@ben  agree with a lot, but I don't think licensing was much of a factor at all, in fact I would have bailed on it for that reason alone,

Any analysis of why the EoV failed that doesn't include the massive, sustained campaign against its success is woefully incomplete.

I'm still waiting for Robbie to get released. He would have been a good fit for the Void series and as he's a modern Avenger he SHOULD be released. Hopefully in 2024.

Maybe, since they can't offer *that* exact figure, this time they'll dedicate sculpt to him. HA, they'd never admit that the sculpt they were offering for $350 wasn't accurate.

Posted by: @fac

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Sometimes the simplest answer is the best, and if this campaign doesn't fund I think it is simply that not enough folks were interested - not that there was anything inherently wrong with the campaign or the execution or the price or that doing it differently would have massively changed the result. It will just be that not enough people wanted this Giant Man. 

hit the nail on the head, there's no real point debaiting what went wrong or that collector are hypocritical (leave that for Hasbros board room), at the end of the day it seems that people just aren't interested in a Giant Man like this.

Also I don't think this will kill Marvel Haslabs, if anything it should allow them to revise how they go about it, dropping the amount of minimum backers would probably help since that number seems to keep rising each campaign, but then again companies always tend to take away the worst lessons so who knows.

@alienking 

Marketing exists for a reason.  Modern history (last 100 years) is littered with examples of marketing making a product popular/sell.  History is also littered with products that didn't sell well, or failed, that in hindsight have been considered better products that what was successful.   In a lot of those instances it was a marketing that made, or broke, those products.  Now of course the "X" factor is consumers, but between psychology and marketing there is a lot of research into how to shape a narrative and sell products.  Hell look at the 70s, somehow a company was able to sell people rocks!  ROCKS!!!! (The Pet Rock in case someone isn't aware).   If that is not a case of selling something people don't/shouldn't want I don't know what is.

As others have said we can go round and round about what went wrong, and what went right for any Haslab.  However I don't think the ML team has done a good job with the Giant-Man campaign.  Will it matter in the end?  Probably not I still think he will fund.

Giant-Man:

5,643 / 10,000 (+12) 56.43% of funding goal with 12d 17h left.

They did a picture series leading to the reveal of the project, it's regularly being shouted out by multiple Hasbro employee's on socials, we get steady updates showing everything included and any revisions made/comparisons with other figures/prototypes (far more than the Sentinel and Galactus already), it's mentioned on any Legends related stream they do, how have they not done a good job with the campaign? Unless you're solely referring to the tiered inclusions, which aren't a particular selling point for me.

They probably could have cut the funding time down to 20-25 days to inspire urgency, and setting him to 10,000 when the Sentinel was 6,000, and what many would consider an army builder, are the two head scratchers to me.

Posted by: @h-bird

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Any analysis of why the EoV failed that doesn't include the massive, sustained campaign against its success is woefully incomplete.

I don't know about "sustained campaign", certainly sustained debate.  I think you can sum up EoV as a lot of people pointing out valid reasons and examples of why it wasn't worth it.  In the end the majority of people agreed.

Posted by: @yojoebro82

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Posted by: @h-bird

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Any analysis of why the EoV failed that doesn't include the massive, sustained campaign against its success is woefully incomplete.

I don't know about "sustained campaign", certainly sustained debate.  I think you can sum up EoV as a lot of people pointing out valid reasons and examples of why it wasn't worth it.  In the end the majority of people agreed.

 

Not talking about posters discussing back and forth about why they weren't happy about it. I'm talking about the talking heads/influencers/social types who latched on to it when they realized how much cache there was in sticking it to the man, and started actively working against seeing it fund. Not making any claims about whether it would have succeeded without that, or saying the project wasn't flawed (definitely was) but that piece contributed to the failure.

I'm not necessarily concerned this won't fund, but I'm also increasingly ambivalent about it. I very much want a classic Hank Pym Giant-Man in my collection. My Avengers team feels lacking without him. But I don't feel like it has to be this one. If this funds, great. I'll be happy. If not? Oh, well. And I'll move on.

I do feel like the Marvel team need to sit back and take a really hard look at the Haslab model, and decide if it's right for them. As we've discussed before, outside of offering unique waves of figures or team sets, I don't know that it's a sustainable venue for the brand. Joe and Star Wars? Of course. Marvel? Not so much.

Posted by: @h-bird

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Posted by: @yojoebro82

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Posted by: @h-bird

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Any analysis of why the EoV failed that doesn't include the massive, sustained campaign against its success is woefully incomplete.

I don't know about "sustained campaign", certainly sustained debate.  I think you can sum up EoV as a lot of people pointing out valid reasons and examples of why it wasn't worth it.  In the end the majority of people agreed.

 

Not talking about posters discussing back and forth about why they weren't happy about it. I'm talking about the talking heads/influencers/social types who latched on to it when they realized how much cache there was in sticking it to the man, and started actively working against seeing it fund. Not making any claims about whether it would have succeeded without that, or saying the project wasn't flawed (definitely was) but that piece contributed to the failure.

 

I've heard that argument that influencers benefit from the negativity.  I think there's also a case to be made that influencers could benefit from getting the item (whether it's EoV, Giant Man, or ANYTHING), reviewing it for the clicks, or to get into Hasbro's good graces.  Who's to say.  

@yojoebro82 More to the point, I think saying that "people are addicted to negativity" is a dumb, reductive stance that I hear trotted out all the time, especially in politics and geek culture.

I don't think it's true and the studies I've seen don't do any deep dives or admit any limits based on correlation/causation.

More often than not, "negativity" is an umbrella term for desire for change or resistance to change and the geek culture wars (and larger culture wars) actually boil down to questions like who gets to be an authority figure on questions such as where life begins and ends, what cultural traditions are favored or disfavored, what sexual practices or forms of gratification are permitted or taboo, what money or relationships entitle a person to, etc.

And those are the kinds of questions that presented on both sides of the debates over things like Haslabs, when people engaged. You also had people on both sides screaming, "It's a toy! Shut up!"

But I don't think that WORKS on discussion forums or social media, where the point is to kind of go deeper than is necessary.

And if people are addicted to something, it's probably not negativity but instead drawing major conclusions about life, humanity, and the world from trivial things like toys or traffic or their last trip to a restaurant or the last movie they saw.

It's probably tied to humans' history of using sympathetic magic like dances, dolls, or symbols to try shape nature. In any culture struggle, people tend to say, "This small thing represents everything!"

And I think it's especially tempting (and natural) to do with toys if a lot of your time and disposable income is tied up in them. Being burned -- or being the beneficiary of a surplus -- on a major toy purchase is kind of just as big of a deal as a vacation or holiday. "Christmas dinner is ruined!" or "Please let me have my Christmas dinner!" are not insignificant. Families can split over things like that.

@yojoebro82 It was a sustained campaign. That's a rosy way of looking back on it.

The majority of people never agreed that a Bratz car was better value or that a stand needed to be taken against pricing for the line in general. It's gone up again since then, so...

We're talking about the very vocal and sustained group that would try and find a new reason to hate the campaign daily, and danced around like goofs when the numbers dropped on the last day like they'd somehow won some great battle in their lives. They were pretty much part of a sustained campaign, and none of the rational folks agreed with their nonsense. 

Those who simply stated the price was too high for them given what was included and sort of faded away - not many of them.

i done toyed too much and my dangnabbit wife left me

more money for haslabs tho!!!!

...sorry if that actually happened. If true, you may need to figure half of that budget going forward tho... 😬 

I don't think it's particularly productive to argue (again) about why the previous Marvel HasLab failed.    As far as this one goes I think it's a decent product for a decent value.   But it doesn't work for me so I'm not ordering it.   I don't have a place in my display for a Giant Man this big and I'm not interested enough to revamp my entire room to figure out how to accommodate it and I'm not throwing $200 at it to keep it in a box in the garage.     I do hope it funds -  I hope it explodes on the last day and hits all the tiers.    I hope it's out there so maybe, one day in the future if I have a different display space or whatever I can track it down and pay the premium for not getting in on the ground floor.   I think if this thing can clear 6,000 backers before the final 3 days then it's golden and it looks like it's on track for that.