Welcome back again! We are wrapping up our chat from SDCC 2011 with Horseman Eric Treadaway. This time we jump into all things Gothitropolis and the mighty Scarabus!
Fwoosh: I wanted to talk about Gothropolis as well, so thank you for being so patient with us!
Eric Treadaway: No, it’s my pleasure!
F: So, Scarabus is finally here. It’s been a journey, it’s been an adventure but, finally having the figures in hand, I can honestly say that it was so well worth the wait. What does it mean to finally have him for sale and now sold out here at the convention?
E: A lot of things. It’s a relief, it’s exciting, extremely extremely rewarding right now. It’s just fantastic, no pun intended. It’s one of the best things about this for us right now, of course, anytime it’s one of our characters that comes out and we’ve been able to take it from a concept all the way to a final product, it’s just a great experience. But the thing that has been different this time around from the past couple of times has been the production end of this has been very smooth sailing. We found a new factory this time around, unbelievable quality. From the time that the first shots came in to the final product, I don’t think we had to change much of anything. A few little tweaks, but they had it right the first time they sent it in, that doesn’t happen often.
F: For being a relatively smaller operation, like you guys are, doing this on your own from the ground up, it is amazing to me the quality in construction, engineering, paint, everything on these figures has gone way beyond anyting that I have gotten from any toy company in the world in the past two or three years. I mean, I obviously don’t collect everything, but it’s interesting to know how the actual production process went, because I’m sure that comes with it’s own set of horrendous headaches.
E: I have to give a lot of credit to all the product managers out there, any of the people that deal with the production end of this on a daily basis. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of ups and downs, a lot of stress, a lot of emailing, a lot of photographing, photoshopping, changes on top of it, a lot of number crunching, a lot of headaches. We’ve had the headachiest of the headaches in some of our past ventures, and our first one, as far as an injection moulded figure was Xetheus. Xetheus went very smoothly, very high quality figure, only real issue with that figure was that the ankles were loose on some figures; great paint, just wonderful experience top to bottom. Then Ramathorr came along. Probably about as bad as it could get. A guy walked away with thousands of dollars worth of our money, we lost molds, had to reclaim molds, had to do a second production run, the quality of the figures was never what it should have been. They looked really nice, did a nice paint job, physically they looked good if they stayed together on the shelf. Timekeepers pretty good, a few little issues there, but nothing major, but always a little something, little issue. The Queens for the most part pretty good, but the weapons had breakage issues, so it had to be a little something again, and they’re good but they are just not at that level of perfection that we want, and especially it’s a little bit closer to what normal figures cost now, but we were asking $20 for those figures a couple years ago. You’re asking a lot of money, especially for a toy that doesn’t have a cartoon, you didn’t grow up with it as a kid, so we know that we’re asking a lot for people to take this ride with us. And then so finally for this one to come out, I just can’t tell you how good it feels to hand this figure off and somebody hands me the money and know that they’re not going to pull it out of the package, there’s not going to bring a weapon that breaks, there’s not going to be a piece that falls off the figure. The figure stands up, the paint is gorgeous on it, somebody put pictures up online of the original prototype next to the final pieces, some of them I was getting wrong which one was which.
F: Well, when I do reviews, sometimes there are those extreme close-ups that are 20x bigger than what you’re actually looking at in your hand, you always see the warts there, and sometimes you think people are going to go crazy because of this tiny little thing, but it just wasn’t there for ten figures with multiple face plates.
E: And I mean, you can make a prototype look as fantastic as you can possibly make it. You can put as many hours in as you want, go as over the top with as many pieces of accessories as you want, but if the production sucks on it, it just really puts a damper on the whole process. That’s where part of the relief is with this, because it just feels good to put this figure out and know that people are as happy as they are with it. It’s been a long ride, and this time we’re asking for $30 for a figure, and unfortunately we have to.
F: Well, you know, I’ve got to say, I’m of the mind and I think that with the reality of the ever-increasing cost of toys, people are getting to this point as well, if it’s a figure that I feel is a definitive, well worth it figure, the pricetag becomes secondary and $30 for one of these guys, I don’t know how it would possibly be able to be done with okay production any less, let alone how perfectly they came through.
E: I’m the same way. I have no problem if I see a Japanese import piece that I really like, if I’m paying $40 for a figure, if was stateside might be a $20 figure, I’ll pay for the quality, but that’s me. I am fortunate enough to be in a position where I can say that. Everybody doesn’t have that flexibility, there’s so much stuff out there to buy now, it’s all getting more expensive. Food’s getting expensive, gas is getting expensive, so it’s a tougher hobby to maintain now, and so when people have all the Mattel offerings and all the Hasboro offerings, Thundercats, and all this other stuff out there, and somebody takes some of their hard earned money and puts it aside to buy the stuff that has no comic behind it, no cartoon, nothing that they’ve had that association with for years and years, it really does mean a lot to us. Our fans have been dedicated, they’ve really stuck with us through a lot of ups and downs. I mean we take a long time to put the figures out, sometimes we’re really good with updating the site with news, sometimes when we have deadlines, we’re terrible about it. It’s just, the people who have stuck with us, it means a lot to us. Our fans of all the stuff that we work for across the board have been great.
Obviously MOTU fans are passionate beyond belief, and we’ve come out here to San Diego for 12 years now, it’s great to see, we’ve seen kids grow up. And same thing, the DC fans, they know what they like, they support the product, everybody when we see them out here, they’re always so nice to talk to, always excited about the products, they let us know if there are things that they don’t like, they let us know what they do like. It’s a real credit to people out there to stick with some of these brands.
F: But at the same time, it’s a huge credit to you guys because you are down here, ground level, every single year. And I know that sometimes I try to pop in to say hello, but I see you guys talking to other people, and it’s like I’ll catch them later because you guys are giving these people who don’t have the opportunity to come out a lot or interact a lot the chance to really do that every single year.
One of the things I tried to get across with the Scarabus review is that they are $30 figures, but the great part of that is that there are ten of them. There is going to be one that you look at and say, if I can only get one, that’s the one I want to get. I see them appealing to a lot of different people.
E: I think part of it, as far as the type of response we get from fans, just the type of interaction we get out here, we’re total toy and comic geeks. So, these are our people. We’re talking to friends out here, we’re talking to people with the same interests. This isn’t, we’re not out here hawking product like a snake oil salesman, because when I’m not at the booth, I’m running off to go down look at Sideshow, look at Hasboro, the designer toy section or whatever it may be. I’m sneaking off to look at toys and pick things up.
F: Speaking of Marvel, from one huge Kirby fan to another – did you see Arnim Zola? I mean I know you guys don’t work on the Marvel stuff but for me that was a huge reveal and you were kind of the first person I thought of when I saw it.
E: I thought that was awfully cool. I saw that yesterday, I love the colors on it, it’s got a great sculpture to it.
F: So with the Scarabus, you said that it was a relief, but it is it also rejuvenating? I mean, the Raven, he’s sitting out there now.
E: Yes, that is the way that I’m wired a lot of times. You go for the pricing part of it with the factory, and I get to the point where I’m thinking I will never do this again, this just burns me out, but then you start getting product in hand. The Raven, I’ve been working on that thing off and on, probably for two years, it’s just hard to find the time to work on a figure that detailed, so the last big push for me was when we did the Toypacolypse show and I wanted to at least reveal a work in progress at that point, I hadn’t touched it since then.
It was probably about 4 weeks ago, I got on the Fantastic Exclusive boards, because Gothitropolis there hasn’t been anything talked about the Raven for awhile because Toypacolypse died out a long time ago, discussion about that. And then I saw people on there saying, oh I hope we get to see the Raven, and I didn’t really think much about it, and then it started to sink in and started to feel a little guilty that I hadn’t touched it in a long time. The next thing I know I was staying up until five in the morning a few nights in a row. Part of it was I’d spent a year and a half on it already on and off at that point, so it’s just even if we were never to make it, there’s a certain satisfaction of just finally finishing the piece.
F: Well even unpainted , you look at that thing and it doesn’t stop anywhere on the detail, it just doesn’t stop. It’s crazy, every single feather is uniquely done.
E: At some point we will do a feature on the site, because there was some early rough pictures that I took of it. I completely sculpted a foot on it and scrapped it at one point because I went by my drawing and then I started doing research on the Raven foot and realized Raven foot is way cooler than what I did here. So I completely scrapped it, completely did one of the thighs, all of the feathers, casted it up, I decided I hated it, so I started that from scratch. At some point we will do a feature where we put that stuff up because it took a long time for a reason. I’ve sculpted a lot of feathers this year: Sorceress, Swiftwind, this thing, a few things that haven’t been seen yet, sometimes it’s little stuff but I just feel like I’m constantly sculpting feathers. But a figure like that, it’s worth it in the end. It feels good to have it done, and put it all together and see that it actually looks like something when it goes all together and again, when we create something from scratch it’s just a great experience to do that sketch and kind of daydream about what it could look like and then keep working on it, improving upon the design and the extras and taking it to the next level. I was to be able to bring it out, it seems like people are getting a kick out of it.
F: So where’s he at? He looks like he’s done as far as sculpt goes.
E: He was literally finished about three days before the show, so that’s where he’s at right now. To make him a reality, we will still have to get into sculpting varient parts, the weapon that he’s got there is not his final weapon it’s just a stand in right now. And then we will see how Scarabus goes, we are in the heart of selling that now, so see how the funding goes with it. And then after that, got to do paint masters, got to send tooling patterns to the factory and go through the whole pricing thing and seeing how to make it work.
F: And you still have DC, Masters and every other thing you’re working on.
E: There’s a reason things take awhile, but we love doing that stuff. Everything’s a different type of satisfaction. Masters and DC, it’s just been a part of our life in one way or another since we were children, so to sculpt these characters, that scratches a certain itch. Creating Gothatropolis or Seventh Kingdom, it scratches a certain, and even amongst our own properties, Gothatropolis and Seventh Kingdom like that fills a certain spot. Magma Corps, that is a completely different creative outlet. Symbiotech another completely different outlet and then Outer Spacemen it’s just another. Again, it goes back to my bad decision making, I couldn’t tell you a favorite thing out of any of this stuff. I think if you just picked one thing to obsess over, for me at least that would get boring. I love that we can do all of this stuff, we are so lucky. We always say it, but it’s so true, I mean we’ve just had such luck with the properties we’ve been able to work on. I had a hand touching some of my absolute favorites when I was a kid. Outer Spacemen, I’ve talked about this quite a few times, but I had the Colorforms playset, it had that picture of the figures on the front. This was in 1977/1978, those figures had disappeared ten years ago, never knew they existed, I wanted that Astronautalis figure so bad, because I remember sitting there as a kid looking at it. I knew they weren’t an illustration, I knew that they were physical figures on that thing, you could see parting lines on them. I knew there was at least one out there somewhere, and so later on, here I am 30 years later, not only getting one, but making it myself and talking to the creator of it. It’s just a great business to be a part of. Occasionally you have a bad day, but a bad day is still a bad day in the toy industry.
F: That is about the best sentiment I can think of to finally say thank you for taking the time to chat with us. We truly appreciate it, and we cannot wait to see what will be revealed between now and next year’s show. Thanks so much.
E: Oh, thank you guys – I always love taking the time to chat with you.
*So that wraps it up! Again, thanks so much to Eric and all of the Horsemen for not only talking to us, but doing their thing so well all the time. Our toy shelves are buckling under the weight of all your toy greatness!
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