Mkall wrote:Vicalliose wrote:Edit: Counterpunch wrote:You are following up on a year where the club exclusive sold out in a day. That followed up on a year where the club exclusive figure was flat out under-produced.
Astro Train and Airazor happened. Which funnily enough, Airazor is probably my favorite exclusive, she seems kinda underrated to me. But they did not sell out for a long time. It seems that that one mistake was enough to permanently convince them to produce as little as possible so they can sell them all out immediately rather than sitting on stock.
Astrotrain and Airazor happened
5 years ago. If they think that 5 years back has any effect on what is happening today, then there's more problems than we see.
It does have an impact. Hopefully lessons were learned, but it appears to me that they weren't. Airazor is an amazing figure in my opinion. Great head sculpt, underrated like Vicalliose said. However, it would have been better to have had that type of 2nd tier character as a convention exclusive or paired with another toy that fans would be rabid about. I don't think an update of Airazor was on the top of fan lists. Astrotain was definitely not the figure that Airazor should have been released with, especially with the failed head sculpt that doesn't look much like the designs we were shown. Unfortunately, the problem with Astrotrain didn't end with Astrotrain. The lesson wasn't learned from that situation as there have been many problems with head sculpts and character choices since then.
While we're being really tough on the Club/BotCon right now, I hope they understand that it's a form of tough love (at least from me, it is). I think we all ultimately really want the same thing ... we want to see them succeed. We really do. It's just frustrating that every year there's something and that this has been going on for 8 years. At this point, between Transformers and GiJoe, this whole process should be pretty seamless. I just want them to get to the point that, problems like this are few and far between (instead of waiting for the next problem to arise), and that they become so successful that there are exclusives coming out every month ... or that we get to the point where there are "figure" subscriptions (similar to MattyCollector.com) where we get an exclusive figure that we PRE-ORDERED every quarter or every month. That would be awesome. That would mean that the Club business model was a success. It should be so successful that they're taking on other brands besides Transformers and GIJoe (unless they have an exclusive contract for Hasbro only brands) ... but then where is My Little Pony or other brands that Hasbro owns?
I want to see the kinks removed from the system, and see this thing go to places none of pictured them growing to. I want to see their business model be a success, see us fans happy, and see them grow as a business!
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