The Energon Pub

It's too bad, but I just wanted two of their figures. It became way too hard to keep track of when they began showing sketch after sketch.

Here's an interesting post-mortem:

http://www.allspark.com/content/2015/03/why-did-the-play-with-this-too-kickstarter-project-fail/

I agree with all the points the article makes except in regards to homages. Instead of nixing homages altogether, I'd rather see a more focused set of homages. But then again, I'm coming from a place of only wanting TF-related things. There's a market out there for totally original creations, and I guess PWTT needs to figure out which market it's trying to captivate. As the article points out, the something for everyone strategy resulted in chaos, and didn't quite work out.

I think there should be more homages to help them establish themselves as a brand... doing a lot of original ideas that nobody yet cares about before being able to actually play with a few of their toys I think was their downfall. Also, there was just too much... people couldn't keep track or understand what they were selling. They should do a tight line, like the Mars Attacks line... 4 Martians, 3 smaller figures, a saucer, gun, and a larger figure. Gives variety, but isn't overwhelming

The "don't do homages" tip really misses the mark for me. The TF homages were the only reason i was interested in this. If you take that away then why would anyone care?

Gauntlet101010 wrote:The "don't do homages" tip really misses the mark for me. The TF homages were the only reason i was interested in this. If you take that away then why would anyone care?

Exactly. Without a TV show, movie, or comic book, $55 figures aren't going to sell just because they "look cool."

MartianSpyGirl1996 wrote:I think there should be more homages to help them establish themselves as a brand... doing a lot of original ideas that nobody yet cares about before being able to actually play with a few of their toys I think was their downfall. Also, there was just too much... people couldn't keep track or understand what they were selling. They should do a tight line, like the Mars Attacks line... 4 Martians, 3 smaller figures, a saucer, gun, and a larger figure. Gives variety, but isn't overwhelming

I agree that it was all too much, but I would say they might have been successful had they gone completely original. Most of the action figure Kickstarters this has been compared to - Mythic Legions, Vitruvian HACKS, etc. - were original, and successfully funded. I think it was a lack of focus generally on a single market that doomed them. In my opinion, most of their other problems stemmed from this lack of singular vision.

At any rate, I'll be following their next steps with interest.

megatronus wrote:Most of the action figure Kickstarters this has been compared to - Mythic Legions, Vitruvian HACKS, etc. - were original, and successfully funded.

I didn't follow these, so out of curiosity, were these the first lines for their respected companies, how much did it cost a customer to get a figure, and how much did they need to get funded?

MartianSpyGirl1996 wrote:

megatronus wrote:Most of the action figure Kickstarters this has been compared to - Mythic Legions, Vitruvian HACKS, etc. - were original, and successfully funded.

I didn't follow these, so out of curiosity, were these the first lines for their respected companies, how much did it cost a customer to get a figure, and how much did they need to get funded?

Off the top of my head? No idea. I think you can still find these on Kickstarter (they've ended, but the info should still be there).

megatronus wrote:

MartianSpyGirl1996 wrote:

megatronus wrote:Most of the action figure Kickstarters this has been compared to - Mythic Legions, Vitruvian HACKS, etc. - were original, and successfully funded.

I didn't follow these, so out of curiosity, were these the first lines for their respected companies, how much did it cost a customer to get a figure, and how much did they need to get funded?

Off the top of my head? No idea. I think you can still find these on Kickstarter (they've ended, but the info should still be there).

Oh I don't care that much, but those may have been factors as to why those succeeded and this failed.

I gotta admit, I just don't know enough about any of those successful kickstartes to even comment.

But I do know that I was only interested in this for it's Transformer-related content. And it was pretty frustrating to see a near constant stream of drawings with no prototypes (until just recently and far too late in the game).

Gauntlet101010 wrote:I gotta admit, I just don't know enough about any of those successful kickstartes to even comment.

But I do know that I was only interested in this for it's Transformer-related content. And it was pretty frustrating to see a near constant stream of drawings with no prototypes (until just recently and far too late in the game).

I don't know too much about those other Kickstarters, either - I was basically parroting Scaleface... speaking of which... has anyone seen that guy around? I wonder what he thinks about this.

I was also only interested in the TF related stuff. If they had trumpeted that and/or made it the sole focus of the Kickstarter, I imagine they might have gotten funded. Lack of physical prototypes didn't help.

megatronus wrote:I was basically parroting Scaleface... speaking of which... has anyone seen that guy around? I wonder what he thinks about this.

Always wondered who he was in relation to PWTToo... does he work with them?

My guessing and opinions.

Think PWTT was banking on the TFCC buyers who often over buy all of those Botcon and club toys. Since most of the PWTT crew came-worked from the TFCC club and also worked for Hasbro. With the intent of TFCC resellers gathering it up in bulk then reselling it all for a hefty profit. That's why their was so many duplicates bulk packs. Think PWTT always knew they'd never hit over $100,000. That's why at the last few days, They told $900 Pledge buyers they'd be getting duplicates instead.

Problem is, From the start. The resellers fans, Saw their were no profits to be made. As the toys were already priced insanely high at $55 each. The resellers might have also seen these were niche toys that didn't transform. and would be in less demand on the secondary market than the TFCC stuff is.

Other problems with this kick starter was PWTT telling fans one thing and then doing another thing afterwards. Like saying all Kick Starter buyers would be getting each toy for cost. Don't think paying $55 for each Kick Starter toy was cost. It was insane high pricing at it's best. Cost should have been $15 per toy.

Think from the start PWTT was trying to create a overly simple low quality toy. Then reap in the huge profits from fans by charging high prices for them. As toys that don't transform and are MOTU styled toys. Are galaxies easier, cheaper and quicker to make than a Transforming robot toy is.

The biggest problem I noticed with PWTT. Was expecting fans to fund the whole project. But fans had no say on what got made, who got made and what style of toy they wanted. Polls rounds should have been set up last year or Two years ago. Letting fans pick the type of toy they wanted like headmasters,multi changer, fem bot. characters chosen, colors, faction, gimmicks. Letting fans fund everything and then getting no say is not what I call a group funding partnership thing.

The Mythic legions line was done by the four horsemen who are very well known and are top of there game right now they did the MOTU Classics line .

PWWTT should have had that prototype already painted from the beginning but saying that once i saw it painted up it turned me off not cos i didn't like it but because there are better figures out right now i want to spend that money on .

As far as PWTT kickstarter 2 goes. Don't think all of the high rollers will be putting back in those high pledges. As the KS was deemed a failure. Which means the resellers buying in dulpicates bulk will have a hard time on ebay trying to get buyers to buy the stuff at a profit.

Been reading other forums. Some regular KS buyers and High rollers resellers buyers did not like the informercial type hard pressed salesman approach that was done on this project.

Guessing PWTT will try to return next week or next month with Kick starter 2. Think PWTT needs to look at all the data from this kick starter for a few months. Reorganize everything, then try again in 2016.

Don't think PWTT can afford another Kick Starter failure. As it makes the high rollers not want to pledge. As the High rollers who might be resellers might deem the toys not worthy to get big profits on ebay. As they might think the toys designs are not popular in the community for fans to want to buy them.

Think if PWTT wants this project to get funded on Kick starter. They need to get rid of the stuff transformers fans dont want. Only sell the stuff TF fans want. Trim down the stuff and sell the bare bones less on Kick starter. How do they do this? set up polls rounds and let fans pick what they want the most.

Maybe the answer is to set up a few Kickstarters with different products and lower goals. Like having one Kickstarter just sell the BMOG toys. Other Kick starter just selling the TF homage Pretender 6 inch toys. Another kick starter selling the NON TF homage character figures. Last kick starter selling the replacements heads, staffs, shirts, buttons.

There were two GLARING (but related) issues with this kickstarter:

One:
At the base level there were really only 2 bodies.
There were a couple repaints of each, but only two actual figures.

Two:
Opening up additional bodies were WAY WAY WAY too expensive on the stretch goal meter.



One of the reasons I pulled my money from this KS was that I DID buy into Mythic Legions.

Mythic legions did use heavy amounts of parts reuse, but they had a lot of parts and were able to combo them up in a lot of ways that made for interesting characters.

Many characters were available from the get-go with Mythic Legions, so I bought in for a few characters right away. As more goals got unlocked, more popped up, and they were things I wanted, so I kept upping my pledge to cover the new items.

But also the stretch goals were not unreasonable. They cropped up within about $10-15K of each other.

With PWTT I initially bought in for a lot more, but once I realized they would not get to goal X, I lowered my pledge. A few days later it looked less like they would get to goal Y, so my pledge lowered some more. I doubt I'm the only person that did that.

megatronus wrote:I don't know too much about those other Kickstarters, either - I was basically parroting Scaleface... speaking of which... has anyone seen that guy around? I wonder what he thinks about this.

I was also only interested in the TF related stuff. If they had trumpeted that and/or made it the sole focus of the Kickstarter, I imagine they might have gotten funded. Lack of physical prototypes didn't help.

You won't find him here, he was only here to promote.

mooncake623 wrote:

megatronus wrote:I don't know too much about those other Kickstarters, either - I was basically parroting Scaleface... speaking of which... has anyone seen that guy around? I wonder what he thinks about this.

I was also only interested in the TF related stuff. If they had trumpeted that and/or made it the sole focus of the Kickstarter, I imagine they might have gotten funded. Lack of physical prototypes didn't help.

You won't find him here, he was only here to promote.

He was informing on a lot of other 3P stuff before PWTToo. He was doing the Retro Robot Radio Podcasts. (He hasn't posted one of those here in a while. I should check his YouTube channel...)

Agamemnon wrote:

mooncake623 wrote:

megatronus wrote:I don't know too much about those other Kickstarters, either - I was basically parroting Scaleface... speaking of which... has anyone seen that guy around? I wonder what he thinks about this.

I was also only interested in the TF related stuff. If they had trumpeted that and/or made it the sole focus of the Kickstarter, I imagine they might have gotten funded. Lack of physical prototypes didn't help.

You won't find him here, he was only here to promote.

He was informing on a lot of other 3P stuff before PWTToo. He was doing the Retro Robot Radio Podcasts. (He hasn't posted one of those here in a while. I should check his YouTube channel...)

Daimchoc and Scaleface use to post new threads here, relating to newer 3rd party TF toys. Notice they both still do this on TFW.

I think there's a simple answer why this didn't hit its funding goal: It primarily went after the Transformers market's collective wallet, and these aren't in the "transforming action figure" category. Pretenders, as characters, just aren't going to be popular enough to hit a large pledge dollar amount, or a large population of folks to pledge smaller amounts (either can equal success, obviously).

Tsutsukakushi wrote:Daimchoc and Scaleface use to post new threads here, relating to newer 3rd party TF toys. Notice they both still do this on TFW.

One did things for News Credits, best I can tell (Daimchoc), and those don't happen here for 3P. The other (Scaleface) only came in to promote a project. I don't see why they would continue to post here given those motivations - which is actually kind of a bummer, because Daimchoc is a local dude and an awesome guy and it'd be cool to have his opinions contributing to any discussions, on 3P product or otherwise. Oh well.

ScottyP wrote:I think there's a simple answer why this didn't hit its funding goal: It primarily went after the Transformers market's collective wallet, and these aren't in the "transforming action figure" category. Pretenders, as characters, just aren't going to be popular enough to hit a large pledge dollar amount, or a large population of folks to pledge smaller amounts (either can equal success, obviously).

I'm not so sure this is true. They only missed their goal by about 10%.

If a few more figures were available at lower unlock points, they would have gotten more $$$ from contributors. I can say this for sure from me.

Seriously guys, Scaleface had been here for years before the PWTToo project. He was posting the Retro Robot Radio podcasts. Can we give him a little bit of a break here? Yes, he promoted the hell out of PWTToo, but that wasn't the only reason he was here.

I'd hate to think that Scaleface abandoned Seibertron for TFW2005 to find a more welcoming community...

Agamemnon wrote:Seriously guys, Scaleface had been here for years before the PWTToo project. He was posting the Retro Robot Radio podcasts. Can we give him a little bit of a break here? Yes, he promoted the hell out of PWTToo, but that wasn't the only reason he was here.

I'd hate to think that Scaleface abandoned Seibertron for TFW2005 to find a more welcoming community...

Aggie... He was here promoting his podcasts.... When have you talk to him outside these two threads?

Just like he was here promoting the bmog projects and all the KFC stuff cause he's friends with someone There or something

Agamemnon wrote:
I'd hate to think that Scaleface abandoned Seibertron for TFW2005 to find a more welcoming community...

I wouldn't worry about that as he got more flak there than he did here.

Robogeek1973 wrote:

Agamemnon wrote:
I'd hate to think that Scaleface abandoned Seibertron for TFW2005 to find a more welcoming community...

I wouldn't worry about that as he got more flak there than he did here.

I don't think we here are Seibertron is ever not welcoming. Just that like diam choc our third party audience is just a lot smaller, so they chose to move on.