The big thing that puts me off this whole campaign is that it's basically just "people of color: they're monsters and here for your white guy super heroes to beat in your toy photography."
And AI has finally come to the one forum I was able to avoid it on for the last few months...
I'm waiting for someone to admit their character design was AI generated. I wouldn't be shocked if someone isn't currently thinking about it.
Got my stretch goal. I'll figure out all the details later.
The big thing that puts me off this whole campaign is that it's basically just "people of color: they're monsters and here for your white guy super heroes to beat in your toy photography."
Or for black guy/gal heroes/villains to beat up.
I appreciate where you are coming from, but it’s always surprising to me the seemingly innocuous things that people find to be bigoted vs the blatant things people tacitly turn a blind eye to. There is no ethnocultural predilection for crime outside of what we might infer/confer to the subject. Criminals come in all stripes and creeds and I need more punks of color because the majority of what Hasbro has provided me with are white guys with ties and tracksuits (thanks for that last bit, Has-Bros, by the by)…
The big thing that puts me off this whole campaign is that it's basically just "people of color: they're monsters and here for your white guy super heroes to beat in your toy photography."
Is Shartimus Hispanic? I don't watch very often, but I thought he said so. I don't know if that makes it somewhat acceptable?
@asm the 4th and 6th stretch goal are white (with another two being asian) so it looks to he covering all races.
@nightwolf It's completely made up by ai. I was using Microsoft Bing Image Creator. It's free and they give you 25 creations per day. I wrote something like, "action figure, articulated toy of an urban person, city package design"
One time I legitimately mistyped "orca" instead of "orcs". Hilarious...
The big thing that puts me off this whole campaign is that it's basically just "people of color: they're monsters and here for your white guy super heroes to beat in your toy photography."
Is Shartimus Hispanic? I don't watch very often, but I thought he said so. I don't know if that makes it somewhat acceptable?
He's said he wants the line to be diverse and have underrepresented races in the figure selection. Which is great for an original line, but not one that's meant to also double as gang members and street thugs.
What exactly has changed from the previous failed KS to this current failing KS? It looks like he didn't learn anything.
I'm not going to watch that video, since I don't want to see anything with the people involved. I will watch Shartimus reviews, since I think he's thorough enough with them and at least lights the figure well. Don't really care about hearing any of those other guys' opinions.
@theknightdamien Yeah like I said, I normally wouldn't post it or recommend the show, but Shart's answers were just really bad and you know it had to be killing Vala trying not to just go off on him and stay "nice." The interview just kinda emphasizes the main fear about the line and it's that Russ is just unprepared to actually make a toyline. The first kickstarter was rushed and despite obviously learning from the first kickstarter he needed to spend alot more time actually learning about how production actually occurs and stuff.
Vala definitely leaned in the 'fed up' direction a few times, whether it be facial expressions clearly showing how unimpressed he was, or that comment he made (which, granted, apparently he discussed privately already with Russ) about people coming into the space not knowing what they're doing and making everyone look bad, or whatever it was he said. At the same time, I'm not going to applaud Vala for holding a modicum of decorum since this was -their- guest that -they- chose. If you can't be respectful to the person you invited onto your show, then you shouldn't be inviting guests, you should be inviting a therapist.
I don't think any amount of preparation or knowledge is going to change the fact that Shartimus struggles greatly to express himself in a live forum. I'm not shitting on him, or suggesting this makes him a bad guy or anything. But whether it's his livestreams, his interviews, that asinine video he made with Boog and Talkerart recently...he rambles incoherently, has great difficulty staying on topic, and cant identify the logical string in a discussion.
He's okay in the format of his figure reviews, because he's not under pressure and has the ability to edit himself. But he's not a good public speaker or conversationalist, and he's the wrong individual to be a pitchman for anything. He's doing himself and his line a disservice by being the one promoting it.
I hear what you're saying. But there's a pretty big difference between being a bad public speaker/conversationalist and clearly not having the answer to a question, right? You can stumble over your words and struggle all day long as long as you -get- to the right answer by the time you're done speaking. Russ did not do this. He very clearly did not have good answers to a lot of the questions. I'm sure it wasn't helped by the fact that he seemed to know very early on that they were clowning on him and every 'listener question' they posed to him was someone being a cunt. I'm not discounting that at all.
I'd give Russ all the credit in the world if he struggled through that but came away with some good answers poorly worded. This wasn't "I have the answers but I'm frustrated." This was "I don't have the answers -and- I'm frustrated."
The big thing that puts me off this whole campaign is that it's basically just "people of color: they're monsters and here for your white guy super heroes to beat in your toy photography."
Or for black guy/gal heroes/villains to beat up.
I appreciate where you are coming from, but it’s always surprising to me the seemingly innocuous things that people find to be bigoted vs the blatant things people tacitly turn a blind eye to. There is no ethnocultural predilection for crime outside of what we might infer/confer to the subject. Criminals come in all stripes and creeds and I need more punks of color because the majority of what Hasbro has provided me with are white guys with ties and tracksuits (thanks for that last bit, Has-Bros, by the by)…
I agree. I mean, I'm not a POC, and I'm not going to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't be uncomfortable with. But given that a big pitch for this line is inclusivity, and that there's more typical white folks included down the road (can't offer every skin color right away), I don't really agree that this is at all a problem. It's a line of aliens disguised as humans. The first two happen to be POC, but isn't it just as problematic if he just made the whole line more white people? It's a situation where you can't win if you're looking to be offended by it. And that's coming from me - someone almost everyone on this entire forum would almost certainly label a 'radical leftist' -AT BEST.
I suppose he could have pitched the line differently and made the main characters BOTH the heroes AND their 'body snatcher' alien doubles. So that each character represents both a hero character and a villain character, thereby sidestepping any claim that any particular representation is being used exclusively as bad guy gang members or monsters. But I mean.... he's a ditz that wants to make toys. Not a writer.
Which goes back to the idea that so much of this desperately needed more than one person involved. The 'storyline' and everything associated with it needed an actual writer or someone legitimately creative. The sales stuff needs an actual spokesman, and the line itself needs someone that understands toy design and how to deal with factories. Russ shouldn't, and demonstrably can't, do this on his own.
What exactly has changed from the previous failed KS to this current failing KS? It looks like he didn't learn anything.
I'm not going to watch that video, since I don't want to see anything with the people involved. I will watch Shartimus reviews, since I think he's thorough enough with them and at least lights the figure well. Don't really care about hearing any of those other guys' opinions.
My understanding is that the actual physical figure itself has been modified with better/extra articulation and swappability and such. But -conceptually- it's the exact same stuff. I mentioned this earlier in the thread where I said that I feel he took the wrong message away from the failure of his first KS. He's acting like the big problem was that the body wasn't modern/updated enough, when the real problem was literally everything else.
If you can't be respectful to the person you invited onto your show, then you shouldn't be inviting guests, you should be inviting a therapist.
Yeah, this was the vibe I got before I shut it off. They invited a drowning man on just so they could hand him an anvil. The critiques were valid, but pointless now that the kick is in progress (and failing) because almost none of that can be changed soon (or possibly at all for this kick). Why bring the man on just to scold him?
@theknightdamien The big problem was him not having any kind of physical prototype with the first kickstarter which he did address this time.
However, there's still a lot of real structural issues with the line.
@theknightdamien I am a POC and I also wouldn’t presume to tell people how to feel, but I will express whether I think something represents prejudice. Additionally, I am also pretty far left in my political beliefs. Not that this detail means I’m a better judge of said matters, only that cultural equanimity is quite important to me and I wouldn’t compromise my beliefs because I like a toy/line/person. Again, I’m not a Shartimus apologist any more than I’m an opponent. He seems like a bit of a puerile goof, but not a malicious bigot and I’m not offended by his toyline. I think when someone is polarizing, as another poster commented, people find reasons to pile on.
The big thing that puts me off this whole campaign is that it's basically just "people of color: they're monsters and here for your white guy super heroes to beat in your toy photography."
I mean, I'm not a POC, and I'm not going to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't be uncomfortable with. But given that a big pitch for this line is inclusivity, and that there's more typical white folks included down the road (can't offer every skin color right away), I don't really agree that this is at all a problem. It's a line of aliens disguised as humans. The first two happen to be POC, but isn't it just as problematic if he just made the whole line more white people? It's a situation where you can't win if you're looking to be offended by it. And that's coming from me - someone almost everyone on this entire forum would almost certainly label a 'radical leftist' -AT BEST.
I get what you're saying KD, but the fact is the choice was made to make the first two figures thugs of color. Even just going one and one on the initial offering probably would have diffused this criticism. And sure it's not the biggest issue this project has, but I don't think it's invalid either.
I am not a Sharimus hater, (like a surprisingly lot of people around here seem to be). But I'm not really sure I completely understand the concept of this line. It's called "Street Humans", but they're not human. They are aliens from another planet who are also apparently shape-shifters, but just their heads. And with their default "human" heads they are just a couple of dudes wearing wife-beaters. OK.
I think if you want to create a line of civilian characters to fit in with Marvel Legends and other 6-inch lines, drop the tacked on alien backstory and make the characters a little more interesting with more variety of types. There are already a lot of wrestling and video game figures out there that can double as street thugs. I don't know, it seems like not a lot of thought really went into this. I mean how much imagination could it take to come up with figures of regular looking guys dressed in pants and tee-shirts?
These are up for PO on BBTS for $32 each. Seems like a lot for what basically amounts to background characters?
I think the concept of "alien disguised as human" is actually strong, it feels very Men in Black-esque and it's bascially what the Real Ghostbusters line did (except with ghosts instead of aliens), and could make for a fun line.
Buuut these really miss the mark, mostly since the whiole alien in disguise thing is just a tact on idea, the regular human is meant to be the selling point and as people have already said, there are a bunch of reasons why they aren't picking up traction (design, price, size, etc).
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