I do feel like we're nearing the end of viable Santa variants. Krampus ones too. They might be able to reuse some of the Santa for a Frosty, but I think that would have a short life as well (though potential army builder for Calvin and Hobbes fans...). At this point it feels like Mrs. Claus will have to be next wave.
I'd say they have MANY variants they could make of Santa, when you take into account the different looks he has in various countries. It's really just a question of whether or not they'd sell. Heck, they've gotten some mileage out of unique concepts like Sgt. Santa, Pirate Santa, Zombie Santa, etc. that I feel they could keep doing those types of spins on it.
I feel they've definitely gone as far as they can with their version of Krampus, but if they were to do a new body that is more bestial in nature, they could do dozens of variants (I'd love to see interchangeable feet, with options to do hooves or clawed). They could also get some mileage out of such a body by doing a Yeti/Bumble type of creature!
Though I doubt it'll happen because it's way too unique, I'd love to grab a Mari Llwyd figure. Maybe Four Horseman will get to that at some point. Feels like more their bag anyway.
I'd DEFINITELY love to see the Horsemen do Mari Llwyd! In fact, I've given serious thought to buying this Mythic Legions horse to turn into Mari: https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/229551?o=4
I love all the various creatures from folklore around the world, and Mari Llwyd is top of my list! I'd also love to see stuff like the Yule Cat, Frau Perchta, Belsnickle (there's another Santa body reuse), and Nuutipukki in figure form.
I'd say they have MANY variants they could make of Santa, when you take into account the different looks he has in various countries. It's really just a question of whether or not they'd sell. Heck, they've gotten some mileage out of unique concepts like Sgt. Santa, Pirate Santa, Zombie Santa, etc. that I feel they could keep doing those types of spins on it.
Yeah, that's what I mean by viable, will it sell. Can they sell small variations on Santa for two or three more years? Maybe, but I don't think so. While there's probably a few more wilder takes they could do, I do think the end of the road there is coming too as once you've hit sort of the big mashups you have to get more and more esoteric, and thus try to hit a shrinking target audience. The biggest draw will be for classic Santa, and everything past that will be a smaller demo. Santa but evil? Slightly smaller demo, but people love an evil version of any good guy. Santa but a zombie? Smaller, but zombies are big enough on their own to carry. There's probably gas left in the tank for a few more. Cowboy, samurai, cthulhu, a few others. But it's not a bottomless well if you need sales.
I do feel like most of the effort this year went to the reindeer since they're top to bottom new sculpts, and I think people are more critical of that (and the price) than they should be. I don't see how reindeer were going to happen for a line this niche any other way. I almost feel like they could have done less this year and had more people happy. Like just Father Christmas and the reindeer. I think some of the new Santas, while I like most of them, aren't necessarily as conceptually strong as the first or second waves.
One thing I think they could do with minimal new tooling that would still sell, is a super deluxe classic 'store' Santa. You take classic Santa, load him up on accessories, and then give him a chair to sit in, with a modified lower shirt piece so he can sit easily, and now you've got yourself a mini mall diorama for your figs. Heck, maybe it could come with the variant mall Santa head so you can get a range of tones out of it.
Picked up my two hat sets today for these guys. The Christmas display takes up their normal spot, but I figure with a little holiday flair, they can still fit in just fine.
Those hats fit quite well on the Modal Nodes...nice!
Got my accessory set last week and got the Jolly bunch out of storage this weekend.
I do feel like most of the effort this year went to the reindeer since they're top to bottom new sculpts, and I think people are more critical of that (and the price) than they should be.
THe price griping about the reindeer is odd considering they're quite a bit bigger than the Santas.
So? They don't look so much bigger that they would require more tools than what's needed to produce a Santa figure. The additional plastic is a negligible cost addition (if it's even warranted) when all is said and done, and they're creating basically one set of tools for 8 different figures (9 including Rudolph and whatever reindeer variants they're doing as well) so the reuse potential is on par with Santa himself. At the end of the day, it is what it is. A company can only put a product out with a price tag on it and consumers are free to decide its worth. As long as the criticism isn't in bad faith, I don't see anything odd about not having much interest in a $45 reindeer. Especially when most look at it as something they would need to buy 8 of to even warrant the purchase. I personally would have liked to see them aim for the lowest price possible. If that mean preposed, non-articulated, reindeer then so be it as long as there was some variety.
So? They don't look so much bigger that they would require more tools than what's needed to produce a Santa figure. The additional plastic is a negligible cost addition (if it's even warranted) when all is said and done, and they're creating basically one set of tools for 8 different figures (9 including Rudolph and whatever reindeer variants they're doing as well) so the reuse potential is on par with Santa himself. At the end of the day, it is what it is. A company can only put a product out with a price tag on it and consumers are free to decide its worth. As long as the criticism isn't in bad faith, I don't see anything odd about not having much interest in a $45 reindeer. Especially when most look at it as something they would need to buy 8 of to even warrant the purchase. I personally would have liked to see them aim for the lowest price possible. If that mean preposed, non-articulated, reindeer then so be it as long as there was some variety.
The amount of individual parts that need to be cut isn't as big a deal when the major cost is that ALL of the parts are going to need totally new molds. And the increase in plastic is not linear with height. Generally I've got no issue with folks saying "I can't afford that", because hey, I'm one of those folks who can't afford a full set. I may not even get one. I have more issues with "it shouldn't cost that much" as it's making a lot of assumptions about what cost is actually feasible for order sizes this small. This is almost dead on what I expected the cost would be.
The reuse potential really isn't on par with the Santas, and they definitely should know that, because not all the people who got classic Santa will get a reindeer, much less a full set, and an even smaller percentage of people who got non-classic Santas will want a full set of non-classic Reindeer. I'd honestly be surprised if we see more than one or two reindeer variants beyond what's offered now. They could keep the basic set evergreen, but I'd be very skeptical that much more than that has legs (pardon the pun).
I don't think the criticisms are in bad faith, but I do think that people just aren't very aware of production realities. I think there's always a contingent who wants the lowest price possible, but another also tends to want premium product, so a company is always making a compromise to one part of its audience to please another. Some folks would have viewed static reindeer as total non-starters since you can find that sort of thing elsewhere. The articulation is what makes these different from something you might be able to find in the seasonal aisle of a major retailer.
I agree, they're on the hook for making a product people want to buy and feel is worth the money, but that's why it's a crowdfund in the firs place. If enough people want it, cool. If not, nobody's on the hook. For me at least this line was so unexpected that it's all gravy. I'm not sitting around waiting for them to complete some comic-book accurate superteam like a Marvel Legend wave, so it really is just whenever they have something cool I can pick it up and if not I move on by.
The price being justified or not, they're more than I'm willing to spend so I'm skipping them.
BBTS did ship out my Classic and Jolly Santas this week, but at this point I doubt I'll get them before Christmas. That's fine, I didn't get my NECA Dracula until after Halloween this year, so I guess next year will be when I get my figures displayed for the Holidays.
@jakeekiss maybe their image isn't too indicative of the end product, but I'm not seeing a very tooling-intensive reindeer here. I think it's even a stretch to claim it's so much larger than their Santa. They can probably fit all of the parts onto one mold because I bet they'll cast it all in the same shade of plastic. Maybe they did a set of tools for just the antlers and hooves, but this isn't some super-complicated sculpt here. Factoring in smaller company and all, I'm just not seeing much effort to give the consumer a better value here. Why no price break for those who are willing to pony up for a full set? If you're going to ask for that kind of price for an articulated reindeer, I also need to see a sample or something so I can see if the articulation is even any good. Hence why I speculate that something closer to static, or even 5 POA, would make more sense if they can't really do much. Hasbro, who has been very successful convincing collectors tooling anything new is some massive undertaking, to its credit gave me an action figure with a fully-articulated panther for the same price as one reindeer. I know Fresh Monkey can't exactly compete with Hasbro, but I think they can do better than this.
I don't want to derail the topic any more than this so anyone that thinks the price is fine should go ahead and buy it and hopefully the end product will meet expectations. I just think it's ridiculous to suggest people on an action figure forum don't understand how products are made and are somehow in the wrong when they don't see the value in what is ostensibly a luxury good. It may have been a pipe dream to expect the line to get to this point where reindeer are actually being offered, but that doesn't mean we're obligated to just take whatever they're putting out there. I like gravy as much as the next guy, but at 45 bucks a helping that better be some pretty amazing gravy.
I need all 9 reindeer, so I'm putting aside $25 a paycheck. That's $50 a month. That's paid off in 9 months. Should be doable.
Hasbro, who has been very successful convincing collectors tooling anything new is some massive undertaking, to its credit gave me an action figure with a fully-articulated panther for the same price as one reindeer.
So this is exactly what I'm talking about. Hasbro is absolutely right. New steel molds, regardless of the complexity of the sculpt, are *always* extremely expensive. They just go from exorbitant pricing to criminal pricing from what I understand. And Hasbro can offer that articulation at a lower cost because they are eating the cost up front knowing that a Snake Eyes (for example) will be nearly guaranteed to sell X number of units in 6 months. They are making up the cost in volume of sales. And note, that wolf Snake Eyes came with has already been used multiple times, and the bodies/accessories that came with the wolf were used 2-4 times now depending on the buck. They are still doing things to offset that tooling.
The reason Hasbro talks about mold costs for them is because, unlike FMF, they're held to different sales goals that sometimes mean they make budget choices not because they strictly speaking have to, but because shareholders want more quarterly return.
That's also why they sprung for the panther tooling (presumably you mean the D&D stuff) even though it might've cost them money relative to sales. That was market testing a line for D&D premium figures. And as far as I can tell, it failed and we probably won't be getting any more. But the risk was worth it because if it had worked, they don't pay licensing for D&D like they do for Star Wars and Marvel.
The thing that's also true of FMF is that they also have to deal with those tooling costs. But they don't have anywhere near the scale of operation Hasbro does. They cannot count on sell-through over a year and they can't afford to take risks like Hasbro.
(also worth noting, Hasbro has been laying off a TON of people, so it's possible those risks they took were costly enough that they were a factor, though certainly not the only one, in letting a huge chunk of their workforce go just before Christmas)
I just think it's ridiculous to suggest people on an action figure forum don't understand how products are made and are somehow in the wrong when they don't see the value in what is ostensibly a luxury good. It may have been a pipe dream to expect the line to get to this point where reindeer are actually being offered, but that doesn't mean we're obligated to just take whatever they're putting out there. I like gravy as much as the next guy, but at 45 bucks a helping that better be some pretty amazing gravy.
TBF, I don't think anyone was obligated to buy anything or was wrong to not buy. *I'm* priced out at $45 a pop. But I've done back end production on stuff in adjacent industries before, and I'm sorry, but yeah, most people on hobby forums have really wrong ideas on how much anything actually costs or is made. They have no idea the margins smaller companies are working on. And the type of hobby doesn't matter. Fans often think they know more than they do, and expect stuff to be the same between huge megacorps and much smaller outfits when those two things are very different.
That doesn't mean people are bad for not wanting to buy this. As I said, I'm not buying it. It just means there's a difference between "I can't afford this" and "the company is doing something wrong because I can't afford this". I agree this price point doesn't work for everyone. Different folks can have different opinions about what they'd pay and for what.
My only issue is when folks say this exact offering *should* cost less due to comparison to Hasbro or similar competitor. That's wild. It' the Giant-man thread again "he's 4x the size he should only be 4x the cost". No, that's literally not how this works.
Do we know how often they update their pre-order statuses?
Latest Post: Mattel regains the DC license Our newest member: Count von Curdles Recent Posts Unread Posts
