The Edge's Blain 18th superdude KickStarter
- Thread starter adrienveidt
- Start date
Buttmunch
Pensive
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2025
- Messages
- 387
Agreed. Having things scale with existing lines will help sell these. Classified and Marvel Legends seem the most logical things to scale this to in 6”. Introducing something that people can add to their active collections now rather than vintage or vintage scaled lines seems to help gain interest too. People like vintage Joe no doubt but Classified is the belle at the ball right now and even BigBadWorkshop is leaning more that way with scalability rather than the 3 3/4” lines
Thank you for your thoughts on this. We are scaling with the current 1/18th lines.
altcunningham
Mr. Ana de Armas
My mind as a consumer:
I don't know the property. Ironically, as a child of the '80s, the toys aren't even the gateway into making me look into the property.
So that's a strike.
What would get me to look into it is if it's just a cool toy. But the scaling is a potential strike.
However, I do like couple 1/18 lines, like JoyToy and Acid Rain World. To me, the point of 1/18 scale is World building.
One dude is not enough. Especially with no faith that there is a world to build out. I flipped through the website and looked at the other characters in the comic and I'm curious what the plan would be to get the rest of the roster out, especially a female character and a villain to beat down.
Those are my thoughts as someone who scrolls every single third-party toy store looking to burn my paycheck nightly.
I don't remember if you were partnered with loose collector or executive replicas or both. Without a crowdfund, is there any way this line could still exist?
I don't know the property. Ironically, as a child of the '80s, the toys aren't even the gateway into making me look into the property.
So that's a strike.
What would get me to look into it is if it's just a cool toy. But the scaling is a potential strike.
However, I do like couple 1/18 lines, like JoyToy and Acid Rain World. To me, the point of 1/18 scale is World building.
One dude is not enough. Especially with no faith that there is a world to build out. I flipped through the website and looked at the other characters in the comic and I'm curious what the plan would be to get the rest of the roster out, especially a female character and a villain to beat down.
Those are my thoughts as someone who scrolls every single third-party toy store looking to burn my paycheck nightly.
I don't remember if you were partnered with loose collector or executive replicas or both. Without a crowdfund, is there any way this line could still exist?
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2025
- Messages
- 3,595
I definitely have some thoughts if it's at all helpful. Criticisms, but in the interest of being helpful not to be a jerk:
1.) As a toy collector, I took one look at the target goal for this project and said 'no way.' There's no functional way anyone is making and shipping an action figure for 20 grand (Canadian) minus Kickstarter's cut (about 10 percent after all is said and done). Throw in that this action figure is also supposed to come with a trading card and comic?
Obviously, maybe the Kickstarter just represents the final hurdle and most of the work is already done and/or paid for? I don't know. But I don't know because it's not noted in the Kickstarter anywhere. So all we have is someone none of us knows claiming to want to make an action figure, and a trading card, and a comic book, for under 20 grand.
With all due respect, there's no chance any person in the action figure collecting world for more than fifteen minutes is going to believe that's possible. And if you're not asking them to believe that, the Kickstarter just needs more clarity on where the rest of the funding for this is coming from.
2.) It's for one figure, and that's a problem. Personally, I don't know any toy collectors that want one of anything. Regardless of what else it scales with, this is clearly its own thing meant to stand on its own. If I'm looking at getting into a new line, with a property and characters I know nothing about, you'll pretty much never get me with a single random character. I don't care about 'Blain.' Why should I? Why do I want 'Blain' on my shelf.
As collectors, we have to assume what you're selling is all you're going to sell. We can't know even if this is successful if you'll ever make anything ever again (look at Skeleton Warriors - we got Baron Dark and then nothing else ever). We've all been bitten. If you're not giving me some kind of conflict-in-a-box (i.e. a good guy and a bad guy) then I'm probably going to ignore your entire project. Stretch goals don't count unless you don't want people to even start supporting you until the stretch goals are unlocked. Those should be extra things, not something core to the experience. If having a hero and a villain to fight each other as the -baseline- isn't your intended experience here, I think that's a different problem.
3.) The scale. I don't necessarily think 1:18 scale is a death sentence. But it starts you on your back foot, for sure. You have to acknowledge you're intentionally limiting your reach and so you've got to zero in hard on the people you have left. 1:18 scale itself doesn't really tell the story anyway because multiple lines in 1:18 scale don't scale with each other. And based on the pictures that were shown during the first campaign, I would not be comfortable telling someone that Blain will scale with this or that other line. I can't tell. He looks huge compared with other 1:18 products. Is that a prototyping thing? Is Blain 7 feet tall? I have no way of knowing. But he's a giant in your pictures comparing him to 25A Joes.
If you want the scale to be a selling point, and specifically compatibility to be a selling point, you're going to have to get WAY clearer with images and descriptions of how that is going to work.
4.) The price. 40 dollars for a character I don't know, don't give a shit about, that's 4" tall? It ain't that world anymore, I'm afraid. I can get a full on Joe Classified figure for that price. This is one of the big challenges for 1:18 products. You've gotta find a way to add more value to that package or I don't see very many people coming along for the ride in this economy.
5.) The entire Kickstarter page looked like it was made by someone that doesn't understand what Kickstarter is and desperately needed to be cleaned up and completely re-designed. Why are there Stretch Goals set at lower values than the base funding level? The whole idea of a 'stretch' goal is a goal for after you have achieved baseline funding. Setting Stretch Goals are pre-funding values looks amateurish and definitely does not fill me with confidence that the person has any idea what they're doing or saying. It looks, again, with respect, like someone just slapping ideas onto a page without regard for how any of this is going to work.
6.) I think this is actually critical: The Risks and Challenges section says basically nothing. It reads like it was written by someone that has no idea what could actually go wrong or be difficult about this process. And again, if you want people to trust you, you need to seem like you know what you're talking about even more than you need to actually know what you're talking about. I look at that Risks section and say to myself "this guy has no idea how he's going to pull this off." That's not a KS I'm ever going to support.
I think ALL of this stuff is very fixable. So I figured it would be worthwhile to write it all up and let you decide if my reading of the KS and my reaction to it is at all relevant to how you choose to lay out the next one. If you ignore it all completely - absolutely no hard feelings.
1.) As a toy collector, I took one look at the target goal for this project and said 'no way.' There's no functional way anyone is making and shipping an action figure for 20 grand (Canadian) minus Kickstarter's cut (about 10 percent after all is said and done). Throw in that this action figure is also supposed to come with a trading card and comic?
Obviously, maybe the Kickstarter just represents the final hurdle and most of the work is already done and/or paid for? I don't know. But I don't know because it's not noted in the Kickstarter anywhere. So all we have is someone none of us knows claiming to want to make an action figure, and a trading card, and a comic book, for under 20 grand.
With all due respect, there's no chance any person in the action figure collecting world for more than fifteen minutes is going to believe that's possible. And if you're not asking them to believe that, the Kickstarter just needs more clarity on where the rest of the funding for this is coming from.
2.) It's for one figure, and that's a problem. Personally, I don't know any toy collectors that want one of anything. Regardless of what else it scales with, this is clearly its own thing meant to stand on its own. If I'm looking at getting into a new line, with a property and characters I know nothing about, you'll pretty much never get me with a single random character. I don't care about 'Blain.' Why should I? Why do I want 'Blain' on my shelf.
As collectors, we have to assume what you're selling is all you're going to sell. We can't know even if this is successful if you'll ever make anything ever again (look at Skeleton Warriors - we got Baron Dark and then nothing else ever). We've all been bitten. If you're not giving me some kind of conflict-in-a-box (i.e. a good guy and a bad guy) then I'm probably going to ignore your entire project. Stretch goals don't count unless you don't want people to even start supporting you until the stretch goals are unlocked. Those should be extra things, not something core to the experience. If having a hero and a villain to fight each other as the -baseline- isn't your intended experience here, I think that's a different problem.
3.) The scale. I don't necessarily think 1:18 scale is a death sentence. But it starts you on your back foot, for sure. You have to acknowledge you're intentionally limiting your reach and so you've got to zero in hard on the people you have left. 1:18 scale itself doesn't really tell the story anyway because multiple lines in 1:18 scale don't scale with each other. And based on the pictures that were shown during the first campaign, I would not be comfortable telling someone that Blain will scale with this or that other line. I can't tell. He looks huge compared with other 1:18 products. Is that a prototyping thing? Is Blain 7 feet tall? I have no way of knowing. But he's a giant in your pictures comparing him to 25A Joes.
If you want the scale to be a selling point, and specifically compatibility to be a selling point, you're going to have to get WAY clearer with images and descriptions of how that is going to work.
4.) The price. 40 dollars for a character I don't know, don't give a shit about, that's 4" tall? It ain't that world anymore, I'm afraid. I can get a full on Joe Classified figure for that price. This is one of the big challenges for 1:18 products. You've gotta find a way to add more value to that package or I don't see very many people coming along for the ride in this economy.
5.) The entire Kickstarter page looked like it was made by someone that doesn't understand what Kickstarter is and desperately needed to be cleaned up and completely re-designed. Why are there Stretch Goals set at lower values than the base funding level? The whole idea of a 'stretch' goal is a goal for after you have achieved baseline funding. Setting Stretch Goals are pre-funding values looks amateurish and definitely does not fill me with confidence that the person has any idea what they're doing or saying. It looks, again, with respect, like someone just slapping ideas onto a page without regard for how any of this is going to work.
6.) I think this is actually critical: The Risks and Challenges section says basically nothing. It reads like it was written by someone that has no idea what could actually go wrong or be difficult about this process. And again, if you want people to trust you, you need to seem like you know what you're talking about even more than you need to actually know what you're talking about. I look at that Risks section and say to myself "this guy has no idea how he's going to pull this off." That's not a KS I'm ever going to support.
I think ALL of this stuff is very fixable. So I figured it would be worthwhile to write it all up and let you decide if my reading of the KS and my reaction to it is at all relevant to how you choose to lay out the next one. If you ignore it all completely - absolutely no hard feelings.
Thanks for the data, yes everything is pretty much done. So the final lift is pretty low. I am getting a solid deal from LooseCollector.
The suit figures are also part of the deal and I am getting those done for a really good price. I appreciate the feedback and wish I had gotten this on the last one. As I came very close last time, I think a few tweaks will get us over the top. I understand that people have been bitten on these before my company ComicsBurgh has completed and shipped multiple Kickstarter. Action Figures are a new thing for me, and I want to try to bring people a long for the ride. I am not trying to trick or fool anyone and run off with cash.
The suit figures are also part of the deal and I am getting those done for a really good price. I appreciate the feedback and wish I had gotten this on the last one. As I came very close last time, I think a few tweaks will get us over the top. I understand that people have been bitten on these before my company ComicsBurgh has completed and shipped multiple Kickstarter. Action Figures are a new thing for me, and I want to try to bring people a long for the ride. I am not trying to trick or fool anyone and run off with cash.
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2025
- Messages
- 3,595
I didn't think so. Or I wouldn't have given any advice at all. If you're fairly new to the action figure space, though, there's some stuff up there that maybe you didn't consider from those of us that have a very much 'been there, done that' attitude toward Kickstarters. Especially from people that seemed like they were over-promising. If you can clarify some of those things for next time, I think it will help a lot to get that extra bit of consumer confidence you need to push you over, for sure.
A lot of this is going to be future concepting for investors. I will try to avoid returning to crowdfunding if possible for the rest of the characters. Yes I am partnered with Loosecollector.
Thanks, I did not want to overpromise which is why I started with one main figure and the army builders. This is just to get started and see where else things can go.
Yes. That will be in motion next year.
JakeEkiss
Filthy casual
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2025
- Messages
- 1,644
Piggy-backing, but this in particular is a big red flag for someone like me. If the stretch goals are beneath your funding goal, that means that, reasonably, they are just part of the package. If you fund at all they should all get made anyway, so why not list them as accessories? Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing platform. Stretch goals costing less than the baseline for production implies this is being thought of more like crowdfund sites where there is no minimum bar to clear. Since some of the stretches rely on a figure to be worth anything (head packs and such) it seems backwards to have them arranged this way.
Like, the best analogy I can see for this is if someone said "hey want to see my new boat?" and then showed you a port-a-potty. You would fear this person doesn't understand what the word "boat" means. And since this regards the direct funding markers for the project, it gives the impression someone has no clue how much money they need or where it's actually going. At the minimum, it implies someone hasn't actually used kickstarter before and hasn't researched how it works, isn't modeling their fundraising on any proven models and, like Damien said, is just winging it.
And we've all seen folks just wing it on kickstarters for toys. It ends really badly, and especially so for the creators. The community generally won't give second chances, just ask the Army Alphas guy.
Understood, I will make the correction.