the older 2012 Triad Boone Town Saloon.
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I made this, sort of. At least, I took this photo, but I did a bit more than that, too.
Pardon me, while I stroll down memory lane. If you want to read further, while this is an epic post, if you are a fan of this hobby, I think you will be entertained by what follows.
We had commissioned some concept art, and sent that to the factory.
I provided the reference and was sort of the "art director" for this product. I remember scouring the web for reference photos, so the factory knew how to paint it. I was able to find an old hard drive with my files and found the communication I sent to the factory.
It was important that this diorama was truly 1/6 scale. Here you can see I was demonstrating to the factory that their first sculpt wasn't in scale.
Here is me showing them how to paint the bricks.
And I made the packaging label.
I was hoping to make a full-color art box, but the box was gigantic, and a full-color printed box would've added like $20 to the cost, so it was not worth it. It's still funny to see this small label on this giant-ass white box. But still, I had fun making the label. At the time, I was absolutely obsessed with 'aging' paper in Photoshop.
I pushed for us to make more generic figures like cowboys and pirates. These teasers were posted many years ago.
We had started a series of historical characters, titled Legends. It started off as monks, there was a plan for samurai and Greek heroes. I had brainstormed the whole series. My ideas included Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, King Arthur, Mina Harker, Nemo, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Long John Silver, Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Doc Holliday, Hercules, Achilles, my list was endless, but that's as far as I got in my Word doc. But based on the poor sales of our Zorro and John Carter figures, it quickly became apparent collectors were not interested in figures that didn't have a celebrity headsculpt. I have a reference folder for Beowulf and inside it has pics of David Beckham ... I don't remember doing that, but I guess we had a solution
The point is, I understand the amount of work that goes into making products. We did more work than anyone will ever know. The amount of badass prototypes we made that people will never see, it hurts my heart to think about how much creativity that company had, that was hamstrung by the inability of the factory to match our vision ... and the fact that there just wasn't enough customers that could financially support what we wanted to make, but I digress.
On top of that, I understand what it's like to deal with people commenting about your products. I had to deal with it for three years. For those that are new, Triad Toys was basically the Star Ace of the previous decade. Though I'd like to think we showed signs of improvement towards the end. Either way, this forum was not kind to us. Back then, mods didn't delete rude comments. In fact, one or two mods even participated in making rude comments.
The amount of effort that we put into making figures for House and Dexter, that people will never see, because they were rejected by licensing. No joke, I counted 10 unique sculpts for House on our workbench. The hours I spent screen-capping episodes of Dexter ... we tried, lord, we tried. Yet people savaged us on this forum, saying we were wasting the license, "They're not doing anything with it." They had absolutely no clue how much effort we put in.
It was
very difficult to handle people telling us how bad we were, or that we were wasting licenses, or wondering how we were still in business. Those sorts of derisive remarks were hard to deal with. 99% of the people here have no understanding what it takes to actually be a producer in this company.
No matter how hard you try, how much research you do, how much effort you put into a product, it won't ever meet your expectations, or the customers' expectations. It was a constant battle with the factory to get them to match your vision. The final product is a compromise between what is possible and what you can afford. The last 5% of any figure, or any creative endeavor, always takes the longest, and is rarely worth the time and effort into making it perfect. The idiom is "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good".
To circle back to the Boonetown diorama, I put a ton of effort into that product. A true 1/6 scale diorama for $120, I think it was? It was an absolute steal, even in that era. But it went over like a wet fart in church. We made 200, I think, and we probbably only sold 100 of them. Nobody was singing its praise. Maybe it was too big, maybe there weren't any cowboy figures to display with it? Who knows? Regardless, I understand what it's like to put in effort and not get the reception you were expecting.
So bringing my point home, what happens in this forum is that you have a game of one-upsmanship, with one person trying to prove they are a bigger fan, by showing where a figure is inaccurate.
It's not a comment that the figure is bad, or that it needs to be improved, but more so that it's an ego boost for the person posting. The addition of the Like function, and the reputation function that preceded it, has only exacerbated the issue.
And when I read RRX's remarks like "This figure isn't meeting our sales expectations", "We should probably cancel Dutch", or "We should've just gone with one look, instead of multiple outfits" ... it hurts to read these comments, they don't help anyone. It reflects poorly on the company, it hurts the fans. The only people who perhaps enjoy reading those comments are the ones that instigated them in the first place, the ones that enjoy bringing people down. They like making others feel bad to make themselves feel better.
I recommend finding an outlet to vent that isn't this forum.
We didn't engage with people here, because we knew it wouldn't accomplish anything. Responding to the comments won't make a company, or their products, better. You can read the comments and learn to differentiate which ones are constructive and might better the product, and the ones that are simply ego boosts on the poster.
Imagine how I felt, when people were complaining about how bad we were, when we made lackluster figures. LIM is making much better figures, and people are still saying they can be better. People will never be happy. Please don't drive yourself crazy trying to make them happy.
Read the comments, laugh it off, talk about how full of **** everyone is here (in private, or with your co-workers, don't do that here), and live your life ... and get me my Cowboy!
