Originally Posted by
bowspearer
Having just gotten an email about it from Hasbro and having seen the thing, I completely disagree with you. They're not crowd-funding at all - they're doing a preorder-based production run on this so that they can justify production costs. In fact they explicitly state they're not taking money for it unless the 5,000 order target is reached.
.....
At 1.25m long and 43cm high, with a cost of $499, there is no way Hasbro could reasonably be expected to take a gamble on this at retail - especially in today's toy market. As such, the concept of turning to fans and saying "Hey, we want to give you guys this, but to be able to make this a reality at $x, we need y numbers of guaranteed sales. Who's interested?" is entirely reasonable.
I agree entirely, and I am hoping it will prompt interest in playsets again. Can you imagine how cool it would be to have an Ark playset, or Shockwave's lab, or hyperspace bridge. Even just an official Teletran-1, instead of 3rd party releases.
But they only seem to be offering to US/Canada, or I might have put down money on it. I hope this is fixed when/if they do crowdfunding for other properties
On the lookout for MISB Headmaster Highbrow, Takara or Hasbro. I'm sure I could make you a sweet deal!