Street Humans

I went in, I wish him luck. More indie toy companies out there is a good thing.

I have to give Shart credit. He went on Boog's podcast yesterday, and did seem better prepared and probably the calmest and most coherent that I have ever seen him in a live setting.

I don't know that it will change much in terms of boosting the backer count, but it's a start.

Saw the Boog video and he is way more interactive in that video. way better with the communication. i personally like the figures, cant have too many goons. once im ready, ill back it but dont know when that would be, i might miss the window to back it but i will buy them down the road.

@nightwolf Unless the kick is successful there is no "down the road". If the kick doesn't make the figures aren't produced.

oh yeah, assuming it gets produced of course.

Man, real telling about the health of this kickstarter that three days ago Russ (not calling him that other name) gave into Vala’s bullying and made jeans and black pants variants of the figures and no one is commenting on it.

anyway, the Lion face one with the jeans is giving me serious “White Trash Lion-O” vibes from that “Robot Chicken” where are they now skit… if this thing funds I’d consider getting that one to hang out with Ultimate Muckman and Mo-Lar

Posted by: @doc-baghead

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Man, real telling about the health of this kickstarter that three days ago Russ (not calling him that other name) gave into Vala’s bullying and made jeans and black pants variants of the figures and no one is commenting on it.

anyway, the Lion face one with the jeans is giving me serious “White Trash Lion-O” vibes from that “Robot Chicken” where are they now skit… if this thing funds I’d consider getting that one to hang out with Ultimate Muckman and Mo-Lar

It wasn't bullying, it was legitimate advice. Having generic pants as a base option does help them as an army builder which is what Russ intends.

Posted by: @doc-baghead

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Man, real telling about the health of this kickstarter that three days ago Russ (not calling him that other name) gave into Vala’s bullying and made jeans and black pants variants of the figures and no one is commenting on it.

anyway, the Lion face one with the jeans is giving me serious “White Trash Lion-O” vibes from that “Robot Chicken” where are they now skit… if this thing funds I’d consider getting that one to hang out with Ultimate Muckman and Mo-Lar

I was thinking the same thing about how much passive disinterest there is for this KS. For all the reasons already gone over ad nauseum - I just don't think people care about the line. More proof that the failure of the first KS wasn't, ridiculously suggested by Russ, just because there was no prototype. It just isn't a very appealing concept.

And I guffawed at the Lion-O thing. Now that you brought it up.. you are absolutely right and that's hilarious.

Posted by: @thewyldman

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Posted by: @doc-baghead

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Man, real telling about the health of this kickstarter that three days ago Russ (not calling him that other name) gave into Vala’s bullying and made jeans and black pants variants of the figures and no one is commenting on it.

anyway, the Lion face one with the jeans is giving me serious “White Trash Lion-O” vibes from that “Robot Chicken” where are they now skit… if this thing funds I’d consider getting that one to hang out with Ultimate Muckman and Mo-Lar

 

It wasn't bullying, it was legitimate advice. Having generic pants as a base option does help them as an army builder which is what Russ intends.

 

I think calling it 'legitimate advice' is overly kind. It's legitimate advice when given over a phone call or in an email or text chat between two guys in the industry. Backing him into a wall about it during a live vidcast? I'm not sure I'd go to the extent of calling it bullying, but it definitely wasn't just 'advice.' Frankly, I don't disagree with almost anything Bobby said (I just threw up in my mouth a little), but he definitely wasn't saying all those things just to be a nice guy. He was definitely putting Russ on blast a little bit for making bad decisions and not knowing anything. Fair. Entirely fair. But not what I think is reasonable to call just 'giving him advice' either.

Not enough people care and the funding goals are pretty damn high at that. The idea seemed D.O.A., though I don't begrudge the guy for trying since this is probably a dream of his, but the scope of this is beyond his reach. For these YouTube personalities with fairly large followers, a mascot style character seems like best route to getting a toy produced via this model, provided you have such a character your followers would want. Absent that it's going to take a really good idea, and if an idea is that good they could also probably secure private funding from an investor or even partner with an indie toy developer to help offset what's needed from a crowdfund. 

Posted by: @theknightdamien

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. He was definitely putting Russ on blast a little bit for making bad decisions and not knowing anything. Fair. Entirely fair. But not what I think is reasonable to call just 'giving him advice' either.

 

Which you know if kinda fair. Shartimus doesn't seem to know what he's actually doing and while this isn't a scam, the way he talks about production stuff, it might as well be if it actually funds.

I don't have any interest in these. The monster head would just go on a different appropriate monster body. The street heavy aspect is more than I'm willing to spend on a no-name figure. For those that want it, I wish it would fund. This is a huge risk for Russ. How many KS projects have gone off the rails and ruined livelihoods? Either A) He's totally unaware of what a risk this is for his brand, or B) He's aware of the risk and is 10,000% confident he can deliver. If it's "A" a campaign that doesn't fund is the best outcome. If it's "B", where's he hiding that confidence?

@thewyldman For sure. Like I've said - I don't disagree with the stuff Bobby said to Russ, nor with saying it right to him publicly. Good. More people should be that straight up and to the point when telling someone they don't know what they're doing.
I just don't think it's entirely fair to act like it was just Bobby being a nice guy and offering some friendly advice, right? That's not what that was.

And yeah... that interview as much as anything else convinced me that even if Russ gets the money, which he won't, nothing good can really come from this. Either the figures will never be made, or they'll be made with a delay and come out terribly or not as advertised, or they'll come out five years later than advertised and Russ will lose his house paying for all the retools. My honest opinion is that if Russ had half a brain he'd just cancel this Kickstarter and go back to the drawing board with this entire concept and all of his intentions - maybe try to work out a partnership with someone like Fresh Monkey that can actually do all the stuff he clearly doesn't have a clue about.

@misfit  I don't feel bad for him at all, to be honest. Isn't this basically a dream of MOST toy collectors? He's not special. I'd love to create a line of historical warriors, but I know that it would be not only SUPER niche, but that I have no clue what I'm doing. There's folks I could call, just like Russ is dialing up David Vonner. But having 'a friend in the toy industry to give you some help' is not the same as really knowing what you're doing and having the firm competency to make something like this happen.

And it's not even a good idea for a line, so it's not like this thing where you can say he's clearly blindsided by people not supporting this amazing idea. AND he ignored criticisms to this effect from his last KS and just decided to go ahead and do it again with basically no substantive changes because he's arrogant. So.... this is what happens.

At least when Bob dicked up his first KS, he actually used the feedback he got, addressed the stuff that was making people not want to back (besides his shitty personality) and came back with a product more in line with what his potential customers were asking for. Russ basically did nothing. He deserves for this to fail because that's how he's decided it needs to be before he'll learn to listen.

Last day to back

I only tuned in for odd bits of the live stream but I have to admit there was a bit of a morbid curiosity in watching people trying to be positive despite knowing that there’d be no positive outcome.  I liked the designs on the creature heads, especially the bat one, a body to go with it, plus delivering to the UK would have got some support from me, not that i’m saying that would have made any difference.

The only surprising thing here is that it managed to get past 50% of the funding goal.

That being said, it did get pretty far - I think like 3/4 toward the goal? That's not nothing. I'm sure he'll come back for round 3 somehow (whether Kickstarter or by doing something like teaming with BBTS), and probably be successful just by scaling back the offering and getting the funding goal down a bit (and/or getting an investor to kick in).

Given that Russ is obviously really committed to this idea, I don't see it stopping here. This is just another roadblock to him figuring out how best to offer this product in a way where it can actually get made. I still don't think it should be. I still think it's a bad idea on its face, with a bad execution. But it'll happen eventually just by sheer stubbornness.