thanks CyberShadow. Exactly what I wanted.
Second up, OMG! CAR WARS!!!

 

OMG 3!
They modified the rules to scale with Hot Wheels!!!

 

I gotta go to bed. I've got a pile of posts I want to reply to though.

and yet other people think it's blatant IP theft. There's no way to win.
No, it's very much like any other 3rd party product. The degree of similarity to what it homages varies, but yeah.

It sure sounds like trolling, but then people with strong beliefs in anything let alone the sanctity of "intellectual property" come in and say things like "exact copy" with no hint of self-awareness.
None of us know if they could get away with this. It's unprecedented. They seem to think they can do it.
There are people who sell stuff on Shapeways, as well as small productions like Renderform. One of the keys is respecting trademark by not naming your products with trademarked names. The other is the profits being small. That last point I find offensive, because it basically says keep your head down and don't make money. It doesn't matter if you can do it better, because business owns culture.

 

Sorry, I don't follow. Why would one feel the need to do that?

I'm with you on the car wars though, awesome indeed.