Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi (tv series)
- Thread starter ghostryder
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CB2001
Master Member
How about a multimillion dollar company insulting half of the fanbase and then asking them to crowdfund any product? XD
If these products were to be mass produced & mass marketed, I'd completely agree, but there are special reasons the HasLab model 'works' & is necessary for these specific product.
The 2 main reasons are retail cost & shelf space. Mass market retailers like Target & Walmart would balk at a 2-3 ft wide box on the shelf, & then with a several hundred dollar price point. With this model, you know how many you need to make to turn a profit & that's your threshold to meet to produce it. You hit that, then add the stretch goals(which the Reva saber didn't have), & consumers feel that they're getting more for their money. As far as I remember, the Rancor was the only other project that DIDN'T fund, in any franchise, including MARVEL, Star Wars, G.I. Joe, Transformers, & Ghostbusters, & part of that was that the stretch goals were a joke. Cardboard backdrops, random skulls, & stuff like that, that many felt should've just been part of the packaging.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but based on the successes, the secondary market, & the quality of the products that have been produced, I'd almost say that the HasLab projects have been much more successful than their retail offerings.
This ^^^
I understand what you're saying but I think back to offerings from the 1980's like the G.I. Joe U.S.S. Flagg which is to date the largest playset/ vehicle ever produced and was about 4 feet long. Those things may not have sold like other vehicles, but it did sell. Back then they could make sets like Castle Grayskull or Snake Mountain and so many countless large playsets that took up considerable shelf space and they sold like gangbusters at retail. Even though I don't collect the toys anymore I still have a habit of looking down the toy aisle just to see what's being produced and I see LEGO boxes for things like a Millennium Falcon that take up considerable space.
Even going off the shelf space being the reason, how many items at retail take up considerable space and still sell? Not toys mind you, but Rubbermaid containers, or furniture for example. If space were the primary concern you wouldn't see a display model of a futon taking up almost half an aisle which will eventually be sold off at a discount when it gets wrecked from customers trying it out. A display model takes up room that could easily be used for more inventory, yet we see displays for all kinds of items like that, and the products move. In fact furniture, a high ticket item that takes up considerable retail space, sells out quicker than just about anything else. Having worked in retail for 21 years and that item was the number one thing to sell out. It would sell out before food, before clothing, and this stuff was high end furniture that was very expensive, yet you'd see regular people buying it too, not just wealthy customers.
Granted I know we live in a different era where kids aren't the primary audience for these items and the secondary market has doubled the prices of the Haslab products (a sad byproduct of the Haslab model) but that's only because Hasbro chose to create these items in limited quantities and pride themselves on exclusivity, then feed that FOMO to the collectors who in turn become rabid over the product. Had they mass produced them they could bring down the price and sell at retail at a more reasonable cost. To my thinking they only charge a premium because they know the adult collectors, who these are clearly made for, are willing to shell out good money. Sure Hasbro would have to sell more units to make their profit, but if they made them cheaper, more people could afford them, which in turn create sales too.
It just seems absurd to me that a multimillion dollar corporation that's been producing toys since 1942 (Google that, I'm not exaggerating) would need a crowd funding model to jumpstart a product like this, when they have many years of sales that didn't require such methods. Clearly there is a market, clearly they will sell. They just choose to make it in smaller numbers to increase their profit margin, when they could just as easily make the same amount of money if they mass produced them, in turn bringing the cost of production down, and by extension, making them more affordable to collectors when selling at retail. If anything their sales model only helps scalpers and hurts collectors.
I'm not trying to be argumentative either so I hope you know I'm not be contrarian for its own sake. I just feel that a major corporation has no business crowdfunding anything and while I personally don't collect the toys any more, I know a ton of people who do. Now, all that said, to each their own, and I recognize that you or others may very well be happy with the Haslab model. I just feel it's an unfair way to treat their customers and kind of screws a lot of them over.
Even going off the shelf space being the reason, how many items at retail take up considerable space and still sell? Not toys mind you, but Rubbermaid containers, or furniture for example. If space were the primary concern you wouldn't see a display model of a futon taking up almost half an aisle which will eventually be sold off at a discount when it gets wrecked from customers trying it out. A display model takes up room that could easily be used for more inventory, yet we see displays for all kinds of items like that, and the products move. In fact furniture, a high ticket item that takes up considerable retail space, sells out quicker than just about anything else. Having worked in retail for 21 years and that item was the number one thing to sell out. It would sell out before food, before clothing, and this stuff was high end furniture that was very expensive, yet you'd see regular people buying it too, not just wealthy customers.
Granted I know we live in a different era where kids aren't the primary audience for these items and the secondary market has doubled the prices of the Haslab products (a sad byproduct of the Haslab model) but that's only because Hasbro chose to create these items in limited quantities and pride themselves on exclusivity, then feed that FOMO to the collectors who in turn become rabid over the product. Had they mass produced them they could bring down the price and sell at retail at a more reasonable cost. To my thinking they only charge a premium because they know the adult collectors, who these are clearly made for, are willing to shell out good money. Sure Hasbro would have to sell more units to make their profit, but if they made them cheaper, more people could afford them, which in turn create sales too.
It just seems absurd to me that a multimillion dollar corporation that's been producing toys since 1942 (Google that, I'm not exaggerating) would need a crowd funding model to jumpstart a product like this, when they have many years of sales that didn't require such methods. Clearly there is a market, clearly they will sell. They just choose to make it in smaller numbers to increase their profit margin, when they could just as easily make the same amount of money if they mass produced them, in turn bringing the cost of production down, and by extension, making them more affordable to collectors when selling at retail. If anything their sales model only helps scalpers and hurts collectors.
I'm not trying to be argumentative either so I hope you know I'm not be contrarian for its own sake. I just feel that a major corporation has no business crowdfunding anything and while I personally don't collect the toys any more, I know a ton of people who do. Now, all that said, to each their own, and I recognize that you or others may very well be happy with the Haslab model. I just feel it's an unfair way to treat their customers and kind of screws a lot of them over.
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ghostryder
Legendary Member
Inside the Lucasfilm Archive: An Elegant Weapon and Other Jedi Artifacts from the Obi-Wan Kenobi Limited Series | StarWars.com
Propmaster Brad Elliott shares insights on fabricating Kenobi's lightsaber and other personal items that link the new series to the prequel trilogy and the film that started it all.
www.starwars.com
CB2001
Master Member
There's a couple of recuts of the whole series, where someone reedited the whole series into a feature-length film. The first one is a two hour edit:
Kai Patterson's re-edit has gotten a lot of views due to the video he posted on Tik-Tok:
- Kai's page for the reedit: Obi-Wan Kenobi Movie - The Patterson Cut
Kai Patterson's re-edit has gotten a lot of views due to the video he posted on Tik-Tok:
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joberg
Legendary Member
While I agree with 99% of what you're saying; I'm wondering if a mass produced Razor Crest could be as sharp as a crowd funded one
I've seen the differences in quality for 2 similar items (specially in the Toy business/production).
One was mass produced and didn't have the same sharpness that the "low numbered made one" had. As far as subsiding a multi-million $$ corp.; it seems that we, as a society, do it all the time...whether for a sport franchise or others. Personally; I hate it
This forum is a testament to small run, high end items of superior quality. That comes at a price and perhaps this may be true for the Haslab items. I have never seen the products in person, though from what I've seen online some look to be very well made. My objection has more to do with the way they choose to conduct their business than the products they sell. I have qualms about the items in some instances but my main point of contention is the method more than the product.
A mega Corp asking for funding is like a rich kid asking the trailer park kid to pay for his lunch. Your sports analogy is totally lost on me about subsidies because I'm a dyed in the wool nerd with zero interest in sports. Lol
A mega Corp asking for funding is like a rich kid asking the trailer park kid to pay for his lunch. Your sports analogy is totally lost on me about subsidies because I'm a dyed in the wool nerd with zero interest in sports. Lol
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Yeah a few days now..
I was just getting to The Duel of the Fates part and it Froze..
Understandable though as it is borrowed content.
I enjoyed what I saw and loved the use of John Williams score although some sounded forced or too dramatic for the scenes they were attached too..
Solo4114
Master Member
Minor point, but the U.S.S. Flagg was actually 7 feet long.
But you're right about the changes in the toy industry.
Back in the '80s and '90s, we still had dedicated, large-scale toy stores. Toys R Us, Kiddie City (here in the Philadelphia area, anyway), Kay-Bee Toys, etc. I mean, think about a single store like Toys R Us, laid out like a Home Depot, with nothing but toys as far as the eye could see. There was also a synergy between toys and the cartoons and commercials being shown to kids, which was itself all on at most 6 stations if you didn't have cable (3 VHF, 3 UHF). Cartoons were in syndication, and it was a whole pipeline where new toys would be featured in the shows, new toys would get their own show of varying length, etc., etc.
So, back then, it made sense to dedicate huge real estate -- and therefore shelf space -- to toys. Over time, though, Amazon and online retailing generally has changed a lot of that, as has the disruption in the media infrastructure. We cut the cable about a year ago, but had been streaming exclusively for pretty much the last 6 years, so my kid has literally never watched regular TV with television commercials. She streams everything. The closest she gets is a 15 second ad on a Youtube video. Instead, "commercials" end up being these stupid, low budget self-made shows where kids play with toys for 15 minutes and they try to wrap a story around it while the folks get endorsement cash from the toy company. Or it's some show where a kid unboxes this or that piece of crap because they have a popular Youtube channel and got the toy for free. That's advertising now, and it's a lot harder to get your product in front of kids.
The pandemic further screwed things up for retail. My kid has been to a Target maybe 5 times in her life that she remembers. We get almost everything from online. As a result, she loses her mind over the trash toys at the drug store. The concept of a Toys R Us from back in the day would melt her brain.
And let's remember, a Target or Walmart or whatever is maybe 2-3 short aisles of toys, all competing for space. It's a far cry from an entire huge store being dedicated JUST to toys.
These days, I think the theory is that, instead of mass production, the company will make a finite number of items for a fixed rate that they KNOW are gonna move, rather than a gazillion different toys and hope that they can get enough kids interested. Like, think of it this way. Back in the day, a company like Hasbro would make a gazillion different molds for different G.I. Joe characters and produce a crapload of them, without really knowing which ones were gonna be a hit. They probably didn't have nearly the capacity for data crunching that they do today, either. So they'd create a ton of molds for, let's say "Snake Eater" and "Ramrod" and "Hard Country" or whatever code name they dreamed up (I'm making up code names here just to illustrate a point). Maybe they'd produce equal amounts of every character or slight differences, so 4000 Snake Eaters and 3500 Ramrods and 3200 Hard Countrys. But then it'd turn out that Hard Country was the most popular figure of the line, and Ramrod was selling only, like, 20% of units shipped. And maybe they'd end up with boxes where there were, like, 47 Snake Eaters and only 2 Hard Countrys or whatever, so stores would end up having tons of Snake Eaters sitting, collecting dust on the shelves, and so on and so forth.
Compare that to a model where you produce a fixed run, with fixed costs, and you are guaranteed 100% sales on the item because your audience is all but guaranteed to buy them. Likewise, a kickstarter makes even more sense because you get your orders BEFORE you have to even produce them. If the whole thing turns out to be unpopular, you've spent far less money tooling up your line for production, and can move on to another product. It's not meant to be an "Oh please fund us, we don't have the money to do it ourselves" thing. It's meant to be a "Let's see if this item is actually popular enough, so that we can maximize our profits to the last penny."
I hear what you're saying but shelf space is truly the least of the argument. In your example it's more a matter of doing upfront marketing to maximize profits than being concerned with shelf space. Though I completely understand what you're saying about the market shift to try and reduce the risk of a financial loss. Though the Haslab projects aren't catered towards children but for adult collectors who grew up with these properties. Kids can't afford these things. If we're being honest these items aren't toys so much as adult collectibles that are rarely played with but mostly sit as display pieces on shelves.
I do acknowledge that we live in a different era now when it comes to Hasbro and the like. Specialty stores for toys, books, music, and movies, have all but disappeared in the wake of the internet and digital media. With that the marketing and tastes have changed to suit them.
So much of the advancement in toys, whether it's more realistic sculpting for figures or the electronics have gotten to the point where the toy lacks much requirement for a kid to employ their imagination. The toys of today often "play themselves" and entertain the kid rather than forcing the child to engage in creating a story with it which is part of why children move on to the next thing so quickly once the wow factor wears off.
I noticed that even as a kid in the 90s when the toys had some gimmicky features that limited its capacity to a single task rather than having enough simplicity to be able to be used in other play scenarios. One is a passive approach to toys, the other is active. Since the passive approach prevailed, it's no wonder toys have little value other than distracting a child for a brief period before they find another more interesting distraction like a video game which at the least requires some interaction on their part. It's no wonder that things like Fort Nite took off when an action figure in a toy aisle feels quaint by comparison.
I think that radical shift coupled with the birth of the information age altered the trajectory of the market forever.
I do acknowledge that we live in a different era now when it comes to Hasbro and the like. Specialty stores for toys, books, music, and movies, have all but disappeared in the wake of the internet and digital media. With that the marketing and tastes have changed to suit them.
So much of the advancement in toys, whether it's more realistic sculpting for figures or the electronics have gotten to the point where the toy lacks much requirement for a kid to employ their imagination. The toys of today often "play themselves" and entertain the kid rather than forcing the child to engage in creating a story with it which is part of why children move on to the next thing so quickly once the wow factor wears off.
I noticed that even as a kid in the 90s when the toys had some gimmicky features that limited its capacity to a single task rather than having enough simplicity to be able to be used in other play scenarios. One is a passive approach to toys, the other is active. Since the passive approach prevailed, it's no wonder toys have little value other than distracting a child for a brief period before they find another more interesting distraction like a video game which at the least requires some interaction on their part. It's no wonder that things like Fort Nite took off when an action figure in a toy aisle feels quaint by comparison.
I think that radical shift coupled with the birth of the information age altered the trajectory of the market forever.
Just a quick reply..
In the same way as we have seen the dismissing Toy Stores of old what I am witnessing amongst family anf friends at least is the lack of desire to hold onto their physical Toys.. I end up salvaging them myself..
Why would you just bin a perfectly good Slave1 ?
A conversation was had recently with friends and I partly agreed but it does make some sort of sense. Once the generation who played with say The Six Million Dollar man has gone. Who's going to want those Toys apart from collectors
I guess but without a "I was there" connection they might be right. Obviously there is a monetary value but less demand may see our beloved Toys dwindle in the future.
Plus the degrigation of plastics that unless checked are in some cases getting all manner of issues.. Mold, flaking paint.. My large Kenner R2d2 has started to get a case of that weird plastic rot, my Steve Austin is still OK apart from the odd lost sock..
They were only ever meant to last a few years I guess..
Not so short was it
Mottrex That's another huge factor that could equally be applied to the franchise of Star Wars, or any 1980's intellectual property too. Sure I know there are kids who enjoy it, but I still feel the only reason that it's even survived this long is the adults who carried the torch for it since childhood and passed it on to our children and grandchildren. Without us, this property would have been relegated to the past like countless others. I think the testament to its longevity will be when we die off and if our young descendents carry that same love with them into their adulthood, or if they grow out of it and it gets mostly forgotten.
As enduring as the quality of the original films are, once the original Star Wars generation is dead and gone, the impact it had on the culture and its influence may very well fade out with us. Not to sound morbid or anything, but then again, we won't live to see that happen. lol
As enduring as the quality of the original films are, once the original Star Wars generation is dead and gone, the impact it had on the culture and its influence may very well fade out with us. Not to sound morbid or anything, but then again, we won't live to see that happen. lol
100% agree.. Not the death part.
I'm certainly old enough to remember the bargain bins at ToysRUs full of not only SW but Gi Joe and other toys when Satellite took off here in the UK.. Kids sudde became glued to Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and toys went by the by for sometime.
I think here certainly it was the Lego franchise that brought them back and the games had a quality and sense of humour they liked.
mattycsi
Master Member
My 2c:
There is a big Smyths toy store near me. Think Toysrus size.
Its always fairly busy when I 've been in. It is chock full of action figures from all manner of franchises. But the SW section is tiny, like, blink and miss it. You have to make a concerted effort to find it.
The toy section in my local supermarket has no SW toys outside of smaller Lego sets.
Far as I can tell, people just generally don't want Star Wars toys for whatever reason.
There is a big Smyths toy store near me. Think Toysrus size.
Its always fairly busy when I 've been in. It is chock full of action figures from all manner of franchises. But the SW section is tiny, like, blink and miss it. You have to make a concerted effort to find it.
The toy section in my local supermarket has no SW toys outside of smaller Lego sets.
Far as I can tell, people just generally don't want Star Wars toys for whatever reason.
Maybe it's because ToysRUs got badly burnt after using four Isles and a Huge Wall display in All the UK branches.
They went under big style.
When my kids were young we got pretty much everything for them there, Bikes games Barbies SWs Power rangers Bay blades etc. It was a power house until Internet shopping took off..
Consider too that Star Wars is no longer the number one selling toy franchise and hasn't been for a few years now. In the last decade Hasbro's selection of Star Wars, G.I.Joe, and Transformers in every department store I've been in the last decade has been virtually nonexistent. If you're lucky you'll see a few meager rows of figures. That's about all.
