Posted: 16 May 2008 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | 7
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First off, sorry for not posting much on here, I do drop by now and again to see what "gives" Stateside. Some really good repaints and excellent reworkings of CMFC figs.
As you may know we have a close relationship with Eaglemoss vis Alan Cowsill and now Richard Jackson....I received a great e-mail from RJ this afternoon and thought it a good idea to publish here...I know that some of the figs we discuss on the UK forum are still a while away for you but it is good to get your feedback too. Here is the message I received:
Hi Steve,
I thought I'd bash out an e-mail that you can put on the website. Hopefully it will answer a few of the questions that have been bouncing around the forum.
Iron Man Film Special: It seems some people are a little disappointed that we decided to do a movie figure and not say, an original comic Iron Man figure. The thing with the Iron Man movie special is that as a licensee we are often presented with ideas from Marvel to give us new ways to utilise our unique product. What this essentially means is that Marvel asked if we wanted to try a movie based figure rather than one from the comics. Looking to expand upon our range and possibly introduce Movie specials alongside other regular specials we thought we'd have a go with Iron Man.
The reason for the reduced magazine content was due to the fact that we simply did not have as much access to the film, images, script etc... as we would have liked. We did however have to increase the price to cover the costs of making a film-licensed product. Personally I think the figure looks absolutely amazing and is a highly detailed replica of the one used in the movie, well worth having in your collection. What the process of producing this magazine has told us is that we will think long and hard before doing anymore movie specials and I'd welcome including the forum in some of the decision making.
Abomination Special: From the forums it is clear that the choice of a rubble base was highly controversial and we certainly didn't want to upset long-time collectors. The thought behind the Abomination was to attempt to deliver a more dynamic figure as many collectors have asked for. The choice in having a different base was somewhat based upon how well the Spider-Man subs gift and Black Costume Spider-Man (when it wasn't broken) went down. Neither of these figures are on a regular base and seem very popular. Occasionally it is good to experiment with these things to see how we can add to our figurine collection but I recognise that we would do well to listen to the forums before ploughing ahead. After all, Galactus and the mega special range were a slight change in direction when they came out. We moved away from the pocket money/under a tenner and smaller range to a larger more collectors' figure. Despite loving the Galactus figurine we were worried that the additional cost would put off a lot of people. Obviously the old adages of 'not trying to fix that which is not broken' and 'you can't please everyone, all the time' spring to mind with the Abomination but your feedback on the figure has been much appreciated and I hope that we can keep move forward with specials that everyone will like.
Professor Xavier: Now here's a controversial character. So far he's jumped in and out of our list, we've considered different poses, different wheelchairs and different ways of presenting the character (double packs). First I want to say thank you to everyone who's either voted in the polls or just posted a comment on the forum, I am listening. Secondly I want to make it clear that Xavier NEEDS to be in this collection. Now the problem I have with Xavier is that we're finding it very hard to make the character fit in the regular series whilst in his wheelchair. The options for the figure have been posted on the message boards and I don't want to go into too much detail now but the real question is: would you as collectors be willing to pay the special price for Professor Xavier in his 'Astonishing X-Men' chair? I feel that if we have to charge more for Xavier we should give you something extra, hence the double pack idea. This way you would basically be getting an extra figurine for the collection, rather than just spending more on Xavier. I know some people will hate the idea of having a 'hanger-on' but if Xavier has to be priced at a higher point wouldn't you prefer to get something extra, rather than just the one figure? Oh and the options for the extra character in the double pack were just a starting point, we could in theory throw the debate open to any other Marvel character. No decision has been made yet and in the next few weeks I'd really like to use the forum as an area to discuss all the possibilities. I'm sure Grim will be a gent and stick up some more polls in the not too distant future.
Crystal: What can I say? I'm sorry so many people really dislike this figure. I understand why and I think we made a mistake not going down the Kirby root and not making the pose as dynamic as possible. Unfortunately the lead-in time for the figures means that we cannot change her now. The positives that will come out of this are that I'm looking at getting a blog running on our website (Marvel approval permitting), this will be updated with every figure update to give you more insight into the Eaglemoss process. I'm going to make sure we do better in the future to avoid this kind of disappointment and I'm looking at ways in which we can more directly involve the forums in the decision making process. Design by committee is never the best way to go (you can't please everyone and those who don't get their way feel the most disappointed) but I think including the insightful thoughts of the 500+ collectors from this forum into the process can only be beneficial.
Hopefully my above comments are useful and answer a few of the questions kicking around the forum.
Many Thanks,
Richard
There has been a great deal of discussion and it is only fair that you chaps have a chance to have an input too. Great that Eaglemoss, and Richard in particular, have taken the time to answer some of "our" questions regarding the above figs....
.....thoughts guys?
cheers
Steve
Edited by Steve Reaper on 16 May 2008 at 5:29pm
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