On one hand, I think that this is a great idea, but on the other, I think GG's game plan has some fatal flaws...
With Star Wars, GG is skipping around, doing a lot of the popular figures and mixing things up. But, with Joe, they plan on just powering straight through, starting with the 1982 figures. Okay, so everyone is going to want a Snake Eyes-- that's a given. But only some people are going to want Zap, and some Rock N Roll, and some Grunt and so on. Point being: Snake Eyes, Stalker and Scarlett (although she wasn't shown) are likely to do well, but the others probably won't sell so great. The problem comes with the fact that, when I spoke to a GG rep at SDCC, he said they are going to "see how these sell first" before they get to obvious huge sellers like Duke, Storm Shadow, Roadblock, Firefly, etc.
So, in essence, by hitting the market with all the '82 figures first-- most of which aren't very popular, they could be killing the line before they get to the figures that will sell in droves. This makes no sense to me, but... so be it.
I wish this line the best, and I will be wanting an '84 Snake Eyes, but until they get to some of the other major players in their classic looks, SE will probably be the only one I'll be buying.
Although, I will say that the rep said that they hope/plan to take the line up until at least the '84 figures. Let's hope they get that far.
Price point was mentioned being somewhere between $75-85 bucks with Grunt in a special footlocker packaging being the first. The rest will all be on reproduction cards like the Star Wars figures.
I respect the classic Joe line for what it is, but I'm not about to drop eighty-five bucks on giant sized versions of any of them, to and include the over rated Boba F…I mean, Snake Eyes. I think it's a fantastic idea to do these figures in chronological order from the beginning of the vintage line, but Gentle Giant needs to understand that they're not catering to casual collectors/fans. Only die-hard fans are going to actively seek out every last one of these. Or to clarify a step further, that would be die-hard fans with a lot of expendable cash. Keep in mind that there were eleven carded figures released in 1982. At eighty-five bucks a pop, that’s $935.00 before taxes and shipping costs. That’s a lot of money to drop on what Gentle Giant is hoping will be a first series. Gentle Giant would really have to pace this series in order to get a lot of folks to take the plunge, but on that same hand they need to make sure that they find a steady momentum that keeps people interested. There’s nothing worse than a collectible line that’s always draining your wallet because every time you turn around there’s something new, but at the same time there’s nothing worse for collectors than to sit around waiting for something new.
ReplyDeleteI can’t help but wonder if a subscription based program would be better for something like this. This way Gentle Giant would have the numbers of their target audience as well as the sales figures in advance.