Latest / The Euro Legions Podcast / 107. Talking Mythic Legions Beyithirr The Dragon with Jeremy Girard from Four Horsemen Studios

Transcript

107. Talking Mythic Legions Beyithirr The Dragon with Jeremy Girard from Four Horsemen Studios · The Euro Legions Podcast

• 0:02
  My wallet is sobbing. I can hear it.
• 0:04
  I can hear it in the hall now. It is breaking down crying.
• 0:08
  It turns out that Attila the arrogant soul.
• 0:11
  And so he's got a fake hammer. Oh, A.
• 0:13
  Fake. Yeah.
• 0:14
  Whoa. As I say, Dick.
• 0:18
  Welcome to episode 107 of the Religions Podcast.
• 0:22
  And this week we have replaced Rich with someone even better
• 0:26
  than Rich. It's a Jeremy from the Four
• 0:29
  Horsemen Studios, because Rich talks like he knows everything,
• 0:33
  but Jeremy actually knows everything about the topic that
• 0:36
  we generally talk about, so. Those are some big shoes to
• 0:40
  fill, man. I'm filling in for Rich this
• 0:41
  week so. Well, you don't need to be.
• 0:43
  You don't need to be healed rich, you know, because you
• 0:46
  don't need to badmouth stuff like that.
• 0:50
  That's the deal. That's the deal.
• 0:52
  And of course Mal is here to support me and I am make sure
• 0:57
  that I I stay on. Topic I, I feel like support you
• 1:00
  and support Jeremy here, you know, ease you both through
• 1:03
  this. Make the silly group.
• 1:08
  Exactly. Yeah, you can do the gags.
• 1:10
  No, but Jeremy, Speaking of Rich's famous faction, you had
• 1:14
  you guys sprung a little surprise on this recently, and
• 1:18
  we're not talking about the dragon yet.
• 1:19
  We'll get to that all in good time.
• 1:22
  But you gave us the legendary barbarian, which I was very
• 1:26
  chuffed about because if you listen to our most recent
• 1:28
  episode, I, I kind of pretty much predicted it might come
• 1:31
  this year. But you know, it wasn't the the
• 1:33
  biggest Nostradamus moment, but, you know, still sweet.
• 1:38
  So with Rich not here, we're just going to jump right into
• 1:41
  barbarian talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:44
  Absolutely, yeah. You know, we've we've discussed
• 1:49
  the idea of a touring figure for a couple years now.
• 1:55
  Interestingly, the undead of Viking fell from the retailer
• 2:01
  wave that was originally going to be a touring.
• 2:04
  Figure. And it just worked out that we
• 2:07
  couldn't get it into production fast enough.
• 2:09
  Like it was going to arrive at a point in the year where we would
• 2:13
  have missed so many of the shows.
• 2:16
  So we were like, wow, do we want to like start it half year and
• 2:18
  run it to half year? Whatever we did, it didn't feel
• 2:21
  right. So we ended up putting it in the
• 2:23
  retailer wave. But with this particular figure,
• 2:27
  we had the ability to get this done.
• 2:30
  You know, we'd had some of these parts that were sculpted quite
• 2:33
  some time ago. We knew we wanted to do this,
• 2:36
  this kind of legendary style figure that, you know, touches
• 2:39
  on some some very cool tropes that we've played.
• 2:42
  Around with. Within the Mythic Legions line.
• 2:46
  So ordering a certain number of those and doing it as a special
• 2:51
  show because we, we, we know there's so much value when
• 2:55
  people come out to the events and they get to spend time not
• 2:58
  only with us, but with the community.
• 3:00
  You know anyone can go online and pre-order stuff and wait.
• 3:03
  For it to arrive. But being there in the thick of
• 3:06
  things is really, really special, so we wanted there to
• 3:10
  be something above and beyond all the other cool stuff we
• 3:13
  bring to shows that was going to be at every single show.
• 3:17
  That we do. So that's how we came up with
• 3:19
  the idea for the legendary Barbarian.
• 3:21
  But additionally, because we know not everyone can get to the
• 3:25
  shows, basically what we did is we we took the.
• 3:28
  Run and we split in half. So half of the figures are going
• 3:32
  to come to shows throughout the year.
• 3:34
  The other half are going to be made available online towards
• 3:38
  the end of the year. You know, we we kind of want
• 3:40
  these early shows of the year to have something special.
• 3:44
  We don't want it to already so many of them already gotten out.
• 3:47
  There through the online sale so.
• 3:50
  If if you're not going to a show and you can be patient, there's
• 3:53
  going to be some on the website. Considering how excited people
• 3:57
  are for it, I imagine they're going to sell pretty fast.
• 4:00
  But I think it's going to be similar to the Ninians where,
• 4:03
  you know, we set a a reasonable limit on the Ninians.
• 4:06
  They lasted a full 24 hours. I think people had pretty ample
• 4:10
  time to get in. There, as long as they had their
• 4:12
  finger on the pulse and got in there that first day, I would
• 4:15
  expect something similar for the barbarian.
• 4:18
  Yeah. And I mean, the thing with the
• 4:20
  barbarian that's similar to the Ninians is people will have had
• 4:22
  an opportunity to get it beforehand when the Valley at
• 4:26
  night was slightly different in that people were very limited
• 4:29
  what they could pick up originally.
• 4:31
  And I think it was very new and very exciting, wasn't it, at the
• 4:35
  time. So.
• 4:36
  Yeah. And you know, our goal with all
• 4:39
  of these type of things is we we try to be as inclusive as
• 4:43
  possible. I think we try to be so
• 4:45
  inclusive sometimes that we actually probably hurt our own
• 4:48
  business and sales because we want to accommodate everybody.
• 4:53
  But we do really care about that, you know, and it, you
• 4:56
  know, when we see people like when we drop the legendary
• 4:59
  barbarian and we saw, you know, some of the comments about, oh,
• 5:02
  exclusives, you know, suck for people.
• 5:04
  It's the exact opposite of inclusivity.
• 5:07
  And we're like, well, read the full post.
• 5:09
  Like we're literally bringing it every single show we do and then
• 5:13
  selling it online. I, I think sometimes people feel
• 5:18
  that because we're doing something cool for somebody
• 5:21
  else, like bringing it to Zolocon or bringing it to
• 5:24
  Mesquite Con, it means that we're not doing it for them.
• 5:28
  Like doing something good for somebody else means we're doing
• 5:31
  something bad for you. And that's not necessarily the
• 5:33
  case. We can reward people that are
• 5:35
  coming to the shows and it's not a slight on you.
• 5:39
  And in fact, we're trying to accommodate you as well just
• 5:43
  later in the year with the online sale.
• 5:45
  I mean, it's an awesome figure. I'm sure you've seen all the
• 5:48
  photography. I actually, I literally have it
• 5:52
  right here. He's my my little desk buddy.
• 5:55
  Even having seen this thing through its full development,
• 5:58
  when I actually got in hand, I've said this before that I
• 6:02
  don't really put a figure through its paces until it's my
• 6:06
  figure and it's in hand. But once I got this thing in
• 6:09
  hand and I was just posing it on my desk at Zolocon in the hotel.
• 6:13
  Room. It's one of the coolest legions
• 6:16
  we've done for sure. Yeah, like going back right back
• 6:22
  to the original deluxe barbarian.
• 6:24
  It's been the one of the most popular types of figures in the
• 6:28
  line, despite what Rich might claim.
• 6:31
  And so to clarify, so the the ones that are going to be
• 6:35
  available online, that will be store horsemen only.
• 6:38
  So the they won't. If it does end up at a retailer,
• 6:41
  it'll be because a retailer bought it through store horsemen
• 6:44
  and is maybe reselling someone online.
• 6:48
  That is correct. That is correct.
• 6:50
  And and you know, this is another one of the challenges we
• 6:53
  have right now. For years, everything we did was
• 6:56
  pre-order. And the great thing about a
• 6:58
  pre-order is there's no worry that you're not going to get it,
• 7:02
  that it's going. To sell out.
• 7:03
  Because it's it's made to. Order.
• 7:05
  You know, you place your pre-order, we'll take those we
• 7:08
  then we can offer them to retailers.
• 7:10
  But for years we saw people saying they wished we had more
• 7:14
  in stock items. They wish they didn't have such
• 7:17
  a long wait. So we're really trying to
• 7:19
  balance those two things to have stuff available that's in stock,
• 7:24
  which is a surprise. But if we do that, we've got to
• 7:28
  guess at the numbers and then we don't make them available to
• 7:31
  retailers because the only way to make them available to
• 7:34
  retailers and kind of preserve that surprise and everything.
• 7:37
  Is to do a second. Run.
• 7:39
  We've already done a fairly large run of these first things,
• 7:44
  so to then go back and do another run of the exact same
• 7:49
  figure, it's just there's so many other things we're trying
• 7:53
  to do that to go back and do a second run, it ends up being
• 7:58
  problematic in a number of different ways.
• 8:01
  So we try to do things like what you see with Vernalis Arden.
• 8:05
  Scale from the retailer wave. While the Minions aren't going
• 8:09
  to retailers, we did make a quaddle figure available to
• 8:13
  retailers to try to fill that gap.
• 8:17
  And a very, very cool one as well.
• 8:19
  We, we did wax lyrical about that.
• 8:22
  I ordered multiples, actually took a different tack on the
• 8:26
  retailer wave this time. So I kind of thought probably
• 8:29
  don't need multiples of the EUR or different versions.
• 8:31
  So I went with multiples of the cosmic and the mythic.
• 8:36
  I put on my budget, you know, I have my budget, whatever it was,
• 8:40
  200 bucks and I said, right, I'm going to get snakes and I'm
• 8:44
  going to get the cosmic well. I think.
• 8:47
  Both of those figures are like, made for buying multiples.
• 8:51
  I mean, especially the. Oh yeah.
• 8:53
  Figures always, I mean, as a as a MOTU fan as well and the kind
• 8:57
  of, you know, the nod to yeah. And just, and, and as a fan of
• 9:00
  someone who's not really that excited about ever painting
• 9:03
  white, not an action figure. There's a bunch of really nice
• 9:08
  white parts that I'll never have to paint.
• 9:10
  Because of course, the temptation there with Cosmic was
• 9:13
  always to do this repaint or some version of it.
• 9:17
  And I was kind of holding back holding vaccine.
• 9:20
  Would you guys do it? And maybe this year I would have
• 9:24
  done it myself if you hadn't have done it.
• 9:27
  So thanks for that. You're welcome.
• 9:33
  Right. And the the barbarian then, do
• 9:40
  you guys have the whole stock already or are you going to get
• 9:43
  like a second shipment that kind of comes in in time for the in
• 9:47
  stock or? No, we've got the whole
• 9:48
  shipment. So what we did was we, you know,
• 9:54
  listed out all of the shows we have for the year.
• 9:57
  We. Knew that half the run was going
• 9:59
  to the shows, so we allocated a certain amount for each show.
• 10:03
  So you know, a large show like Toy Lanta.
• 10:06
  We have Toy Lanta coming up. In a few weeks.
• 10:08
  Toy Lanta is going to have considerably more than say,
• 10:12
  Mesqui Con will, because Mesqui Con is just a smaller show.
• 10:15
  So we tried to approach it that way and like OK the shows that.
• 10:19
  Have more attendees that have. More of our fan base going,
• 10:24
  we're going to bring more stock for this than some of the
• 10:27
  smaller. Shows So what we did at Zolo was
• 10:32
  we split up. Zolo was the most like because
• 10:35
  that was the debut we put the most into the.
• 10:39
  Zolocon appearance. We sold a certain amount on
• 10:43
  Saturday and we reserved a much smaller amount for Sunday.
• 10:47
  The Saturday lasted for a good amount of the day.
• 10:52
  It's definitely sold out by the afternoon, but Sunday sold out
• 10:55
  immediately. I think the word got out there
• 10:59
  on Sunday and everyone just came right to the table to get their
• 11:03
  legendary barbarian because, you know, it was almost like one
• 11:07
  after another, just. Everyone was because we were
• 11:09
  limiting. Them to one per person.
• 11:11
  Per time through the row, you know, again, it's we're a toy
• 11:16
  company. Our job is to sell toys and we
• 11:18
  routinely, we routinely tell people, I know you want to give
• 11:22
  me more money, but I can't take it from you.
• 11:24
  Like it's insane that we routinely say I have to limit
• 11:28
  how much of this you. Buy.
• 11:30
  But we really do try to make it so somebody doesn't come up and
• 11:34
  buy a dozen of these and then the people behind them lose out
• 11:40
  because we sold all of them. So we at least said, look, if
• 11:44
  you get back in line, yes, you can buy another one and another
• 11:48
  one. We have no problem with that.
• 11:49
  But at least we're going to do 1 per time through the line.
• 11:54
  Yeah, that's fair. And I think Minion Legions con
• 11:58
  was a bit similar. Sunday went a bit quicker, yeah,
• 12:01
  but it was cool then. Then on Saturday, it was pretty
• 12:03
  easy to to get once the line kind of calm down and even for I
• 12:08
  didn't even need to get mine in the when you get the retailer
• 12:11
  time or the the exhibitor time. I actually made a chance over
• 12:15
  lunchtime to to go into the queue and it only took 10
• 12:17
  minutes. Absolutely.
• 12:19
  And you went and for a figure like like that legendary
• 12:22
  barbarian. So when did you press the button
• 12:24
  on kind of send and all that to production?
• 12:27
  That might be interesting to. So.
• 12:30
  Start the kind of planning to production phase.
• 12:32
  And so that's one of those figures where the parts, you
• 12:35
  know, were ready, the parts have been ready to go for.
• 12:37
  Over a year. Like that and you know the only
• 12:39
  new part on that. So the head is obviously brand
• 12:43
  new and then the lower legs are technically new because as you
• 12:49
  know on the Marley, it's got the fabric legs and then the boots
• 12:54
  are like 2 pieces. But after Eric did Marley, when
• 12:58
  we, we, we had the Novian Figaro, we had that boot cut.
• 13:02
  He realized that hey, this boot cut is going to open up a lot of
• 13:05
  possibilities for us. So he basically took that
• 13:09
  leather boot he sculpted for Marley and redid it and we
• 13:12
  reengineered it. You know, the reason that it
• 13:15
  doesn't have that second piece anymore is just because the way
• 13:19
  it's built now is different. So we couldn't have the two
• 13:23
  different pegs. There wasn't enough clearance.
• 13:25
  So in order to have the movability at like the the boot
• 13:30
  cut area, we had to lose it below the cuff.
• 13:33
  But those were sent over. That was all available.
• 13:37
  A figure like this, what we do with the factory because there
• 13:40
  are times where the factory is kind of between projects where
• 13:44
  they're fully done, you know a certain wave and that's out
• 13:49
  shipping, but then the next wave is like an injection or
• 13:52
  something. So there are points where
• 13:54
  they're just waiting for the next parts to arrive to start
• 13:57
  full production. We could be waiting for tooling
• 14:02
  to to finish something up and there might be like a little gap
• 14:05
  of a few weeks. Those are perfect places where
• 14:08
  something like this that. Doesn't have a firm.
• 14:10
  Deadline they can just squeeze that in and get it done.
• 14:14
  So I think that they finish this up towards the end of last year,
• 14:20
  like I think it was right after the necro stuff was done.
• 14:24
  They jumped right on to this when they had a little gap.
• 14:28
  When was the design part of it done?
• 14:30
  Would have been. Last year as well.
• 14:33
  So yes and no. The head was designed.
• 14:36
  Eric had sculpted the head and everything well over a year ago.
• 14:40
  But we put the parts together, I want to say.
• 14:44
  Probably around this time last year is when we started pulling
• 14:48
  all the pieces for the figure and deciding exactly what parts
• 14:52
  were going to go on it, and then it got fully painted up and sent
• 14:55
  over to the factory. So listeners just wonder in the
• 14:58
  background what's going on for, you know, maybe this time next
• 15:01
  year or, you know. Well, I was going to ask a
• 15:04
  question, and no, I'll only get a certain amount of an answer to
• 15:07
  it, but I'm going to ask it anyway because I've not
• 15:11
  actually, admittedly, I've not seen all the shows where they've
• 15:13
  talked about that, have been quite busy.
• 15:15
  But there's a mention in there, obviously, of a companion for
• 15:19
  the legendary barbarian. Is there a chance we might see
• 15:23
  her in future? Or was it more because of this
• 15:28
  the sort of references of the figure itself?
• 15:32
  There is always a chance. So you could use.
• 15:38
  Your I love I love to tease things in those BIOS.
• 15:42
  So people reading into it, you are definitely.
• 15:48
  On the right track. OK, Cool, cool, cool, cool.
• 15:52
  I will say that. When you guys get this figure in
• 15:55
  hand, because what really struck me about it is how little is
• 15:59
  actually new on the figure, but you get this in hand and it does
• 16:04
  feel. Very, very new.
• 16:06
  Like, granted, the body IA lot of people reach out and they're
• 16:09
  like, oh, this is a brand new body.
• 16:11
  And it's it's technically not. It's the body from Anubis, it's
• 16:14
  the body from Gaspar. So it's those newer bare parts,
• 16:18
  but we've we've seen them. Before.
• 16:20
  But when you get this figure in hand, even with so much parts
• 16:24
  reuse in there, it feels very very.
• 16:27
  Fresh from the Legion standpoint.
• 16:31
  Yeah, well, hopefully we do have a wonderful friend called Brett
• 16:35
  Starter to May may or may not have hooked myself and Mallop.
• 16:41
  So we'll we'll report back in one of the next couple of
• 16:46
  episodes. Brett is a sweetheart, one of
• 16:50
  the. Oh, he's great.
• 16:51
  We have a, we have a text, we have a text thread with Brett
• 16:54
  and it's it's one of those text thread that I always at least
• 16:58
  one or two messages every day and.
• 16:59
  Yeah, I just, he's just such a shining example of what this
• 17:05
  community is all about. I cannot speak highly enough
• 17:07
  about him. Yeah, I mean, and, and that's, I
• 17:10
  think that's what it is. It's it's community building.
• 17:12
  It's the little thing that you talked about about, you know,
• 17:16
  you could sell 20 a dozen figures to somebody who's going
• 17:21
  to probably resell half of them. Or you get through the line and
• 17:24
  then, yeah, you can go back around the line and get, you
• 17:27
  know, and if you're, if you're energetic enough to do all that
• 17:31
  queuing, then maybe you deserve to resell a few.
• 17:33
  But you're not just going to get them easy.
• 17:34
  You know, we have a community here.
• 17:37
  Well, I always tell people because, you know, you always
• 17:39
  see in the. Cabal is anyone?
• 17:41
  Going to Zolocon that can they pick this up for me?
• 17:44
  And there's so many people that will do that and will sell it at
• 17:47
  cost, and that is amazing. But like, personally, I always
• 17:53
  tell people like, hey, man, you know, these people paid the
• 17:56
  money. To get into that con, they spent
• 17:58
  their time there, They waited in the line.
• 18:00
  They did all that stuff. I'm not saying give them what
• 18:03
  eBay is charging for these, but you know what?
• 18:06
  Throw them a few bucks. Like, Like throw them a few
• 18:08
  bucks for their time and everything for what they're
• 18:10
  doing, whether they ask. For it or not, that's just a
• 18:13
  cool thing to do because there are so many people like Brett
• 18:17
  that will go out of their way to help people out.
• 18:20
  I think that it's nice to to make sure that they know that
• 18:24
  they are appreciated and. Give them a little.
• 18:26
  Something for that time to soften the blow on the legions
• 18:29
  they probably bought for themselves.
• 18:31
  Absolutely, absolutely. So as you say, next couple of
• 18:36
  shows, Mesquite Con Toy Lanta, anything else this month or?
• 18:41
  No, this, I mean this is my busiest.
• 18:42
  Month. So I started the month at Zolo.
• 18:44
  You know, next weekend I will be like we usually said in Mesquite
• 18:48
  Con and then I end the month at Toy Lanta on three of my
• 18:52
  favorite shows. Actually, I love the month of
• 18:55
  March because of these specific shows, but but that's it for us
• 19:00
  this month. Looking forward, we've got
• 19:03
  Toycon New Jersey in April, which is another show that I
• 19:06
  always enjoy doing. And then Shop the Curiosity in
• 19:10
  May. We've got a bunch of others
• 19:11
  coming up too. We've got some St. team shows.
• 19:13
  Coming up there as we get towards the spring and summer,
• 19:16
  so. This is going to be at every
• 19:18
  single one of them. And which?
• 19:20
  So which of the upcoming shows will better be on display?
• 19:24
  So they look at he won't be at Mesquite Con, he's just.
• 19:29
  Are far too big and fragile to bring, you know.
• 19:33
  It's like I've even seen. People asking for us to do like
• 19:35
  posing demonstrations. With him, I mean he is a 3D.
• 19:38
  Printed hunk of, you know, resin.
• 19:41
  He's held together with glue and screws and everything, so he
• 19:45
  actually stays in that pose for those displays.
• 19:48
  So we brought him to Zolo Code. We could drive there.
• 19:52
  He won't beat a Mesquite con because we're flying.
• 19:54
  I'm not sure about Toy Lanta, whether we're going to pack him
• 19:58
  and bring him. That still is trying to be
• 20:02
  decided. He'll.
• 20:03
  Probably come to Toy Con, New Jersey.
• 20:05
  But by that point, the the pre-order the campaign will be
• 20:09
  done so, so we'll see. I will say this though, I do
• 20:13
  hope that I shouldn't reveal this too early.
• 20:15
  But what the heck, we're all friends here.
• 20:17
  I'll give you a little scoop. I do hope to bring some of the
• 20:22
  stretch goal items to Mesquite Con to have at least those on
• 20:26
  display for the first time. Oh, that's very cool because you
• 20:29
  posted pictures recently of those just, you know, behind the
• 20:35
  scenes pictures of them. Yeah.
• 20:37
  Which which as much as I love the glamour shots from Trevor,
• 20:41
  and sometimes it's nice to also see that, you know, how does
• 20:45
  this look when someone just takes a photo with their phone?
• 20:49
  You know, Yeah, It, it gives you kind of a, a view that maybe
• 20:53
  that we're used to seeing on, you know, the cabal of different
• 20:56
  figures because that's what most people take their pics with.
• 21:01
  That's what you're going to see, right?
• 21:02
  When you open it up and you put it in your counter, it's almost
• 21:06
  like you're looking at it. That photo, that behind the
• 21:08
  scenes really raw photo, it feels very real because it looks
• 21:12
  like it's almost in your house under your.
• 21:14
  Light. Yeah, I like those.
• 21:15
  Totally, Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of it's it's very realistic,
• 21:20
  right. So we should get on to the main
• 21:21
  to the main man himself bait here the pillar of the West.
• 21:25
  I love that that you, you added that to the, the name or I
• 21:29
  probably was in there already. I'm just too, too slow to see
• 21:32
  because I know it was, it was in the bio for sure.
• 21:35
  And I'm from the West of Ireland.
• 21:37
  So you know that that also speaks to me a little bit.
• 21:41
  Interestingly, when we were. Talking about Beth there and
• 21:45
  creating him, you know, we looked at a lot of like European
• 21:50
  type naming and stuff like that, because I always imagine this
• 21:53
  character like we were looking at a lot of like Scottish names
• 21:57
  and all, all stuff from that area of the world because that
• 22:00
  is the area, you know, this character, the pillar of the
• 22:03
  West. This is kind of like the forest
• 22:05
  dragon basically. If you look at the bile, this is
• 22:08
  that's kind of his domain is that the very wooded kind of
• 22:12
  areas of, you know, this world that we're yet to explore.
• 22:17
  So immediately when we were starting to think about it, I
• 22:19
  was going to, you know, the time that I've spent in Ireland, the
• 22:23
  time that I've spent in Scotland, you know, immediately
• 22:26
  thinking about like the West Coast of Ireland, but over in
• 22:30
  like the cliffs of Moore and I, I stayed over there in Doolin
• 22:34
  and everything and Liz Varna. It's, it's such a oh, such a
• 22:39
  gorgeous, gorgeous area. So in my head, when we were
• 22:42
  writing a lot of the, the lore and the and stuff, that's what,
• 22:45
  that's where my brain was travelling to.
• 22:48
  Love that, love that. That's, that's not far from
• 22:51
  where I'm from, Maybe maybe an hour.
• 22:53
  So, you know, it just makes me feel like getting a pint of
• 22:56
  Guinness now, you know, But we won't do that.
• 23:01
  We're recording this in a Monday.
• 23:02
  So I don't think we should be drinking pints of Guinness in a
• 23:04
  Monday necessary. That's next Monday.
• 23:06
  Right next Monday. Is the next Monday Saint
• 23:09
  Patrick's Day? It is actually, Yeah, that is
• 23:12
  Yeah. That would be mandatory next
• 23:13
  Monday. So there you go.
• 23:14
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 23:15
  It's. My kids are half Irish, but I'm
• 23:17
  still trying to explain to them that Saint Patrick's Day.
• 23:19
  So that's at least they speak like the large people, but
• 23:23
  they're not fully integrated yet to the thing.
• 23:26
  It's difficult when you live in another country and you try to
• 23:30
  embed the culture, you know, when you only get maybe a couple
• 23:33
  of weeks a year to travel there anyway.
• 23:36
  And so both here and he he went up for pre-order.
• 23:42
  Obviously you had the teaser at legions con, which was amazing
• 23:49
  was more than a teaser. Of course we we saw the guy, he
• 23:53
  saw the prototype and you know, he did the big reveal.
• 23:55
  But this has all been a kind of a build up and you know, smart
• 23:58
  people like Bill from door Claire has been saving his money
• 24:03
  and other of us have been spending money on your on your
• 24:10
  various drops since then. But it it finally came the time
• 24:16
  to was it always planned to for this?
• 24:18
  Was this the kind of day you you had in in?
• 24:21
  Oh goodness, no, I know. This this this.
• 24:25
  Like since November, I mean. No, it hasn't.
• 24:28
  I mean. So going back this entire.
• 24:31
  Project has been an absolute lesson and trying to think on
• 24:36
  our feet and be flexible and adjust to the new information.
• 24:41
  I heard corn boy at Zolocon say something and it was such a
• 24:44
  telling phrase where he. Basically said we made a thing
• 24:49
  and didn't realize how expensive it was going to be to make the
• 24:53
  thing. And that's the reality because
• 24:56
  whenever we make any of our regular figures, right, we have
• 25:00
  a pretty good sense of what the costs are going to be because
• 25:03
  we've made so many things that are similar.
• 25:06
  There's sometimes that we get pricing back from the factory.
• 25:08
  They're like, wow, those soft goods added considerably more
• 25:12
  than we expected to the price. Like that happens, but it's
• 25:16
  usually a difference of a few bucks.
• 25:18
  When we got the pricing for Bayathere shortly before Legions
• 25:23
  Con, it caused us to completely put the brakes on what we were
• 25:27
  doing for the project. I think I mentioned this on the
• 25:31
  live stream with Eric the other night, but there was a point
• 25:34
  that we were going to sell Bayathere alongside the Reign of
• 25:38
  the Beasts wave. Now it wasn't going to go like
• 25:42
  we were at first. We were going to let it stretch
• 25:44
  even further than the reign of the beasts wave.
• 25:46
  So at one point we were like, yeah, we're going to do like a
• 25:49
  multi month project for a multi month pre-order for Bay Affair.
• 25:54
  And we had all these plans including offering him for a
• 25:57
  much lower price like these were all part of the original plans.
• 26:01
  But when we got the pricing back from the factory, it was so far
• 26:06
  above and beyond what we expected that we realized that
• 26:10
  this was not something that we could just make and hope we get
• 26:14
  the pre-orders. Like we had to kind of go back
• 26:16
  to that crowdfunding model to make sure it actually made sense
• 26:21
  to produce this figure. So the reason we also put the
• 26:24
  brakes on was we looked at the pricing and said that feels
• 26:28
  wrong. Like it feels like we've got to
• 26:30
  be able to get. Some price breaks on here.
• 26:32
  This is too much money so. Originally we were talking about
• 26:37
  doing it maybe in January and that would give us you know, a
• 26:41
  month and 1/2 or so to work with the factory to see where we
• 26:45
  might be able to find some accommodations.
• 26:48
  As we got towards January, we weren't where we wanted to be.
• 26:51
  So that's when we said OK, let's move things around.
• 26:54
  Let's do the in stock sale in January.
• 26:56
  Let's move the Dragon to to March the the be all end all is
• 27:02
  we continued negotiations with the factory discussions.
• 27:06
  We even sent Chris out to China to have these discussions in in
• 27:09
  person. And this particular toy is, I
• 27:14
  mean, it's such a monstrous undertaking to produce because
• 27:18
  of the size, because of the detail.
• 27:21
  Like if you think about the fact that with a regular Mythic
• 27:24
  Legions figure, someone is in the factory having to put those
• 27:27
  pieces together. They're taking the arms, they're
• 27:30
  popping in the torso. They're putting their head on
• 27:32
  one of the charges on Bayothere is like an extra charge to put
• 27:38
  this together because of the size and the spikiness of it,
• 27:43
  The fact that it's so big. Yeah, it's so big and so sharp
• 27:48
  that the factory workers have to wear gloves and be very careful
• 27:53
  how they assemble it. So the amount of extra time that
• 27:57
  it takes for them to put it together, all of these things
• 28:00
  factor into the price. You know, I know a lot of people
• 28:03
  compare. Bay Affair to like some of the
• 28:05
  Hazlab stuff like the Sentinel and the you know, the Galactus I
• 28:09
  have. Sentinel and Galactus, I love
• 28:12
  those figures. I think they're super, super
• 28:13
  cool, but it's. Apples and oranges.
• 28:15
  Like, those figures are really big figures with a lot of
• 28:19
  unpainted plastic, and that's no way to knock at Hasbro.
• 28:22
  I love those figures. But because they're armored
• 28:26
  figures, it's a lot of smooth surfaces that they are able to
• 28:29
  actually, you know, mold in the colors they need for the figure.
• 28:33
  That's great. That allows them to kind of keep
• 28:36
  the cost down a little bit. With Baya there, every inch of
• 28:40
  that figure is just covered in paint, covered in paint, covered
• 28:44
  in detail. So when we saw the final prices,
• 28:48
  we had to to go back to the drawing board.
• 28:50
  We had to figure out, OK, what makes the most sense.
• 28:53
  And it's one of the reasons why we decided not to sell it to
• 28:57
  retailers because when we sell to retailers, I mean, if this is
• 29:03
  no surprise, right, this is the way that the retail works where
• 29:07
  we have a certain cost, we sell it for a certain price.
• 29:11
  We sell it to retailers at a discount, wholesale pricing, and
• 29:15
  then they sell it at a price to their customers because I'm in
• 29:20
  sales. And marketing.
• 29:21
  I know a lot of people expect that everything that comes out
• 29:24
  of my mouth is, you know, a cleverly clafted lie to get
• 29:27
  people to buy stuff. But the reality is we looked at
• 29:31
  how much we are charging for this and we tried to find that
• 29:35
  number where what's the minimum we can charge in, the minimum
• 29:38
  number of units that we need to sell in order to just get.
• 29:42
  This into the world. If we're charging the minimum
• 29:45
  amount, I genuinely don't have the margin to go even lower for
• 29:51
  the retailers. I mean, and think about it, even
• 29:53
  if I could knock off say 50 bucks, if I could bring this
• 29:56
  down to 500 for wholesale, a retailer's not going to want to
• 30:00
  spend $500 and. Sell it for five. 50 you know
• 30:04
  they're going to want to sell it for, you know, $800.00 so those
• 30:09
  were some of the challenges we had when we had to make these
• 30:11
  decisions and we're making all of these decisions while the
• 30:15
  entire community is looking at us because normally we don't
• 30:20
  reveal any of this stuff before it's ready to go to market,
• 30:23
  right We hold everything back until the reveal with Baathair.
• 30:26
  We showed it at Legions Con and have had to know know how you
• 30:31
  know five months of everyone saying.
• 30:33
  When's the dragon coming? When's the dragon coming?
• 30:35
  So. We're trying to make the best
• 30:37
  decisions possible and get this into the world under a lot of
• 30:41
  scrutiny. And it's it's it is certainly
• 30:44
  been a challenge to get it to this point.
• 30:47
  And, you know, to go back to your original question, is this
• 30:49
  what we always planned? Oh my goodness, not.
• 30:52
  There were so many different things we planned.
• 30:55
  But taking everything into account, let us hear.
• 30:59
  And there's going to be plenty of people second guessing.
• 31:02
  Why didn't they do this? Why did they do that?
• 31:04
  You know what I to have been telling people is you know we
• 31:08
  always do everything we can to make the products as affordable
• 31:13
  and as accessible to our fan. Base as possible.
• 31:17
  Trust that in this particular case, we made the decisions we
• 31:20
  had to make based on the the the.
• 31:23
  Unique set of circumstances that we were presented with.
• 31:26
  At the end of the day, this is a math problem.
• 31:29
  There's a certain amount of money that we have to pay to do
• 31:31
  it. We can only go so low to
• 31:34
  actually make this. Worth while?
• 31:37
  For a very small company. Like ours to be able to produce
• 31:40
  it. And when you're talking with the
• 31:44
  factory, are you talking about, you know, the base 2000?
• 31:48
  How does that work? Do you work in the tiers with
• 31:50
  them? Yeah, they gave us, you know,
• 31:53
  price prices for the different, different amounts and stuff.
• 31:57
  You know, I mean, realistically as you get, and I had someone
• 32:01
  mentioned to me the other day they were like, well, you know,
• 32:03
  if you sell 250 more, the price will come down.
• 32:07
  It it actually won't. Like there's a lot of
• 32:09
  assumptions out there. There's a lot of people in the
• 32:12
  group saying, oh, if they just did this, it would do that.
• 32:15
  I the amount of misinformation and and uninformed, well
• 32:20
  meaning, but uninformed, you know, comments that I've seen
• 32:24
  out there. Are are.
• 32:25
  Staggering. The reality is numbers below
• 32:30
  2000, we were going to get penalized.
• 32:32
  Like the numbers were so low, like if we were going to do 500
• 32:36
  of them, it was such a low number that our price went up
• 32:39
  significantly higher. So 2000 was kind of like that
• 32:43
  magic point. Where it's like, OK.
• 32:45
  This is really the minimum that you realistically can do.
• 32:49
  Now those numbers above 2000, there are some small price
• 32:54
  breaks, not crazy big price breaks, but what we tried to do
• 32:59
  and this is how we address the stretch goals.
• 33:02
  With the stretch goals, we said OK, if we get 500 more, we get a
• 33:07
  little bit of a price break on the figures.
• 33:10
  So instead of us making more money on the Dragon, which
• 33:14
  realistically any other. Company would do.
• 33:17
  Any company would say our margins are so darn tight,
• 33:19
  Great. Once we get a little bit of
• 33:21
  relief, we can get a little more margin.
• 33:23
  Instead, we looked at it and we said, OK, if we get a $10 price
• 33:27
  break, let's add something in there that cost us $10.00.
• 33:32
  So what we're doing is we're still making the same amount of
• 33:36
  margin on every figure, but as we get into those higher
• 33:40
  numbers, we're adding more value to the package.
• 33:43
  So the the fans who do. Buy it for that.
• 33:46
  That 550 are now like, Oh yeah, but I got this and I got this
• 33:51
  and I got that so. You know, ultimately that's how
• 33:54
  we try to approach this is as we pay a little bit less, let's add
• 33:59
  a little bit more value, our unit cost basically goes up to
• 34:03
  like we're almost keeping the unit cost consistent across the
• 34:06
  entire campaign, but at the higher amounts you're getting
• 34:09
  more bang for your buck. And what about what about then
• 34:12
  the tooling cost? I guess that would you know you
• 34:15
  have to pay for the tooling that's like your fixed cost
• 34:17
  almost on on. On the dragon.
• 34:19
  Yeah. That's like your.
• 34:21
  That's like your fixed cost. So, so if you sold OK in Disney
• 34:25
  World scenario, if you sold 20,000, then that's where you'd
• 34:29
  that's where your cost would reduce because the the fixed
• 34:32
  cost is the tooling, the tooling is not going to change for it's.
• 34:34
  Not going to change regardless. I mean, one of the nice things
• 34:39
  with our company is any other toy company would take into
• 34:43
  account like production and development costs because we do
• 34:48
  everything in house right or wrong.
• 34:51
  We almost ignore that those are real costs.
• 34:53
  Eric Treadaway spent six months sculpting the dragon.
• 34:57
  Six months of Eric Treadaway's time is not free.
• 35:02
  But we just ignore that we spent that.
• 35:04
  We ignore all the time that Sherry painted this all the
• 35:08
  time. Yes, she, she told, she told I
• 35:10
  had a quick chat with her and at least she told me she spent
• 35:13
  probably a month painting it back and forward with, with
• 35:16
  Eric, you know, giving her feedback or whatever.
• 35:19
  I mean, and if you think of trying to replicate that in a
• 35:21
  factory on 2000 trackets, because we know you guys, it's
• 35:26
  going to be pretty close from the factory to, to here.
• 35:30
  So, so they're going to have to really dial their painting
• 35:33
  protest process. And that all that all gets, that
• 35:37
  all gets battered. I saw somebody get costed of.
• 35:40
  Course. So I saw somebody say that the
• 35:43
  dragon should be less expensive for paint because it's bigger
• 35:48
  and that makes it easier to paint the parts.
• 35:51
  And I was like, yeah, but there's more surface area.
• 35:54
  Like, OK, it's not as tricky to paint the the Dragon's eyes as a
• 35:59
  little little guy's eyes, but it's a giant amount of service.
• 36:03
  Area, yeah. Has anyone customized an ogre?
• 36:07
  For example. OK, it looks easy.
• 36:11
  Did you actually do it? I think that's also shows that
• 36:14
  people are forgetting that a lot of what you guys produce is hand
• 36:17
  painted as well. Whereas, you know, people like
• 36:20
  Hasbro, the stamps aren't. They are like they've blatantly
• 36:24
  unlike the faces are stamps. They're some of the paint apps
• 36:27
  are stamps because otherwise you wouldn't end up with and skew
• 36:30
  whiff the way they are so. Well, again, I mean, and once
• 36:35
  again, this is not a knock on Hasbro.
• 36:36
  Hasbro has a lot of plastic. You know, I do.
• 36:39
  I collect a lot of Hasbro stuff. I've got a lot of it.
• 36:41
  I like it very much. What they're doing is right for
• 36:45
  their product, but. They do take advantage of the
• 36:48
  fact that a lot of the figures they produce.
• 36:51
  Because of the way they produce them, they're able to use
• 36:54
  plastic. That's the color they need,
• 36:56
  which eliminates the need for paint.
• 36:58
  Our stuff has so many paint hits on everything that it
• 37:02
  significantly adds to the overall cost.
• 37:06
  Yeah, and you're you're not selling the nostalgia there, you
• 37:08
  know, so they can do a cartoon figure.
• 37:10
  Yeah. You know, for example, that
• 37:13
  doesn't have that has kind of cartoon type scheme.
• 37:17
  You know, you're doing a pretty realistic looking dragon.
• 37:20
  Yeah, that's gonna have a bunch of shading and all that kind of
• 37:23
  stuff. And.
• 37:24
  But to your original point, yes, the tooling, I mean the tooling
• 37:28
  is a dramatically expensive part of of course.
• 37:32
  Like when we saw the cost of the tooling on this, the cost of
• 37:38
  tooling the Dragon for just kind of comparison, we could tool
• 37:44
  multiple waves of figures for the same amount that's costing
• 37:49
  to tool the dragon. So it is a significant,
• 37:52
  significant investment in order just to cut the steel and some
• 37:57
  of the pieces they're gigant like those wings both.
• 38:01
  Sets of wings, by the way. The amount of tooling for those
• 38:04
  wings is so expensive because the blocks of steel that they
• 38:08
  need are just huge. And that one of the things we
• 38:13
  realized is like we saw that when we do an Ogre and it's say,
• 38:17
  you know, almost like play 1.5 times the size of.
• 38:21
  A regular figure. The costs are, you know.
• 38:24
  Commensurate, right? It's a.
• 38:25
  Little bit more surface area, a little bit more paint, a little
• 38:28
  bit more plastic. The dragon, it's not
• 38:31
  commensurate, it's many multiples higher.
• 38:34
  So not only like if we look at a dragon and say, oh it's you
• 38:37
  know, 10 times the size of this thing, it's not ten times more
• 38:41
  expensive. It's multiples of that.
• 38:43
  Because once you get into a certain scale, everything
• 38:47
  becomes more complex because you get to the point where all of
• 38:50
  your standard processes for how you do the tooling and
• 38:53
  everything have to be adjusted because everything is bigger.
• 38:59
  And I guess a point to be made here as well as you guys aren't,
• 39:03
  you know, you can't go shopping around for a factory either
• 39:05
  because you have your factories that do the stuff to your
• 39:09
  standard and for I guess for the most part, you know, they're the
• 39:14
  guys you want to do it, you know, so.
• 39:16
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, we, we have a couple
• 39:19
  factories we work with and we had, you know, them all look at
• 39:24
  the project and, you know, realistically our deluxe
• 39:28
  factory, the ones that makes the trolls and that makes the, the
• 39:31
  horses and so forth. They were the ones that really
• 39:34
  started the project. They're the ones that, you know,
• 39:36
  it looks like we're going to be going with.
• 39:39
  But even that, that's a good point where originally we
• 39:43
  selected them because they do the.
• 39:45
  Trolls. So they do.
• 39:46
  We know they do some rotocast stuff.
• 39:48
  Because originally we were imagining.
• 39:50
  That a big part big elements of Bay it they're like especially
• 39:54
  the main body, we're all going to be roto cast.
• 39:57
  Roto cast is a bit cheaper to produce.
• 40:00
  The tooling is certainly cheaper.
• 40:03
  That was our plan, the factory all, but we're like refused to
• 40:08
  do it in roto. You know, we've gone back and
• 40:11
  forth with them trying to get them to accommodate us and.
• 40:17
  Look, at the end of the day, they're awesome like they are.
• 40:19
  They know what they are doing. They are engineers.
• 40:22
  They understand materials, they understand processes and they're
• 40:26
  like we do not want to do this in roto.
• 40:28
  It is not going to hold up to the weight.
• 40:30
  It's still roto or not. Those wings.
• 40:33
  The wings cannot be roto. The wings are not thick enough
• 40:36
  to be roto. Those have to be injection
• 40:38
  plastic. They're going to have.
• 40:40
  Ratchets at them and stuff they were just like this body is not
• 40:44
  going long term going to be able to support the weight of this
• 40:47
  creature unless we do it fully injected.
• 40:51
  Fully injected it weighs like 35 lbs.
• 40:54
  It's like a small dog. So again.
• 40:58
  All. Of that factors into this.
• 41:00
  When you imagine someone in the factory picking up that that
• 41:04
  torso and attaching those limbs and everything, this is a
• 41:07
  gigantic, heavy piece of material.
• 41:09
  They have to do that with. So in terms of it coming in the
• 41:14
  box, it will come fully assembled, wings and all, on or.
• 41:18
  No, it will. I mean that would the box itself
• 41:23
  is going to be huge and this is another example of.
• 41:27
  The challenge of revealing something too early.
• 41:29
  I remember at Legions Con because there was a point that
• 41:33
  we were told that this is going to break down and it's going to
• 41:37
  be about the size of two troll boxes.
• 41:39
  So 2 trolls are a case. So I'm imagining, oh, it's going
• 41:43
  to be like the size of a troll case.
• 41:44
  That's actually not that bad at all.
• 41:47
  And I, I actually said that to people.
• 41:49
  There's a very nice gentleman actually from the UK who I met
• 41:52
  at Megacon who I had said to him, yeah, it's not going to be
• 41:55
  unwieldy. It's going to be about about the
• 41:57
  size of two troll cases. But that's the, that's the risk
• 42:01
  of saying things early in the process because then stuff
• 42:05
  changes and you're like. Oh, darn it.
• 42:07
  No, it's, it's not that I lied back then, it's that stuff
• 42:11
  changed along the way. Now they're looking at this
• 42:15
  dragon and how they're going to break it apart.
• 42:17
  And I mean, our factory are like masters at figuring out where to
• 42:21
  lay things out. But the box itself, you both got
• 42:26
  Necronominus all In's. It's bigger than a Necronominus
• 42:30
  all In, so it's wider. It's deeper and it's about 12
• 42:34
  inches taller. So that is a huge box and it
• 42:38
  weighs, like I said, 3540 lbs. So in the box, the wings will be
• 42:42
  off, the tail will be off, the neck will be off.
• 42:45
  They're disassembling this thing, so there's some minor
• 42:49
  assembly required. So to consolidate how it fits in
• 42:53
  that box to bring it down, it won't be a window box.
• 42:56
  It'll be kind of like, you know, Castle Grayskull.
• 42:59
  And out in Sofia. Where it'll be?
• 43:01
  Yeah, it'll be a four color like full graphic box, but it won't
• 43:06
  actually have a window to see the dragon.
• 43:08
  It's just it's not going to be sexy seeing what's in that box
• 43:11
  because we're going for efficiency of packing versus
• 43:15
  like. Coolness of display.
• 43:16
  So we're going to get a bit of Nate, Bart, Bart.
• 43:19
  Nate Barcher Nate, he does love to paint his dragon.
• 43:22
  So he's been he's been sneaking them into every piece of art for
• 43:25
  years. Now he gets to actually paint
• 43:27
  one. Yeah, exactly.
• 43:29
  I'm sure he'll sneak a different color one or something in the
• 43:31
  background. I know just to to drive everyone
• 43:33
  wild. I've got visions of this
• 43:36
  beautifully painted scene and just a tiny little dragon in the
• 43:38
  top court. Yeah, it'll just be.
• 43:44
  It'll just be. Sir Benegar, it'll be honest.
• 43:48
  Which actually that that goes on nicely to what I was going to
• 43:51
  sort of say. We should mention a bit more
• 43:53
  about the stretch goals because you know, really OK, you, you
• 43:57
  say about how rather than you know take that value into the
• 44:03
  organized company, you want to give it back to the customers.
• 44:05
  I mean, it actually adds a lot of value as well.
• 44:08
  By the time that figures fully, you know, fully funded with all
• 44:13
  the accessories, that's a near 100.
• 44:15
  Not what's the top premium figure.
• 44:17
  I can never remember, but it's it's one of their man more,
• 44:20
  isn't it? Oh, it's very, very souped up.
• 44:22
  Well, even like what we did with the add on sets, for instance.
• 44:25
  And I have to imagine now that when you saw The Burning Night,
• 44:29
  I had to imagine that that was like.
• 44:32
  Oh I was so happy man, must have been busy at work.
• 44:36
  I saw that being posted and I I immediately sent Mal the
• 44:42
  picture. I'd already seen it because I
• 44:45
  did stay up for the reveal show. I did, I, I was up, I'm always
• 44:50
  up an hour earlier than these guys, you know, and I just
• 44:53
  thought, OK, they're probably not staying up till one AM, 2:00
• 44:55
  AM for the reveal. So of course I was up at 7:00.
• 44:59
  Translucent figures through the Internet.
• 45:02
  So So what we did with the add on sets because.
• 45:05
  Similarly, the add on sets came to us and they were so much more
• 45:09
  expensive than we expected, especially those wings because
• 45:12
  originally at Legions Con we expected all of that to be one
• 45:16
  set. The head, the fire, the neck and
• 45:19
  the wings all one set. And when we priced it out and we
• 45:22
  saw how expensive it was going to be.
• 45:24
  We were just like we can't have an add on.
• 45:26
  Set. That's nearly the price of the
• 45:28
  dragon. It's too much.
• 45:30
  So we split them up, but the reason that we added the figures
• 45:34
  to them because I've seen some people say, oh, I wish that you
• 45:37
  would just get the figure out and drop the price 50 bucks.
• 45:41
  That's not how it works. The reality is these sets were
• 45:45
  going to be 150 no matter what. Like that's what we.
• 45:48
  Had to kind of charge. But we said, you know what, how
• 45:52
  can we add like a good amount of value with only a little bit of
• 45:57
  cost? If you look at the burning
• 46:00
  night, if you look at the Ashen Zombie, as cool as they are,
• 46:04
  they don't have a ton of paint. Like those are figures that will
• 46:07
  cost us a little bit less to actually produce.
• 46:11
  So we're able to add them in for only a little bit extra cost to
• 46:15
  increase the value of what you're getting.
• 46:18
  Ultimately, if we had sold the, you know, the fiery breath set
• 46:22
  without the burning night, it's not like it would have been $100
• 46:25
  set and we added $50.00 to cover the night.
• 46:28
  It still would have been $150.00 set, but you wouldn't have got
• 46:32
  that figure. So again, all of these stretch
• 46:35
  goals back in November, none of these existed.
• 46:38
  None of them existed like the Ashen skeleton and Zombie.
• 46:41
  Those were in the display case just as diorama items.
• 46:45
  And everyone at Legions Con was asking us for them that we said
• 46:49
  when we realized we were going to do.
• 46:51
  A campaign, you know, a crowdfunding style campaign.
• 46:54
  We said, well, those are ideal stretch goals because they don't
• 46:57
  add a lot of cost, but they certainly add some cool value.
• 47:01
  That makes a lot of sense, of course.
• 47:04
  For the main unlock with Baathair, we didn't just want to
• 47:08
  do, you know, an ashing kind of character.
• 47:11
  We wanted to go above and beyond.
• 47:12
  So even that weekend we started talking about.
• 47:15
  The idea of a dragon knight and Eric started sculpting you know
• 47:19
  Eric sculpted that that had those pauldrons that shield all
• 47:24
  of that was sculpted after legions con specifically to
• 47:28
  create this character to add that you know that extra value
• 47:32
  into this because again it. All goes back to us trying to
• 47:36
  say what's the best way that we can get this out there, get this
• 47:41
  to market and make this a compelling overall offering for
• 47:45
  the fan base. Because you know, one of the
• 47:48
  things that I think is really challenging with us and what
• 47:51
  this campaign is most large campaigns are for one item.
• 47:54
  So when you buy the caps layer, it's it's 650 bucks, but it's
• 47:57
  one item Bay if there is less than that Bay if there is 550.
• 48:02
  But because Eric got so excited to do the extra wings and the
• 48:06
  extra fire breath, we made all these things and.
• 48:09
  Back to that comment from corn. Boy, we made a thing and didn't
• 48:12
  realize how expensive the thing was going to cost to make.
• 48:15
  So there's a lot of people that are like, oh, you know, it's
• 48:18
  over $1000 to get this. Well, yes, to get everything if
• 48:22
  you want to get everything. And let's hope that everything
• 48:25
  unlocks everything means a giant dragon.
• 48:29
  Figure a second set of wings and head that's almost the size of
• 48:33
  the dragon itself, and four total figures with a couple of
• 48:37
  accessory packs that go with them.
• 48:38
  That's that's quite a bit of overall stuff.
• 48:41
  You're not just getting 1 little thing.
• 48:46
  Yeah, totally. And, and the, the thing like the
• 48:48
  burning night, for example, not the hugest fan of transition
• 48:53
  figures, but that one has, you know, the kind of slightly
• 48:57
  different colors between the two.
• 48:59
  And also a figure like that, you can't customize that, that like
• 49:04
  you can't make that like you you'd have to do a whole figure
• 49:08
  if you were a 3D printer in clear resin and then it's a 3D
• 49:12
  resin print figure. So.
• 49:13
  So that's really cool to have. And I really do like it.
• 49:18
  And, you know, say not the biggest tag, non fan.
• 49:21
  I like the first one because it was one.
• 49:24
  Yeah, I don't need loads of them.
• 49:26
  This is a different interpretation on it and it
• 49:29
  totally makes sense with the the character of the dragon with the
• 49:33
  fire and the knight. That is might actually what
• 49:37
  happened with the knight, you know, maybe not as you know, as
• 49:40
  clear, but like cool. We're in fantasyland here, so we
• 49:43
  love it. You know what I love about that
• 49:45
  figure and the reason so we love the idea of like, OK, just the
• 49:50
  tips of the armor are you know, so it almost looks like you
• 49:54
  know, the the flame burst is hitting him and those parts are
• 49:58
  outside of the cone of. Fire and he's all.
• 50:00
  Heating up but if you swap in the fully translucent part
• 50:04
  should those unlock? It makes me question like is
• 50:08
  this night burning because of the breath or is he like a human
• 50:12
  torch type? Character where he can like.
• 50:14
  Actually engulf himself in flame.
• 50:17
  So it kind of works both ways. And I kind of like, and that's
• 50:20
  how we, you know, burning night. Like it's almost like if you
• 50:23
  think about like a character like you know, they have the
• 50:26
  Green Knight in Arthurian. Legend like is this the?
• 50:28
  Burning Knight, a character that can ignite himself on.
• 50:31
  Fire as he runs into battle. So he's kind of negating the
• 50:34
  Dragon's effect. I love it.
• 50:35
  There you go. Oh, see, you're selling it to us
• 50:38
  here on the double man. He doesn't need to sell it to us
• 50:40
  too, though. Well.
• 50:42
  There's AI mean OK, I mean you can confirm this on here, but I
• 50:46
  mean I know the answer to this, but some of the people, and it's
• 50:50
  been asked quite a lot is unfortunately if the dragon
• 50:55
  doesn't get funded, the add-ons aren't getting funded either.
• 50:58
  Are they then? Well, they might get funded, but
• 51:00
  they're not being produced. Yeah, I mean, this is really
• 51:03
  tied into the dragon. You know, it's it would be such
• 51:06
  a strange scenario where the add on sets get funded but not the
• 51:12
  dragon to add them with. I mean, at that point we'd have
• 51:16
  to go back and we've said right from the beginning, there are
• 51:19
  no. Refunds on this.
• 51:21
  Unless it doesn't fund. Obviously if it doesn't fund,
• 51:24
  everyone's getting their money back.
• 51:26
  That's crazy. But that that I did confirm that
• 51:32
  that if the dragon doesn't fund, but in some weird scenario the
• 51:36
  add on sets do. We'd have to rethink that.
• 51:41
  Well, I mean, and the thing that made me sort of raise that as a,
• 51:44
  because I was then going to say just shows the sort of creative
• 51:48
  nature of the community is there's people already going,
• 51:50
  well, I could have the dragon over here and that head, you
• 51:53
  could have it peering out of something, breathing the fire.
• 51:56
  And I mean, it would in itself make a very cool display piece,
• 52:00
  wouldn't it? And I had a number of people at
• 52:02
  Zolocon ask me, can I just buy the head pack?
• 52:05
  And this is before we showed the Burning Knight.
• 52:08
  And I said, yeah, you don't have to buy the dragon to buy the
• 52:10
  heads pack. And that's.
• 52:11
  What they said there, there are people that don't have the room
• 52:14
  to display Bayothere but want bayothere in their collection.
• 52:18
  So that thought of like, OK, if I buy the full head, can I
• 52:23
  display that? And actually, I'll give you
• 52:25
  another scoop. The way that the dragon head
• 52:29
  works is you've got the head and like the the the fiery breath.
• 52:33
  One the long. One, you've got the head, you've
• 52:35
  got a little piece of neck, then there are two little tiny neck
• 52:38
  pieces that go between the front part and the whole big long
• 52:43
  neck. Those two little pieces were
• 52:46
  only supposed to come with the base band there, like you were
• 52:50
  going to have to pull. So what?
• 52:52
  Because the idea behind that was you add it to Baya there.
• 52:56
  So we were like, oh, the two pieces that already are on Baya
• 52:59
  there, you don't need 2 sets of those.
• 53:01
  Just pull the pull the neck off, pop those on.
• 53:05
  But then when people were asking us, hey, I may use, I may only
• 53:09
  buy the fire pack for that neck set, We realized that they're
• 53:14
  not going to have a complete set.
• 53:16
  There would be a little bit of a gap showing.
• 53:18
  So we added those two pieces into it.
• 53:21
  So if you buy the Baya Thea and you buy the head, the headpiece,
• 53:26
  you actually now don't need it to disassemble it.
• 53:28
  You just remove it at the chest area.
• 53:31
  You can pop one off and pop the other one in and you have a
• 53:34
  fully intact other neck and head.
• 53:37
  That was us adding something in that we hadn't even thought
• 53:40
  about as we started talking to fans and realized, oh, that will
• 53:44
  make this even cooler. That'll give them even more
• 53:46
  usage. It's not a huge cost to add
• 53:49
  those two pieces. No problem, we'll add those two
• 53:52
  pieces in into both sets. That's.
• 53:55
  Very, yeah, I mean, that's just a little bit of stuff you didn't
• 53:59
  need to do, but works. Works.
• 54:01
  Yeah. And yeah, please, please people,
• 54:06
  make sure that you get over the 3000 so we can get the fully
• 54:12
  clothed Sir Banger that is literally I would cry if we
• 54:18
  don't get him. Yeah, we got.
• 54:19
  Especially, and I cry even more if we just get the normal
• 54:23
  version of him, which is OK. It's it's cool.
• 54:26
  Until you showed me the other one.
• 54:27
  Yeah. Even and even that John, you
• 54:30
  know, soft goods add a significant amount.
• 54:35
  Of I can imagine I'm I'm we're still scratching our heads here
• 54:38
  how we got the Gideon for the price we got him for and how you
• 54:43
  still managed to do, you know, not to blow smoke, but you know,
• 54:47
  there is pretty good value in the soft goods.
• 54:49
  You know, we've all had the oddness Core 2IN our collection
• 54:52
  and. Gideon's, again, like Gideon,
• 54:56
  Gideon was dramatically underpriced based on what we
• 54:59
  paid for them. Didion should have been a more
• 55:02
  expensive figure, but that was genuinely the studio saying, you
• 55:06
  know what, he's part of a wave. We're going to make a little bit
• 55:09
  more over here so we can make a little bit less over here and
• 55:12
  give the fans a gift. Not to go too much the Necro
• 55:16
  Wave, but the Necro Wave had very few standard figures.
• 55:20
  So much of it was deluxe with Balloua and Tuberculi and Zach.
• 55:25
  So when we got to a character like Gideon and Maxilius,
• 55:30
  especially with Gideon, we were like this figure should be a
• 55:34
  deluxe. Based on the soft goods and what
• 55:36
  we know it's going to cost, but Eric wanted to have more
• 55:39
  standard figures in. The wave so we said hey, let's
• 55:44
  charge the regular 37, you know, 50 at retail for that.
• 55:49
  So that's absolutely a gift. You know some it's funny because
• 55:51
  sometimes I think. That our past.
• 55:54
  Generosity is actually what we're working against so often
• 55:59
  because whatever we like actually raise the price to what
• 56:03
  something should be. Instead of people saying, oh,
• 56:06
  it's amazing that they gave us these in the past so cheaply.
• 56:10
  They're all like, well, you gave us those cheaply before, why
• 56:13
  can't you do it now? And you know, genuinely,
• 56:16
  sometimes it's because we're going above and beyond to do a
• 56:19
  gift in the. Past, but things may have
• 56:22
  changed or it's a different set of circumstances.
• 56:24
  So we've got to adjust accordingly, as you know, with a
• 56:27
  future item or something like that.
• 56:30
  Well, I remember being sorry man.
• 56:32
  I remember being, you know, in the community when you signed
• 56:38
  that, when the Horseman signed the deal with the CJSM, there
• 56:41
  was a lot of confusion around and then, you know, and
• 56:44
  obviously it had to be explained and, you know, people maybe
• 56:47
  didn't know what CJSM did or whatever.
• 56:50
  And of course, because he didn't do tremendous amount of soft
• 56:53
  goods back at the time. But in hindsight, it's been such
• 56:58
  a great partnership really with everything.
• 57:02
  Yeah, it really has. I mean, he's, he's elevated.
• 57:05
  The the pieces to a dramatic level.
• 57:09
  Going back to Sir Benagar, I have to find, I have to, I'm
• 57:12
  going to have to share the original Sir Benagar design.
• 57:16
  And then what CJ did to it, because you know, on the Cape
• 57:20
  how it's got that like scallop style look.
• 57:23
  CJ did that. Like we didn't.
• 57:26
  Eric just had a regular, a long voluminous Cape, but that was a
• 57:30
  regular cut. Same thing on the tunic.
• 57:34
  Like the bottom of the tunic was more of a straight cut.
• 57:37
  And CJ was like, hey, looking at this character, I'm I'm seeing
• 57:41
  more angles. I'm seeing more of that batwing
• 57:43
  style scallop, you know? Are you cool with that?
• 57:46
  I remember Eric sending me the picture from CJ and he's like,
• 57:49
  dude, look at how this is amazing.
• 57:51
  And I was like, Oh my God, that looks, that looks so cool.
• 57:54
  So CJ absolutely adds that element to it.
• 57:59
  You know, not only can he take the stuff that we come up with
• 58:02
  and execute on it, but he's got. Such a sense and I say.
• 58:05
  He, you know, it's both, you know, it's the whole team over
• 58:08
  there, both him and Caitlin, they do such an amazing job.
• 58:13
  At. Kicking it up to another level
• 58:15
  and really making these figures the best that they can be.
• 58:20
  And super humble to boot, which is which is a kind of a added
• 58:25
  bonus. We we, we work with good people.
• 58:28
  I mean, that's at the end of the day, we find good people to work
• 58:31
  with and they're another example of that.
• 58:35
  Absolutely. Yeah.
• 58:37
  Even going to intern for a day, it's very clear, you know, that
• 58:44
  that's that's the case. Such a fun experience right now.
• 58:50
  Should we get on to some more shipping stuff?
• 58:55
  So shipping directly, unfortunately should probably.
• 58:58
  So here's something I've had, you know, from a lot of people
• 59:03
  over this side or people in our Discord, whatever is like, why
• 59:07
  can't you just ship, you know, ship from China to somebody in
• 59:11
  Europe, you know, Bango Bango jobs are good and you know,
• 59:14
  we'll all get it for similar as if we're in the US, You know,
• 59:18
  that's how it works with everything else, surely, you
• 59:22
  know, but. There's no way around talking
• 59:25
  about bad there without talking about the monstrous challenge
• 59:31
  that is shipping this this item. And it goes without saying that.
• 59:38
  We understand that it's very, very expensive outside of the
• 59:42
  US. It's expensive in the US to ship
• 59:45
  this outside of the US, we absolutely realize it's super
• 59:48
  expensive. We did look into a number of
• 59:52
  different options and at the end of the day we made the decisions
• 59:57
  that we felt were best. Overall and you know, to address
• 1:00:01
  a few of the specific challenges and things we did and things you
• 1:00:05
  just mentioned. The idea of shipping directly
• 1:00:09
  from our factory, our factory is not a shipping center like
• 1:00:13
  they're not set up in any way to ship end consumers, their
• 1:00:17
  product. Even if they were, it's not like
• 1:00:22
  the prices the rates are going to be.
• 1:00:23
  That. Much cheaper, if cheaper at all.
• 1:00:27
  When they ship to US, they ship in a container, so a giant
• 1:00:31
  container ship that holds. You know a 40 foot container of
• 1:00:34
  all of this? Product we can get that for a
• 1:00:37
  certain price. So shipping from our factory to
• 1:00:40
  us in a container on the the water that there's you know, a
• 1:00:45
  reasonable cost where it gets spread across all of the figures
• 1:00:48
  in that container. But the minute that you start
• 1:00:50
  talking about shipping individual figures or individual
• 1:00:54
  cases, it gets very, very expensive.
• 1:00:57
  So much so that a lot of our international retailers,
• 1:01:01
  including a number of them over there in the EU, they have
• 1:01:04
  actually asked us to start shipping directly from New
• 1:01:08
  Jersey to them because the prices that they're getting
• 1:01:11
  quoted from the Chinese factory are so much more than they
• 1:01:16
  expected. So shipping is expensive across
• 1:01:20
  the board. The idea of having our factory
• 1:01:23
  ship it adds a total level of logistics that they're not set
• 1:01:28
  up to do, and I don't think it would make a discernible
• 1:01:32
  difference on the cost as well. And then whatever.
• 1:01:36
  So I imply from that, that there isn't someone say in the EU
• 1:01:41
  that's going to be able to take a container of stuff because
• 1:01:44
  there isn't a container's worth of people.
• 1:01:46
  Yeah, the bandwagon. So we did speak to a couple
• 1:01:50
  different retailers in the EU, the idea of shipping an entire
• 1:01:56
  container, you are right, there's not going to be enough
• 1:02:00
  sold. Even if we had a fulfillment
• 1:02:02
  center in the EU, there's not enough for us to fill a
• 1:02:06
  container. So then we've got to start
• 1:02:08
  dealing with, OK, are you getting a container of other
• 1:02:11
  stuff? Maybe we can like springboard on
• 1:02:14
  to that and pack into that. You know that adds another layer
• 1:02:19
  of complexity and. A whole lot of cost.
• 1:02:21
  And everything to it as well. So these we're all things that
• 1:02:26
  we looked at, we actually did talk to some of our retailers in
• 1:02:31
  the EU, you know, and some of whom we're willing to do this
• 1:02:34
  for little to no money, which is amazing.
• 1:02:37
  And it speaks volumes of how amazing our retailers are
• 1:02:40
  because, you know, most retailers are like, well, what's
• 1:02:43
  in it for me? Like how much, you know, I'm not
• 1:02:46
  going to do all this work and fulfill all this just to be
• 1:02:48
  nice, like I need to make some money on this.
• 1:02:51
  And we had some conversations that that's not what they were
• 1:02:55
  looking for. They weren't looking for, you
• 1:02:57
  know, a whole bunch of money on this.
• 1:02:59
  But one of the challenges that we encountered was if we ship it
• 1:03:03
  to them for fulfilment, they. Still have to pay stuff like
• 1:03:07
  that and they still have to pay customs and all those charges
• 1:03:10
  so. The only way that I can charge.
• 1:03:13
  Our customers is at the time of order.
• 1:03:15
  Which what it was looking like was I was going to have to
• 1:03:18
  account for all of those charges upfront, which means we were
• 1:03:23
  looking at actually doing a separate like EU ordering
• 1:03:26
  website. So on the US store Horseman Bay,
• 1:03:30
  if there would be 1 price, but we would have to Add all of
• 1:03:34
  those fees that I can only charge you right now.
• 1:03:37
  We would have to add those all into the European website, so
• 1:03:42
  Bayit, there would have been like 700 and 5800.
• 1:03:45
  Dollars. Like right out of the gate.
• 1:03:48
  Can you imagine the absolute rancor that would have happened
• 1:03:53
  if we would have had two different webs, like two
• 1:03:56
  different websites with two different prices for the same
• 1:03:58
  item? You know, So every time that we
• 1:04:01
  explored all of these different options, it was just another
• 1:04:06
  layer of complexity and another layer of cost and another layer
• 1:04:11
  of potential things breaking down.
• 1:04:14
  We were giving up some of our control and some of our stuff to
• 1:04:17
  make sure that this actually would go forward.
• 1:04:21
  And we weren't seeing the kind of cost savings that a lot of
• 1:04:24
  people expected, because I do see a lot of people online say,
• 1:04:28
  oh, why can't you just sell it through retailers?
• 1:04:31
  We already talked about the margins, the.
• 1:04:33
  Fact that I don't have a wholesale cost.
• 1:04:36
  But even if we sell it at this price, I still have to ship it
• 1:04:41
  from somewhere to those, those people in the EU or in Canada or
• 1:04:47
  in wherever, it still has to get to them.
• 1:04:50
  That is expensive. When you when you see the size
• 1:04:53
  of this box and the fact that it weighs as much as it does every
• 1:04:56
  which way we looked at it, it's going to be an expensive
• 1:04:59
  shipping price. Well, I mean.
• 1:05:02
  Sorry, I was going to. Say, I said to John earlier,
• 1:05:05
  didn't I? And I, well, the other day,
• 1:05:06
  whenever it was that it's hard to be annoyed at the shipping of
• 1:05:12
  well, let's take the dragon on its own, that shipping because
• 1:05:15
  that's one thing and then there's the other.
• 1:05:16
  But it's hard to be annoyed at that when you're seeing that
• 1:05:19
  people in the US are also paying upwards of $100 and that's
• 1:05:25
  within country. So then only be it's not
• 1:05:28
  actually that much more in the UK.
• 1:05:32
  Shipping like New Jersey to, say, California, that's like,
• 1:05:37
  you know, shipping from where you are to like some middle bit
• 1:05:41
  of Russia, like it's so far away.
• 1:05:44
  Yeah, I I put it in my cart. Now I live just over three hours
• 1:05:49
  away. From from the.
• 1:05:50
  Studio. I put the three in my cart.
• 1:05:53
  It was almost $100 to ship to me.
• 1:05:55
  Yeah, no, it's a three hour drive.
• 1:05:59
  Well, 6. Hours round trip I guess.
• 1:06:01
  You know, the challenge here and, and, and that's the other
• 1:06:04
  thing too, is everyone's not listing prices for Bayette.
• 1:06:08
  They're they're listing prices. For the whole thing because
• 1:06:10
  that's part of the narrative is oh this is an $850 figure no,
• 1:06:15
  this is a $550 figure with $300.00 in add on pieces and I
• 1:06:21
  I've seen a lot of people say that they're essential I.
• 1:06:24
  Love the fact that they're so cool people think they're
• 1:06:26
  essential, but I saw someone compare it like to buying a car.
• 1:06:30
  Your car's still going to work. It's everything you need for a
• 1:06:33
  car. But if you want a spoiler on it,
• 1:06:34
  if you want the tinted windows, if you want the sound system,
• 1:06:38
  those are nice add-ons that are going to cost you more money
• 1:06:43
  because these things are so big. They ship in three separate
• 1:06:46
  boxes. They're all boxed by themselves
• 1:06:48
  because they're all gigantic. So if you get all three of them,
• 1:06:53
  it is $850 and it's 3 oversized packages that are going to be
• 1:06:58
  shipped to you. So inevitably, that is going to
• 1:07:01
  add up to quite a bit of cost. But you are right.
• 1:07:06
  Yeah, no matter where you are shipping this, there is a very,
• 1:07:10
  very, very hefty price. In order to be able to do it and
• 1:07:16
  it's, it's a challenge for us because we know we lose sales
• 1:07:20
  because of that. We certainly see a lot of people
• 1:07:23
  and a lot of comments about us being greedy and all this stuff
• 1:07:28
  and everything. And it's like we have no.
• 1:07:31
  When we do this, we weigh the package.
• 1:07:34
  We, we besides the package up, we do all that.
• 1:07:37
  We put it into the shipping system and the.
• 1:07:40
  Carrier in real time comes back with what those prices are.
• 1:07:44
  You know, we aren't padding it. We aren't adding all kinds of
• 1:07:47
  extra dollars for. Handling and everything, we
• 1:07:49
  absorb that stuff as part of the cost of us doing business.
• 1:07:53
  At the end of the day, it's just a huge, heavy item.
• 1:07:57
  Yeah, it does. It does.
• 1:07:59
  Just tell me a little bit how people still can't equate the
• 1:08:03
  the shipping is not the horseman.
• 1:08:05
  The shipping is the shipping company.
• 1:08:09
  As consumers, we have to cover the cost of the shipping.
• 1:08:12
  That is just the way it goes, you know.
• 1:08:14
  And I get it. I like, I don't for a second
• 1:08:18
  want anyone to think that I'm being unsympathetic.
• 1:08:21
  Dude, it's an expensive item and stuff like shipping, stuff like
• 1:08:25
  customs. I mean the fact that you.
• 1:08:26
  Have to pay additional money to get that into your country
• 1:08:30
  Sucks. I totally get that it's all
• 1:08:33
  stuff that's out of our hands. I'm not unsympathetic to it.
• 1:08:37
  But I've said before, the only things we can do are control how
• 1:08:41
  cool the items we put out are and what we charge.
• 1:08:44
  For them and. We go up out of our way to try
• 1:08:47
  to overachieve on both of those things to hopefully in some way
• 1:08:52
  make up for the fact that you know, we know.
• 1:08:55
  There's going to be those other charges.
• 1:08:57
  I know this doesn't help you guys at all, but the fact that
• 1:09:00
  we allowed for a factory pick up, for a studio pick up, you
• 1:09:04
  know, that's something that we haven't done in years.
• 1:09:06
  Because quite honestly, we used to do it, but as we've gotten
• 1:09:10
  bigger, it's really hard to do it.
• 1:09:12
  And we had someone who abused it very badly and we said we're
• 1:09:16
  done. We're not doing studio pickups
• 1:09:18
  anymore. But this was such a unique case
• 1:09:21
  that we said, you know what, if somebody is nearby and they want
• 1:09:26
  to pick it up and the fact that they're going to save 100 bucks
• 1:09:28
  by doing so, if that's a a difference maker for them,
• 1:09:32
  we'll, we will make that happen. So we will come in, we will set
• 1:09:36
  up a Saturday. We'll, we'll hang.
• 1:09:38
  Out at the studio and we'll process these orders and we'll
• 1:09:41
  meet people and hand them their packages.
• 1:09:43
  And it's been great to actually see, you know, we're talking
• 1:09:46
  about some of the negativity, but on the.
• 1:09:48
  Positive side, it's been awesome to see the community come
• 1:09:52
  together and start to plan out like little convoys where
• 1:09:56
  they're going to all go to the studio together and they're all
• 1:09:58
  going to hang out and have they're going to make a mythic
• 1:10:00
  meet up out of it and they're all going to go and get their
• 1:10:03
  Dragons like. Yeah, that is all Jealous.
• 1:10:07
  Right. FOMO for that place worth
• 1:10:09
  buying. Bring them cake guys.
• 1:10:11
  Bring them cake. Bring bring those lovely people
• 1:10:13
  that are going to give you a dragon.
• 1:10:15
  Cake and I've heard people say like oh would be great if it
• 1:10:17
  coincided with like legions con so people could take them home,
• 1:10:20
  then I agree completely. It would be, of course would,
• 1:10:24
  but we don't like it's too far out for us to say like, oh, we
• 1:10:27
  know we're going to be able to do it on that day.
• 1:10:31
  So if it works out that way that we can actually coordinate that,
• 1:10:35
  maybe that'll be something that we'll do, but I certainly can't.
• 1:10:39
  Promise that because it's too far in the future for me to know
• 1:10:42
  if that's, you know, actually going to line up.
• 1:10:45
  So, so the one thing I wanted to get back to just before we move
• 1:10:48
  on is so the EU thing. So people are talking about, OK,
• 1:10:55
  why, why we can't do retail order, OK.
• 1:10:59
  So my understanding is from from talking to you is that the
• 1:11:04
  margin is so low in terms of the profit margin, OK, so that you
• 1:11:09
  can sell it to a retailer that they will have to anyway pass on
• 1:11:16
  the VAT. So when they sell me my standard
• 1:11:20
  Legions retail figure, for example, I pay about just under
• 1:11:25
  €50, which is about the equivalent to the $50.00 that
• 1:11:28
  you pay in the retailers in the States.
• 1:11:30
  And the VAT is included in that because they get it at a
• 1:11:33
  wholesale cost for you that they're able to.
• 1:11:36
  They might make slightly less profit than US retailer, but
• 1:11:40
  they think that's fine for them because they're able to make
• 1:11:44
  enough sales to make it worthwhile, whatever.
• 1:11:47
  In the case of the Dragon, that just doesn't exist because
• 1:11:51
  because the margin is so low that they will have to put the
• 1:11:53
  VAT on top, which will already bring it above.
• 1:11:57
  And you're saying that's going to bring it to the, you know,
• 1:12:00
  where they're going to have to charge 700 to make anything off
• 1:12:04
  it. And then on top of that, they're
• 1:12:07
  paying shipping from China or whatever.
• 1:12:11
  So we're already, and we're just talking about the base dragon.
• 1:12:13
  You're not even the two things. We're already at 7-8 hundred.
• 1:12:17
  Yeah, the. Just just, and so the only
• 1:12:22
  benefit that would be OK, we'd make it a bit more easy for some
• 1:12:26
  people that a retailer might be able to do the admin bit of it,
• 1:12:32
  which is the customs. You know, you might have to pay
• 1:12:35
  a customs bill when you get something from outside of
• 1:12:38
  Europe, but it just the the volume and everything just isn't
• 1:12:44
  there that that actually makes sense in a way.
• 1:12:48
  Yeah. I mean, so there's another
• 1:12:49
  element. If we use one of those retailers
• 1:12:53
  for fulfillment, what if that retailer's not there in a year?
• 1:12:57
  Like we've had plenty of retailers, we've had retailers
• 1:13:01
  who are long time partners that something goes wrong with their
• 1:13:04
  business. Like if we put all of our eggs
• 1:13:07
  in that basket and then six months from now they fold up
• 1:13:11
  shop for whatever reason, we're suddenly like, okay, all of our
• 1:13:15
  plans for fulfillment are totally scrapped.
• 1:13:18
  Everything that we had expected do is totally scrapped there.
• 1:13:22
  So you know. That is a challenge whenever we
• 1:13:25
  have. You'd have to yeah.
• 1:13:27
  So to, to, to mitigate that, you'd have to diversify.
• 1:13:30
  And that would just make it even less attractive.
• 1:13:32
  So you might have to do 3 retailers just so that one could
• 1:13:37
  pick up the slack if something went wrong.
• 1:13:39
  So. And then again getting into.
• 1:13:41
  Complication. This is what I said, where
• 1:13:43
  there's a level of complexity and every time we add another
• 1:13:47
  step in this. This process, it adds cost, it
• 1:13:52
  adds complexity, and it adds a potential point of failure.
• 1:13:55
  It's a potential point where something.
• 1:13:56
  Could go wrong that means that we.
• 1:14:00
  Now have to like figure out how do we recover from this, you
• 1:14:03
  know, having to recover from a $550 dragon, like, OK, all of
• 1:14:10
  those shipments that were supposed to go there, they're
• 1:14:12
  not, it's not being, it's not going where it's got to go.
• 1:14:15
  We've got to take care of this. It's not like we're just going
• 1:14:17
  to have a bunch of these lying around that we're going to be
• 1:14:20
  able to, you know, make the problem go away and fix it.
• 1:14:24
  So we really do have to consider that.
• 1:14:26
  And, and you are right, all of those costs add up.
• 1:14:29
  You know when. When we ship something over like
• 1:14:33
  you just said, you don't pay the VAT and the customs and all that
• 1:14:37
  because the retailer is paying that.
• 1:14:39
  But the retailer has profit margins to say, okay, that just
• 1:14:42
  lowers my margins. If they're doing fulfillment for
• 1:14:46
  us, number one, they are making something.
• 1:14:49
  So there is going to be some kind of a fee for the service
• 1:14:53
  that they are actually rendering there.
• 1:14:55
  So they have to do that. They still have to ship it out
• 1:15:01
  to you. So even though they are shipping
• 1:15:03
  within the EU, it's it's a 40 LB box.
• 1:15:08
  So instead of us just shipping it directly to you, the end
• 1:15:13
  customer, we're now shipping it to a middleman.
• 1:15:16
  They're making a little bit of money on it, even if it's a
• 1:15:18
  minor amount of money. And then now they have to then
• 1:15:22
  ship it to you. So we've just added a stop.
• 1:15:25
  We've just added more hands that are touching this box, more
• 1:15:28
  expense that's coming on. That's what I'm trying to say.
• 1:15:31
  That doesn't go away. That just gets passed on.
• 1:15:33
  When we looked at all this, and This is why when I see, because
• 1:15:37
  I've had a lot of really well meaning people reach out to us
• 1:15:41
  and say, have you considered this?
• 1:15:42
  Have you considered that when you look at the big picture and
• 1:15:46
  you understand that there is so little profit in this thing for
• 1:15:51
  me to like move around the numbers and say, well, if we
• 1:15:54
  make a little bit less here, we can still make the numbers work.
• 1:15:58
  There's really not that wiggle room.
• 1:16:00
  So that's why as. Awful as it is.
• 1:16:03
  To see the shipping prices that we are seeing to the EU, any of
• 1:16:07
  these other solutions wouldn't have brought down that price.
• 1:16:11
  And in some cases, I think it would have made it more and it
• 1:16:14
  also possibly would have required, it would have
• 1:16:17
  potentially had situations where things breakdown.
• 1:16:21
  Where the stuff arrives a lot later.
• 1:16:23
  Or. In some cases not at all, and
• 1:16:25
  then we have to deal with that headache.
• 1:16:27
  Yeah. So I mean, for me, I think the
• 1:16:30
  best case scenario is you could have put something in place that
• 1:16:33
  might have just reduced the overhead while still keeping the
• 1:16:37
  cost at, at the very best. As cheap it is as it is today to
• 1:16:43
  order direct at the very best and including import charges and
• 1:16:48
  everything. I think that's probably where we
• 1:16:51
  land. And even then that wouldn't be
• 1:16:55
  guaranteed. And there would be of course
• 1:16:57
  some risk in that too, you know, right.
• 1:17:03
  One more thing I wanted to get to on my list here was the
• 1:17:07
  difference between this approach and say, the Kickstarter
• 1:17:10
  approach for the game. For example, where you had your
• 1:17:13
  own website, was that ever considered or how did the top?
• 1:17:19
  I mean, this is our. This is our own.
• 1:17:21
  So are you talking about the difference between Kickstarter
• 1:17:23
  versus doing it? On No, because you did it.
• 1:17:26
  You did a crowdfunder for the Mythically Tactics where you
• 1:17:29
  built your own site, which I guess meant that you didn't have
• 1:17:34
  to pay the Kickstarter. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:17:38
  So that Forged Horseman that was created by the game team
• 1:17:44
  specifically for the game. And the idea at the time was,
• 1:17:48
  oh, you know, down the road we might be able to use it for
• 1:17:51
  other kinds of projects. But I mean, realistically, we've
• 1:17:54
  already got store Horsemen. It's like it's just the same
• 1:17:59
  thing, you know? It's really very, very similar.
• 1:18:02
  Yeah. That had certain tools like real
• 1:18:04
  time. Stats.
• 1:18:06
  And stuff like that. But at the end of the day, if we
• 1:18:10
  do store horsemen, people can use gift cards.
• 1:18:13
  People already have the orders there.
• 1:18:15
  They know how to track stuff, they know how to see stuff, they
• 1:18:17
  know how to contact us. It just made a lot more sense to
• 1:18:21
  keep it at Store Horseman using Forge Horseman, which has been
• 1:18:24
  retired. That was never a consideration.
• 1:18:28
  We did consider Kickstarter because there.
• 1:18:31
  Are. Absolutely some advantages of
• 1:18:33
  Kickstarter. The advantages of Kickstarter
• 1:18:35
  are exposure. The fact that, you know, right
• 1:18:39
  now we are kind of in a little bit of an echo chamber where we
• 1:18:44
  have our audience and we we can only communicate within our
• 1:18:48
  audience. We obviously love when people
• 1:18:52
  like yourselves and you know, the toy reviewers and you know,
• 1:18:55
  all of these people when they also talk about it on their
• 1:18:59
  channels because their bubbles go outside of ours.
• 1:19:03
  They're certainly crossover, but they have audiences.
• 1:19:06
  So we love the fact that there's a lot of exposure, but
• 1:19:09
  Kickstarter does a great job of getting just beyond.
• 1:19:13
  All of that. The other great thing about
• 1:19:15
  Kickstarter is you can pledge upfront but you don't pay until
• 1:19:19
  the end, but you pay 100% at the end.
• 1:19:23
  So here's my question. What's better that you can
• 1:19:26
  pledge day one and you have? To pay day. 30 or that you can
• 1:19:31
  pledge whenever you want now and I know that our paying for
• 1:19:34
  doesn't work for the EUI do know there are other services.
• 1:19:39
  I don't know if Klarna works for you.
• 1:19:42
  I haven't investigated it. Yeah.
• 1:19:44
  I mean, there's credit cards. I mean, that's there's obviously
• 1:19:47
  a lot of options to split your payments up, but that was the
• 1:19:53
  thought too. Is that OK for at least some?
• 1:19:57
  Of our customers. Because every decision we make,
• 1:19:59
  we know that it's going to benefit some and not others.
• 1:20:03
  So the question is, well, OK, I don't have a solution that's
• 1:20:07
  going to benefit everyone equally.
• 1:20:09
  Do I do this solution that's going to benefit some of the
• 1:20:12
  people and do nothing for the others?
• 1:20:15
  We don't want to ever do anything that's going to hurt
• 1:20:17
  anybody. Like we don't want to help
• 1:20:18
  somebody but hurt somebody else. But if it helps one group and is
• 1:20:22
  net neutral for the others, that's something we have to
• 1:20:25
  consider. So again, with Store Horsemen,
• 1:20:28
  we've got the pain for where people can buy now and break it
• 1:20:33
  up into for bimonthly installments.
• 1:20:35
  So those are, you know, some of the reasons.
• 1:20:38
  But the other big reason is Kickstarter is not free like
• 1:20:41
  Kickstarter charges money. There's a 5% Kickstarter charge
• 1:20:47
  plus a 5% processing charge. Plus if you use backer kit for
• 1:20:50
  fulfillment, that's another charge.
• 1:20:53
  So imagine having to add 15% of costs right on top of what we're
• 1:20:58
  doing. It means a more expensive
• 1:21:00
  package. So once again, we said, you know
• 1:21:03
  what, if we keep it in house, it's the way that we can reduce
• 1:21:08
  our cost. As much as possible.
• 1:21:10
  And we can put that right back into the cost of the dragon to
• 1:21:14
  have that lower price. So instead of having to charge
• 1:21:16
  say, $600.00 on Kickstarter, we can charge 5. 50 on store
• 1:21:21
  Horsemen. I think the key here is that
• 1:21:24
  with the shipping, everything's shipping separately anyway.
• 1:21:28
  So if you were, you know, if you wanted to add, if you're
• 1:21:32
  completely, completely cool and amazing and had a second pay it
• 1:21:36
  there, It's not going to ship for the first one.
• 1:21:39
  You had a wings pack or a fiery breath pack, they all go out
• 1:21:44
  separately. So yeah, that the combined
• 1:21:46
  shipping or the separate shipping for those is is the
• 1:21:49
  same, so. Yeah, there's no advantage.
• 1:21:51
  Have three orders. Yeah, there's no advantage to
• 1:21:54
  putting it all together. So if you, because I even did
• 1:21:57
  this, you know, during my testing where I added just pay
• 1:22:00
  it there and how much is that? And then I added this and how
• 1:22:03
  much is that? And I tried all these different
• 1:22:04
  combinations. It always kept coming up to the.
• 1:22:07
  Like combine the map as if so because I've had some people
• 1:22:11
  say, well, if I buy Bayafair like week 1, but I can't do the
• 1:22:15
  add on packs until the end. Is that OK?
• 1:22:17
  And it's like, yeah, it's going to be exactly the same.
• 1:22:19
  Will they ship all the same? No, not necessarily because the
• 1:22:23
  way they pull orders, you might get one before the others.
• 1:22:27
  You're going to. You're going to get the add.
• 1:22:28
  On packs before you get bayafair and be like oh.
• 1:22:31
  Where's my dragon? But, but, but the nice thing
• 1:22:35
  about this shipping process is it's going to go fast because
• 1:22:39
  it's very few items. The challenge like with the
• 1:22:41
  Necro process, yes, there's so many different skews in there
• 1:22:45
  and the orders are so complex. The Bay of their shipping will
• 1:22:48
  be similar to like a figure of shipping where they can bang it
• 1:22:52
  out much, much quicker because it's a lot fewer things.
• 1:22:56
  Yeah when I when I looked back at my Necronomus order I was
• 1:23:00
  like did I just get the all in? Hopefully and then I saw I added
• 1:23:03
  a 2 pack as well, which was great because you know got a 2
• 1:23:06
  pack too you know and it's already paid for, but at the
• 1:23:09
  same time it took a bit longer ship but actually I have it
• 1:23:12
  already so not too bad Good. I'm pretty happy and right and
• 1:23:19
  then what is the ultimate dream date for this in terms of
• 1:23:24
  production? So we're not talking about
• 1:23:26
  guaranteed dates here, but you. Know I mean if everything.
• 1:23:29
  Goes well. I'm hoping it's going to be in
• 1:23:31
  hand before the end of next year.
• 1:23:32
  You know, we've this is such a unique process where we're
• 1:23:37
  further along in the process that we would typically be at
• 1:23:40
  this point like you saw that model that we had.
• 1:23:43
  Yeah, legions gone so that. To be clear, that was a
• 1:23:47
  prototype, but it was not injection molded.
• 1:23:51
  So we, we, we haven't cut the molds for this because that's
• 1:23:53
  what we're kind of raising this money for.
• 1:23:55
  That's what we're doing this Briolar to make sure it makes
• 1:23:58
  sense to do that. So what that was was kind of
• 1:24:02
  like a resin print, but a little bit different than we do.
• 1:24:05
  So it had more functionality and pose ability and stuff, but
• 1:24:10
  we've spent so much time working with the factory to try to make
• 1:24:13
  sure that the process is right, the engineering is right, the
• 1:24:17
  pricing is right, that we are further along than we would
• 1:24:21
  normally be. But on the other side, The thing
• 1:24:24
  is such a beast that putting one together is going to take a lot
• 1:24:28
  longer than putting anything else together.
• 1:24:30
  So in some ways I feel like we're ahead of the game, but in
• 1:24:34
  other ways I feel like we've still got so much.
• 1:24:36
  Work ahead of us. I'm really hoping that we will
• 1:24:40
  see this in hand before. The end of next year.
• 1:24:44
  And what would the plan be to maybe do like for example, Chris
• 1:24:48
  to do the odd factory visit between now and then?
• 1:24:50
  Is that kind of? Yeah.
• 1:24:52
  So Chris, I mean, he went over with George, obviously his first
• 1:24:57
  visit back was with George sometime last year and then he
• 1:25:01
  just went back for almost a month a couple of weeks ago.
• 1:25:04
  Oh. He was there for a month.
• 1:25:06
  Wow. Yeah, he was there for almost.
• 1:25:08
  Almost a solid month. Well, he went to Japan first.
• 1:25:11
  He did the Wonder Fest with Masaki, one of our retailers out
• 1:25:15
  there in Japan. And then he went over and he
• 1:25:18
  spent a couple weeks in China, which was fascinating.
• 1:25:22
  By the way, little side note, I don't know if I've told this
• 1:25:25
  story yet. I don't think I have.
• 1:25:27
  Oh, give it to us so. There's there's a night where
• 1:25:30
  because they're on a different, you know, time schedule over
• 1:25:33
  there, the best time for me to talk to Chris was at like 9.
• 1:25:37
  O'clock at night. So there was a Wednesday that I
• 1:25:40
  had just finished my show and I texted Chris and I had a bunch
• 1:25:44
  of information. That I I need answers to all
• 1:25:47
  these things. So he messages me like.
• 1:25:49
  Half an hour later, so it's like 930 and he says, do you have
• 1:25:53
  time for can you FaceTime? And I'm like, yeah, I can
• 1:25:55
  FaceTime. I'm.
• 1:25:56
  Thinking he's in his like hotel. Room.
• 1:25:59
  And we're going to talk real. Quick before he goes to the.
• 1:26:02
  Factory. He brings up his phone and says
• 1:26:04
  hey Jeremy, and then he shows me that he's at a table.
• 1:26:08
  Whoops. He's at a table with everyone in
• 1:26:11
  the factory and he's like, hey everybody, say hi to Jeremy.
• 1:26:16
  So he propped, put his phone up with my face on it and I sat in.
• 1:26:22
  I was in the meeting for 90 minutes as we went through and
• 1:26:26
  it was fascinating. It was absolutely fascinating to
• 1:26:29
  see how this stuff is done, how these decisions are made, the
• 1:26:33
  back and forth and everything at the factory as we discussed
• 1:26:36
  these things. But it was, we're now at the
• 1:26:40
  point where Chris is going to be going over there more
• 1:26:43
  frequently. I think he's already got at
• 1:26:45
  least one other trip planned this year, probably more than
• 1:26:49
  that. So we are going to see Chris
• 1:26:51
  going over there a lot. More.
• 1:26:53
  And I can absolutely tell you based on what got accomplished
• 1:26:56
  in that meeting, I can't believe that we released any toys in the
• 1:27:00
  last like three years during. COVID.
• 1:27:03
  Because. The level of complexity that has
• 1:27:06
  to go back and forth with these products and all of these
• 1:27:09
  decisions to try to do that with no FaceTime, It's baffling to me
• 1:27:14
  that we were able to make this stuff actually work.
• 1:27:17
  The amount of decisions that we made during that 90 minute
• 1:27:21
  meeting a couple weeks ago. I feel like it would have taken
• 1:27:25
  us three months to get that amount of work done that we got
• 1:27:30
  done in those 90 minutes. Being in person, being able to
• 1:27:33
  ask questions in real time and adjust right on the fly.
• 1:27:38
  Those are all going to have a benefit that we're going to see
• 1:27:42
  in the release schedule for this line.
• 1:27:45
  And I don't mean how quickly we offer pre-orders, I mean how
• 1:27:48
  quickly we deliver pre-orders. That's awesome.
• 1:27:53
  And Next up we have All Star 6. Yeah.
• 1:27:57
  So All Star Six, that is wrapping up production this
• 1:28:02
  month. That wave suffered because of
• 1:28:05
  Chinese New Year. Like they were really trying to
• 1:28:08
  get it done before they left for Chinese New Year.
• 1:28:11
  And then it just it didn't work out.
• 1:28:13
  It took a little bit longer with Necronominus and a few things,
• 1:28:16
  so we ended up getting to the point that it had to get pushed.
• 1:28:20
  They came back from Chinese New Year to finish it, so they're
• 1:28:23
  wrapping that all up this month. The latest information we got is
• 1:28:28
  it should be headed to port by the end of the month.
• 1:28:32
  So with any luck, I don't know if it'll be on the water in
• 1:28:35
  March, but it should be on the water hopefully.
• 1:28:37
  In early April. And on the way over to us and
• 1:28:41
  then right after that they should be going right into the
• 1:28:44
  first Ox crew wave in the, the Ox crew waves are going to be
• 1:28:47
  pretty much. Back-to-back, we're going to
• 1:28:49
  work on them pretty much just like we did with Necro and All
• 1:28:52
  Stars. We'll do the Ox Crew waves
• 1:28:54
  back-to-back, so we should be seeing those by the middle of
• 1:28:58
  this year as well. Yeah.
• 1:29:00
  So we, we did mention when we were chatting about this on the
• 1:29:04
  show at some point earlier this year that we might have another
• 1:29:08
  kind of summer of Kosmerian in a way.
• 1:29:12
  Like last year it was the sale, this year it might be the the
• 1:29:15
  waves coming. But yeah, that's cool that
• 1:29:17
  they're coming quick after each other.
• 1:29:19
  And of course, All Star 6. So probably All Star 6 before
• 1:29:22
  the start of the summer. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:29:26
  I mean, with any luck, don't quote me, but I, I'm, I'm really
• 1:29:31
  hoping that we're going to start seeing those arriving in May.
• 1:29:34
  Yeah, cool. Yeah, that would be the dream.
• 1:29:37
  I I'll let you say that, but yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:39
  Yeah, yeah. That's, that's what that's what
• 1:29:41
  we're hoping for right now. I mean the good thing.
• 1:29:44
  So by tying All Star 6 into Necronominus, we did a really
• 1:29:49
  good thing and a really bad thing.
• 1:29:51
  The really bad thing we did was we made it so that wave was
• 1:29:56
  100%. Dependent on Necronominus.
• 1:29:59
  So every time we got a delay in the Necro wave, it meant we got
• 1:30:03
  a delay in the All Star Six wave.
• 1:30:05
  Unlike if you remember what happened with All Stars 5, we
• 1:30:07
  got a delay in in Cosmic 1 and we just said let's just do All
• 1:30:12
  Stars 5. We just leapfrogged it and did
• 1:30:14
  that. We couldn't.
• 1:30:15
  Do that with All Stars 6 because it was dependent on necro parts.
• 1:30:20
  The good side is, once Necro was fully debugged and ready to go,
• 1:30:24
  it meant that All Star Six could just completely roll out
• 1:30:28
  everything that we had to fix. We had already fixed during the
• 1:30:31
  Necro wave, so there was presumably no unexpected issues
• 1:30:37
  that were going to arise that we're going to slow things.
• 1:30:39
  Down. That's awesome.
• 1:30:42
  That's awesome. So do you got anything else for
• 1:30:45
  for Jeremy now? No, I think that's everything.
• 1:30:49
  And what about the potential for tariffs and stuff like that,
• 1:30:53
  Jeremy, is that something you guys are looking at in the next
• 1:30:56
  couple of months or? It's, it's just another one of
• 1:31:00
  the challenges that, you know, we're all dealing with right
• 1:31:04
  now. I mean, costs are rising.
• 1:31:06
  Across the board on, on things, you know that to produce stuff,
• 1:31:11
  there's so much kind of up in the air right now in terms of
• 1:31:14
  what's going to happen with tariffs.
• 1:31:16
  So at this time we're just kind of, you know, looking out for
• 1:31:19
  them, seeing what's happening, figuring out if there are any
• 1:31:22
  adjustments that that have. To be made.
• 1:31:24
  But you know, we're, we're doing what we need to do to in order
• 1:31:28
  to, you know, keep this stuff coming out and everything and
• 1:31:31
  we'll adjust accordingly. Yeah.
• 1:31:33
  I mean, obviously you have to stay alive as a company, you
• 1:31:36
  know, So these things, these are kind of, you know, death and
• 1:31:39
  taxes. You just have to to deal with
• 1:31:41
  them. But does this penalize you on
• 1:31:43
  stuff you've already solicited, for example?
• 1:31:47
  Yeah. So the I mean if there are
• 1:31:49
  tariffs supplied, it doesn't. Matter when they were solicited.
• 1:31:52
  It's all based on arrival. And stuff rights in the port.
• 1:31:54
  So, yeah, yeah. So I mean, that's one of the
• 1:31:56
  challenges of doing preorders the way we do, you know.
• 1:32:00
  Outside of tariffs, you can look at go back to shipping prices,
• 1:32:04
  right? Yeah, so.
• 1:32:05
  Yeah, that was the big. Problem in COVID, wasn't it?
• 1:32:07
  Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, if you so
• 1:32:09
  with COVID, there was a point where actually the container
• 1:32:13
  prices from China like they went up so, so much like a container
• 1:32:19
  that used to be like. $6000 to ship went up to like $30,000.
• 1:32:24
  So I mean immediately you're like, OK.
• 1:32:28
  Every one of the items on that container just now.
• 1:32:32
  Cost us a lot. More money to to get over.
• 1:32:34
  Here. But even outside of that, if you
• 1:32:37
  think about it, for all of the complaining about shipping
• 1:32:40
  prices, when we do a pre-order, you are charged the shipping
• 1:32:44
  prices that we have, right? Now.
• 1:32:47
  So if it takes a year, a. Year and a half for that
• 1:32:50
  pre-order to arrive. If shipping prices have gone up
• 1:32:54
  during that time, which they tend to do, they tend to go up.
• 1:32:58
  We only charged you the shipping price, you know, 18 months ago.
• 1:33:03
  So that's one of the challenges that we deal with as a company
• 1:33:09
  doing the pre-order model that we do.
• 1:33:12
  And we can't add a whole bunch of buffer to the shipping prices
• 1:33:16
  saying like, Oh, well, we'll just cover ourselves in case
• 1:33:19
  because then the shipping prices are out of whack and they're
• 1:33:22
  unwieldy. So it's one of those things
• 1:33:24
  where you kind of just have to like, put your best foot
• 1:33:26
  forward, cross your fingers and hope that the impact, if there
• 1:33:30
  is any change, it's not so dramatic that it's going to
• 1:33:34
  actually hurt you. Will it cut into your margins a
• 1:33:36
  little bit? Absolutely.
• 1:33:38
  But again, you know, that's one of the nice things about a
• 1:33:41
  company like ours is we're not this giant corporate, you know,
• 1:33:46
  mega lift that has shareholders and everything that we have to
• 1:33:49
  report to, you know, everyone here is a hard worker.
• 1:33:53
  No ones here, no ones trying to ring every penny out of every
• 1:33:58
  sale that we can get. So if prices go up a little bit
• 1:34:01
  and we make a little bit less profit, we're still OK.
• 1:34:04
  We're still OK. We're still going to be able to
• 1:34:07
  to make this work. And like I said, as as things
• 1:34:10
  change, we'll adjust as we as we have to keep making cool toys.
• 1:34:17
  You just have to tell Corn Bite to get, you know, 11 less double
• 1:34:20
  of the mascot figure he's getting whatever you know, you
• 1:34:24
  can just have the the one corn boy don't get there.
• 1:34:27
  Don't get the second one to keep in box we.
• 1:34:28
  Can't do that. Shipping's gone up mate, that's.
• 1:34:32
  That's a sacrifice we can't make.
• 1:34:34
  Come on. We can't.
• 1:34:35
  We can't mess with corn boy. Can't mess with corn boys.
• 1:34:37
  Mezco's. That's right.
• 1:34:39
  That's I love because I mean I collect Mezco as well.
• 1:34:41
  Not as crazy. As corn boy I just collect like
• 1:34:44
  the original. He's the completest.
• 1:34:46
  He gets everything like he buys. He buys characters from
• 1:34:49
  franchises he has genuinely known.
• 1:34:52
  That he's just. But he's just like cool finger,
• 1:34:55
  cool finger. Just lost fingers.
• 1:34:57
  I only buy like. Most of the wacky Rumble society
• 1:35:00
  stuff. But they're cool, yeah.
• 1:35:02
  Every time there's a drop like corn boy and I are messing up
• 1:35:06
  there and we're like. Oh, did you get this?
• 1:35:08
  Did you get that? So it's, yeah, it's pretty cool.
• 1:35:10
  It's. Bonding with one of the bosses
• 1:35:12
  over Mezco. OH.
• 1:35:13
  Absolutely, absolutely. So I bond.
• 1:35:15
  I bond with Corn Boy over Mezco and Eric and I bond over those
• 1:35:21
  big vintage Shogun warriors every time.
• 1:35:26
  So at Zolocon, we, Eric and I were.
• 1:35:29
  Walking the show and Erics wife and and sons we couldn't find
• 1:35:33
  them. They were off.
• 1:35:34
  And we were. We got to a booth that had
• 1:35:36
  shoguns and we were looking at them.
• 1:35:39
  And then Laura, Eric's wife comes up and we heard, I heard
• 1:35:41
  her say she's like, yeah, I should have known I'd find you 2
• 1:35:44
  here. We do.
• 1:35:45
  It shows we're like. Look at the hot.
• 1:35:47
  One look at the Hot 1. Oh yeah, better to be
• 1:35:51
  predictable. Yeah.
• 1:35:53
  In a good way. So as of now, Beth here is 45%
• 1:35:56
  funded. Yes, the Monday of.
• 1:35:59
  As of this morning. I may drop this episode a little
• 1:36:03
  bit earlier than usual because we got some really awesome
• 1:36:06
  information and Jeremy, thanks so much for your time.
• 1:36:10
  Thank you both for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:36:13
  I've loved every time I've come on here and I there's a lot
• 1:36:17
  going on right now with with Bay.
• 1:36:19
  Yes, absolutely. To be able to, you know, just
• 1:36:22
  have an open conversation with you guys about it, both the good
• 1:36:25
  and the. Bad has been really really
• 1:36:26
  refreshing, so thank. You and I think it's both.
• 1:36:29
  It's really it's mostly good. And for the rest of the campaign
• 1:36:33
  we'll be, we'll be rooting for years.
• 1:36:35
  And as I said, I want to get past that 3000 mark for sure.
• 1:36:40
  I think that's I think that's worth making the point.
• 1:36:43
  If anyone's wants to back it, get back in it.
• 1:36:47
  Don't be waiting because the sooner you're back it the
• 1:36:49
  quicker it gets to the the points and more stuff you get
• 1:36:54
  the more. Value.
• 1:36:55
  For your old, for your older. Follow the horsemen socials or
• 1:36:58
  on source Horsemen. They have a, they have a little
• 1:37:01
  page there where you can see the, The Daily Progress of the
• 1:37:04
  of the stuff, which is fun to follow in itself if you like a
• 1:37:07
  little bit of, I don't know, just a little bit of mystery
• 1:37:10
  every day. Yeah, that's you putting them
• 1:37:13
  together, Jeremy, is it? Yeah, Nate did the graphic and
• 1:37:17
  it's it's like a layered Photoshop file where I can kind
• 1:37:21
  of move. Move it as it goes.
• 1:37:23
  The fire, so it, it shows that so, yeah.
• 1:37:26
  So every morning, run the reports, see where we are for
• 1:37:30
  sales. I adjust that accordingly and
• 1:37:32
  then I make the post. There's also there's a fan, his
• 1:37:36
  name's Brian, who does all of these cool graphs for Brian
• 1:37:41
  Brinks, his name, He does all these cool graphs.
• 1:37:43
  I think I saw his post today. Yeah, all the major.
• 1:37:45
  Kickstarters, he does he so he, you know, all the has labs and
• 1:37:48
  everything all those kind of, he does these really, really cool
• 1:37:52
  like data-driven graphs of like the process and how it's going.
• 1:37:56
  And he posts it I believe. It's on a geek dash had life.
• 1:37:58
  But he posted in the. Cabal today that he put together
• 1:38:02
  the actual like graph for this crowdfunding campaign.
• 1:38:05
  So that's yet another way that you can follow the progress and
• 1:38:10
  and kind of see a very data-driven I know actually rich
• 1:38:15
  like spreadsheets. So I don't know if he gets
• 1:38:17
  really into this kind of data, but but maybe that'll be
• 1:38:20
  something that will. Excite him.
• 1:38:28
  It's a very much Excel nerd looking graph, which is a good
• 1:38:32
  thing. All right, Jeremy, as I said,
• 1:38:36
  thanks so much. What's that?
• 1:38:39
  Jeremy said very cool. It's really not.
• 1:38:43
  It is when you're when it's about a dragon, it's not when
• 1:38:45
  it's about, you know, the sales of like paperweights or
• 1:38:48
  something. It's.
• 1:38:49
  Super impressive that he put it together and if it helps excite
• 1:38:52
  people to buy more Dragons then I'm totally on board.
• 1:38:56
  It is impressive. It is impressive, yeah.
• 1:38:59
  So we're up to was it 7th of April?
• 1:39:02
  Or I think it's the 6th because it started on March 7th and it
• 1:39:07
  goes till Sunday, April 6th. Yeah.
• 1:39:11
  And I mean, we always get a flurry of orders that final
• 1:39:15
  weekend because, you know, obviously.
• 1:39:17
  Why? Why are you going to drop the
• 1:39:19
  money on it up front? There's no incentive to buy
• 1:39:21
  early. There is no incentive to back
• 1:39:25
  this early other than being a part of this.
• 1:39:29
  At a point where it helps get it closer to funding.
• 1:39:32
  The quicker we can get it funded, the quicker we can start
• 1:39:35
  to unlock. There is a.
• 1:39:36
  Snowball style effect. And this is one of those
• 1:39:39
  downsides to it not being on Kickstarter, because
• 1:39:42
  Kickstarter, every one of our fans could say I'm going to back
• 1:39:45
  it day one to really get that up there and start unlocking stuff.
• 1:39:49
  And I know I don't have to dig into my wallet until day 30.
• 1:39:53
  This doesn't work that way. You do get charged upfront.
• 1:39:57
  You do get charged when you place that order, but by backing
• 1:40:00
  it early. It gets those numbers up, it
• 1:40:03
  gets those stretch goals unlocked because ultimate.
• 1:40:06
  Once we unlock Sir Benagar, as you mentioned now that's a lot
• 1:40:10
  of value being added into this set right out of the gate.
• 1:40:15
  One thing I met was starting to talk about earlier that I didn't
• 1:40:18
  get to finish. I'm realizing now is, you know,
• 1:40:21
  we decided to split the Sir Benagar into two unlocks rather
• 1:40:25
  than do it, instead of saying, OK, 2000 is funding, 3000 is Sir
• 1:40:30
  Benagar, we will like OK, we don't want to have to go a whole
• 1:40:33
  1000 without an unlock. So we'll do, Sir.
• 1:40:36
  Benagar, the base figure at 2500 because that's one price.
• 1:40:41
  You know when we come down, as I mentioned, when our unit cost
• 1:40:44
  comes down, we'll add him back in to bring it up and then 500
• 1:40:48
  more it comes down again. So now we can Add all the soft
• 1:40:51
  goods in and bring it right back up.
• 1:40:53
  But that .3000 to me is really, I think that's kind of the
• 1:40:57
  fulcrum point where once we hit that, there's a lot of value.
• 1:41:01
  I think we're going to see. I think we're going to see a lot
• 1:41:04
  of people coming out of the woodwork who are waiting right
• 1:41:07
  now to see whether or not that stuff's going while he's going
• 1:41:10
  to unlock and whether it's going to fund.
• 1:41:12
  We'll hopefully see them come out and then that will push us
• 1:41:15
  towards those other unlocks as well.
• 1:41:19
  Yeah, so if if you do get between 2500 and 3000 but not
• 1:41:24
  over the 3000, can you promise me you'll do like a soft goods
• 1:41:28
  pack? It doesn't matter if it's four
• 1:41:30
  years time, I don't care. I'll wait and you can fleece me
• 1:41:33
  for you can charge £60.00 for. I'm fine with that.
• 1:41:37
  We'll see. I I there's a lot of questions
• 1:41:39
  about like how close do you have to get to unlock it I think.
• 1:41:43
  I'm just trying to say how much I like it, you know?
• 1:41:46
  Let's be honest. John, none of us want to see.
• 1:41:48
  Sir, that I got. Get released without his.
• 1:41:51
  Out his tunic and without. His weapons.
• 1:41:54
  So one way him, because he's got, he's got to be, you know,
• 1:41:57
  looking after Dragons, you know? Yeah.
• 1:41:59
  One way or another, we've got, we've got to get that and I
• 1:42:03
  think we're working on a couple things.
• 1:42:04
  I've seen a lot of people. Asking if Sir Benagar is going
• 1:42:09
  to have like extra hands because right now he uses.
• 1:42:12
  They want the vertical hinge they.
• 1:42:13
  Want the vertical hinge for the the.
• 1:42:17
  Jousting Lance and everything. So we're working on some stuff
• 1:42:21
  right now. I think we're going to add.
• 1:42:22
  Some even some extra. Goodness into Sir Benagar.
• 1:42:26
  The Forestman. Listen, don't worry guys.
• 1:42:28
  You know, whenever you make good points, you know.
• 1:42:30
  Whenever we can. All right, Jeremy, now we really
• 1:42:34
  do have to get out of. Here.
• 1:42:35
  Thanks guys. Appreciate.
• 1:42:36
  It all right. Cheers.
• 1:42:37
  Thanks.