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You Are a Pirate: Tide-Realm Corsairs with Creator Quaid Owen Cundall
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Ahoy mateys! This week we're joined by Wyoming-based creator Quaid Owen Cundall to talk all about his project — Tide-Realm Corsairs. These 1:12 scale pirate action figures sculpted and prototyped by Four Horsemen Studios need your help on Kickstarter to become a reality. Learn all about them in this episode!
Back Tide-Realm Corsairs here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/406936874/tiderealm-corsairs-fantasy-pirate-action-figures
Follow us @aic_podcast on Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube
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Intro and other voices by Joe Azzari
https://www.instagram.com/voicesbyjoe/
Theme Music is "Game Boy Horror" by the Zombie Dandies
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Transcript
Introduction to Adventures in Collecting
00:00:03
Speaker
Are you ready kids? Get your parents permission, check your mailbox and grab your shopping cart. It's time for the Adventures in Collecting podcast. I'm Eric.
00:00:15
Speaker
And I'm Dave. Welcome to Adventures in Collecting. Where we talk toy news, culture and hauls. Along with our journeys as collectors.
Pirate Adventure Narratives
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Adventures in Collecting. Hi. Ahoy there, Dave. Yes, I've ah found myself on.
00:00:43
Speaker
i found this old map and now I'm here. I was going to say, I don't know where here is. did Did you follow a map or were you abandoned with a pistol in it and and and one and one shot?
00:00:59
Speaker
um I started to take up a piracy and went to a random port and then the crew was like, now we've had enough and now I'm here.
00:01:13
Speaker
uh tortuga were you at the tortuga tavern by any chance um i was recently at the the new know by michael bolton rolled by was oh my god what a what a pull i i was gonna say i was recently i was recently at the establishment across across the pathway from the tortuga tavern in uh in disney world i was i was at a a certain pirate bar that was fun how is it that's new oh that was great.
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah, I forget. i'm not I'm now forgetting what it's called. Something Pete's. Right. I don't know. I've never been to it. It's new. I forget what it's called, but it was really cool. It's basically like Trader Sam's, but pirate themed.
00:01:55
Speaker
I've only been to Blue Bayou in Anaheim. I got to get out there at some point. Which is not pirate themed. No, no. It's isn't it like a New Orleans? it's like New Orleans Square. That's where pirates is.
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, the OG I have. I've I think I've been on it like when i was really little and I just don't remember it. Probably when we were is when we were there.
00:02:22
Speaker
real I find it to be the more superior version. That's what everyone
Guest Announcement and Pirate Content
00:02:27
Speaker
says. So, by the way, we're talking about pirates because today's guest is very pirate related and today's content is going to be very pirate related. Also, Sid Meier's pirates. Great video game.
00:02:40
Speaker
hated those dueling things, though, when you had to like with the keyboard you had like, see, I liked it better on the computer than the Genesis. But when it switched to that view, I liked when you were like sailing around on the ship. But when it switched to that view, like when you got boarded and you had to time your parries and things like that, ah never I was never was never really. Thieves got nothing on pirates gold.
00:03:03
Speaker
um Yeah, pirates. so we're gonna be talking a lot about pirates
Social Media and Giveaway Updates
00:03:07
Speaker
today. ah We do have some housekeeping. um We are, as is usually the case, we we're recording this in past in the past. um There will be a June giveaway, as is usually the case. um We just haven't decided. We have a couple of options.
00:03:27
Speaker
And we haven't decided what June's giveaway is going to be yet. We're between giveaways. Yeah, at the... When we know, you'll know. At the time of this recording, the giveaway... Or at the time that this airs. Yeah, that's the thing that I was looking for. That's the the the phrase I was looking for. um When this show airs, which will be... If you are listening to this when it is new, it is it's June 1st.
00:03:53
Speaker
So... The giveaway will be announced later on today yes on our social media feed, um which is at AIC underscore podcast. There will be a pinned post.
00:04:06
Speaker
There will be a new giveaway. If you are listening to this when it airs at midnight on YouTube or at 5 a.m. on your favorite podcast platform as you commute to work or working an overnight shift or wherever you listen, um there's a good chance that May's giveaway will still be there.
00:04:25
Speaker
um I would actually say that there's a very good chance May's giveaway will still be there, which means that if it's still there, you can enter, at which point it it gives you the opportunity to win a ah McFarlane Toys DC Multiverse Joker. Or you can wait for a little bit later in the day and June's giveaway will pop up.
00:04:46
Speaker
And if you're listening to this before June 1st, get out of my house. that
00:04:52
Speaker
Get out of his house or get off. No, get off. his Get off your island. Yes. Get off your island. Hop on the nearest to make it home back home by then. Hop on the nearest set of sea turtles.
00:05:06
Speaker
And right. Isn't that how Captain Jack got off the island the first time? Rode the sea turtles. That's not actually what happened. Why is the rum gone, Dave? I need to get home before the finals start.
00:05:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's true. Congrats on your Knicks. You're very not cursed Knicks. Do we know who they're playing yet? Even in the past? um In the past, we do not. In the present, we would.
00:05:30
Speaker
Okay. All right. So good luck to good luck to the New York Knickerbockers. Yeah. Yeah. As a non-basketball fan, this has been a tremendously fun. Oh, yeah. To be a to watch to watch to be a casual basketball watcher.
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah. um But as we alluded to, ah that takes it. That takes care of of housekeeping. I was trying to think if there was anything else housekeeping that we want to talk about. Oh, we'll be going to Sweet Sweet in July. So that's happening. Yes.
00:06:00
Speaker
um So we'll be back there. There might be a cool thing that they're doing this year. um Stay tuned. But we might actually be recording an episode of the podcast at Sweet Sweet.
00:06:14
Speaker
I'm hearing that there might be like some sort of podcast studio. We'll see if we can wrangle. More to come when that happens. We'll see if we can wrangle James, the rock father. that'd be great. See if we can drag him into the studio there and and ah pick his brain on one of our favorite
Interview with Quaid Cundall
00:06:32
Speaker
toy shows of the year. We love we're big, sweet, sweet fans here. So yeah, sweet, sweet's a great. um Yep. Yep. So shout out there for having us.
00:06:41
Speaker
We'll be able to to potentially have to have on. Maybe we could steal Bobby from Jazzwares. He's ah he's always a good time. We have options. We'll find somebody yeah to talk to. Friends will be there, I'm sure.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, and it's also ah Happy June, which means that our halfway through the year, i can't believe i'm I'm even saying this out loud, but our halfway through the year list oh episode. mean, we got to address that at the end of this month.
00:07:10
Speaker
Yes. Oh, at the end of the month. Yeah. ah Jeez, that's coming up too. All right. But anyway, ah that's it for housekeeping for real this time. as ah As we alluded to in the beginning of the episode, we do have a fun new friend of the pod, new guest.
00:07:26
Speaker
ah This week's guest is a creator who is taking a lifelong... love of storytelling, action figures and fantasy and turning it into one of what we think is the coolest indie toy launches on Kickstarter right now. This brand new high fantasy pirate universe called Tide Realm Corsairs, a line of ambitious seven inch scale action figures is being brought to life in collaboration with the legendary Four Horsemen Studios.
00:07:54
Speaker
You know them. We know them. From homemade superhero films to building an original mythology filled with pirates, monsters and sea fairing fantasy characters. Our guest is proving that passion projects can absolutely become a reality. Quaid Cundall, welcome to Adventures in Collecting.
00:08:16
Speaker
It's fantastic to be here, you guys. Thanks so much for the invite. Seriously. Oh, it's it's a pleasure to have you. i have to shout out. um we We were one of our very good friends, Toy Farce. So if you are not, if you are listening to this and you are not following um at Toy Farce on Instagram, often oftentimes we will get a. Yeah, seriously, what are you doing? um You're listening to this and not following him. Ew.
00:08:42
Speaker
Gross. But. ah He often will reach out to us and i you know, it's hard to know everything that's going on all the time in in the toy community. There's there's so much out there. So shouts to him for for frequently sending us messages and saying like, hey, you guys should check out this. Hey, you guys check out that. But he was actually the one that recommended that we reach out to you. So Shouts to Toyfars for making those connections. In our DMs trying to um double check with me who but who I've already talked to, who he still needs to talk to. So I've always appreciated that about him.
00:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, he's he's he is good people. Our favorite ah Norwegian Frenchman. um well well love us some toy farce but uh quade well welcome to the show man it's it is it is honestly a pleasure to have you you are doing something really i think really unique so i can't wait to talk to you about it but the first question that we ask all of our guests uh what are you currently collecting and what are some of your recent pickups Well, not to be a Debbie Downer, but when you when you invest in making your own toy line, you kind of run out of money to buy toys for yourself after a while.
00:09:57
Speaker
um So that that part of the conversation been pretty limited for quite a while. um I've always collected a a little bit of everything on a a personal level.
00:10:09
Speaker
Transformers being probably the biggest one, I've just always been a huge fan of Robots in general so that kind of extends to maybe one of the only few recent things I've gotten which
00:10:22
Speaker
But let's see Pacific Rim they never really had all a proper toy line I mean they did NECA took a stab at it in like 2013 or 14 Probably the year after the film came out And they were okay, but they had some some quality control stuff that always irked me, so I never quite picked them up. But there's ah either a Japanese or Chinese company that got the license, and they started doing some Jaegers last year, and I got the – Crimson Typhoon and just fell in love with this. One of the best made action figures I think I've ever handled actually. It's like, I oh awesome can't wait for them to take a stab at a Kaiju.
00:11:01
Speaker
And so they finally, after like two years, put out their leather back and I just love him. He turned out wonderful. Yeah. That is, that is a vastly underrated film that for fun, like the the design in it,
00:11:16
Speaker
you know, say what you will about the execution of like the story from like a film standpoint, but like the world that they created in the span of two and a half hours was love yeah remarkable.
00:11:28
Speaker
Remarkable. um Even Diamond Select for a short period of time there, that they put out a couple of Pacific Rim pieces that were okay. That were, I would say, good enough at the time. These are well more than good enough. They're what they always should have been and they have some of the most high quality durable joints I've ever seen. Like they're they're small enough that you're surprised to find ratchet joints in them despite the fact that they are larger figure. year And <unk>re it's astonishing. I'm so glad they exist. it's I'm frustrated that I only have two, but they're fairly expensive. So I'm really glad to have what are essentially my two favorite things that appear in that film.
00:12:10
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. That's a great find. And that's actually the first time I think like in the seven years we've done this show, I think it's the first time Pacific Rim has actually come up as like a focused topic. Interesting.
00:12:24
Speaker
Well, it's, wow it's, it's a very under-merchandised movie. Yes. Criminally under-merchandised in my opinion is just as cool as anything that came from, from Transformers in that same era. That was why I loved it. But, uh,
00:12:41
Speaker
I was always astonished by by how little selection there was for for movie merchandise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was one of those ones that like people just didn't bet on, you know?
00:12:51
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, it definitely caught people by surprise. Yeah, I think it did fine in the theater, but I don't know if Del Toro was very worried about merchandise licenses. It doesn't really seem like his priority anyway.
00:13:05
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that's for sure. And then the sequel kind of was not so great. Yeah, that was a mess. Yeah, that was a mess. Yeah, I would have rather seen it like go the video game or like more animated route or anything like that. i know they just dabbled a little, but.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think they tried to do a little bit of a cartoon, didn't they? I didn't pay it any attention, I'm afraid. Yeah. um So getting into Tide Realm Corsairs, though, for people just discovering the the, I guess, property, for lack of a better word, what's the elevator pitch?
00:13:39
Speaker
What is this world? And what makes it different from traditional pirate action figure lines?
Creating a Unique Pirate Toy Line
00:13:46
Speaker
Well, interestingly enough, we actually set out to more or less define what a traditional pirate action figure line is. One of the only selections we've ever had going back to NECA a second ago is when they had the license for the the Disney franchise and that lasted for about,
00:14:03
Speaker
maybe six or seven years. I don't know. I think the last crack they took at it was 2011 with the fourth film. And I don't really remember how successful those figures were or how many there were, but that's the last time we've had kind of a traditional wave by wave built around world pirate action figure line.
00:14:23
Speaker
There's been teeny tiny stabs at it. You know, McFarland did some Assassin's Creed stuff, but they've all been licensed to an extent. And there's not really been any freeform sandbox play pirate theme for the action figure world. And that shocked me when I first ran into Four Horsemen Studios. because it seemed kind of like a no-brainer for the amount of stuff they were offering. Come to find out, the sheer amount of stuff they're offering is quite literally why there's not stuff like that. They have so much that's already working for them. There's only so much time to explore so many things.
00:14:58
Speaker
And come to find out, I had a very different vision than they did for seafaring things anyway, so it all worked out. But that was the impetus. That was the inspiration, was was taking a genre that seemed so woefully underrepresented and defining it in a space that really didn't have ah a direction yet. So we took a lot of almost every classic motif that you would like to see from that and put it into one package and expanded it as much as we could for a first time out.
00:15:30
Speaker
And is something like, you know, something like, you know, this pirate world, is it something that you've been passionate about for a long time? Or is this kind of just like a, you know, a realization that like, hey, we have all these other fandoms, and this one's really kind of underserved?
00:15:45
Speaker
It, it's funny, because it was, it was basically all of the above coming together to make a dream that I didn't really realize I already had and needed.
00:15:56
Speaker
permission to feed into. And once I came into the indie toy making space and realized that there was, there was permission, there was people begging for that. But just like I was playing pretend with all the other things that I've always loved, pirates was one of them. You know, if you went into the toy aisle and the Lego aisle in like 1986, you know, you'd have your, your four main heavy hitters, you'd have your town, your space, know,
00:16:22
Speaker
your castle and pirates. And that was generally where I would head. I didn't unfortunately grow up with too many of those toys, but if I had my choice of something at any one time, that's where I went first. That seemed to be what I gravitated towards more often than not. There was something about the concept of this kind of infinite horizon that the pirate theme ah brought to the table when it came to play time.
00:16:54
Speaker
um And you saw that in Mega Bloks as well years, years later, they picked, I think they picked up the Disney license as well, but they had their own IP within the Pirates line. And that had a ton of free roam sandbox play characters that were their own with really, really cool, unique aesthetics. And I don't really think I ever left that realm, so to speak, only to create my own.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And pirates is one of the... Pirates are one of those things that... is kind of pervasive throughout different types of medium right like you have like theme parks and like the disney pirates of the caribbean you know aspect you have the historical like actual pirates and you know people like you know figures like blackbeard and yeah and things like that you have as you mentioned like tie-ins with games like assassin's creed and then even like as kids you know a lot of us are exposed to things like peter pan very early on in our childhood and we You kind of have this pathway through pirates and you you have like your Peter Pan and your Lego worlds. And then, you know, as you get older, you start to experience more things and start to learn like the more like factual aspects of pirates. And it's it's cool to see that.
00:18:08
Speaker
um those realms of like fantasy and fiction blending with reality and and you know even in some instances like hyper fantasy you know you start to get like the lovecraftian type things happen and yeah um so it it is to me when you know again and and you know mentioned toy forest one more time then we're not talking about him anymore um when he mentioned yeah we should have um when when he mentioned like hey you should check this out uh it's a it's like a pirate toy line i actually like just sat there for a second and went why is it taking it's taking somebody's like taking it so long for somebody to do this like yeah as soon as i saw the pictures of it i was like oh this is this is like a no-brainer like uh-huh yeah
00:18:57
Speaker
Well, that was that was where the design approach started. We wanted to do something that people would look at it and go, where's this been for 15 years? Like, why Of course we would. That's exactly what we're after. And that was where all of our market research went, was to meet the exact need that you would expect from a line like this. We were not trying to come up with some abstract, you know, artist's interpretation, know,
00:19:24
Speaker
you know Audity for the sake of audity, you know us as artists, we can get in there and and make sure that this you know this is my creative expression, this has to have my everything on and this has a lot of my fingerprint on it, but we wanted.
00:19:38
Speaker
everybody to be able to bring themselves and what they would project onto the toy first rather than having to, I guess, understand me first. So we met all those archetypes that people would of course like to see within a fantasy pirate line. That's part of the reason it grew up overnight.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, so um working with Four Horsemen Studios is ah a dream collaboration for a lot of indie toy creators. How did that partnership come together, and what was it like seeing your ideas transformed by one of the most respected studios in the industry?
00:20:16
Speaker
Well, one, it was just an honor actually having that door open. We didn't realize how much of a kind of revolving door policy they have when it comes to talking to up and coming indie creators. They're always happy to meet with somebody who has an idea.
00:20:32
Speaker
um That doesn't always come to the same fruition that we're seeing with this line, but that that alone was encouraging enough, they were very, very protective of our original IP before they did even the scene. Anything you know we had NDA is in place and several meetings beforehand before we've ever we'd ever said the word pirates.
00:20:53
Speaker
And so that was extremely encouraging going in, but I couldn't really be more thankful when it comes to them because they established with how protective they were. um That's going in how complimentary the process was going to be of designing these things together.
00:21:14
Speaker
It's been a really, really unique relationship. I've never had a professional relationship that was so complimentary. Like I just said, there was so many moments where their head space was exactly where we were at. There wasn't a lot of you know no no no i'd like it this way you know we think it would be better this that there wasn't any of that there was always that natural feed-in of of creative collaborative process was not only consistent but right in line
00:21:46
Speaker
with where we were already headed. So I just, I'm floored every single time I think about it because people kind of blink at me once or twice. they're like, how did that come to be? i' like, well, it really was as simple as shooting them an email, but it also helped that we had a world built. We had ah a pitch. We had intentions of elaborating even further on what we already led them with, you know, we, we presented them with basically a Tide Realm Bible, which I can only imagine, Corn Boy's face when you open that email. And then there's this reams and reams and reams of how much, you know, potential product there could be. But, you know, and I talked to him about that several, almost a full year later. i was like, was that confusing for you guys or encouraging? They were like, it's, it's always encouraging to meet a creator that has a, that knows where they want to go.
00:22:37
Speaker
because we have just as many emails that are kind of like, I would like to design toys. How do I do that? And we were coming from the same place, but we also had, here's the toys we want to design. So so speaking that, before before we hop into the concept of lore, storytelling is something that is clearly in your DNA. ah Yeah. You know, and and and, you know, learning a little bit about you. you know, you spent years making fan films, Spider-Man fan films and, you know, doing some voice acting and things, um you know.
00:23:10
Speaker
What do you take from kind of those experiences into building this world? And and and what kind of gave you that push to to kind of switch directions there? Because it's quite it it's quite a shift.
00:23:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's almost a complete 180 as far as, you know, career paths goes. But what's funny is that they... in the end couldn't have been more related. Toy making is always what I wanted to do first and of course telling stories with toys is that's what we all did. That's half of what we're motivated by when we are interacting with those objects and so Spider-Man was one of my first loves just like Optimus Prime and I got so very, very frustrated with a lot of the things I was seeing the mainstream media do with Spider-Man that frankly one day I think I just woke up and went, I've had it. I'm not doing it. I'm not watching it anymore. i have to do this myself. And I'm really, really tired of seeing one of my favorite individuals in the storytelling industry, Mr. Stan Lee, get kind of put to the back seat when it comes to his ideas. So I'm going to do them to the best of my ability. So I spent three and a half years of my life dedicating a script and a presentation of what that story for me always meant and what it was supposed to be i wanted the most accurate representation of that of that story from start to finish that equated to three three-hour films that um upon reviewing we went back and watched them again with my grandparents not too many months ago and it's funny when you spend enough time away from a project you
00:24:47
Speaker
You know, so maybe some of those rose tinted glasses come off or the ah stress, you know, has been away for so long that you have the opportunity to be more critical and judgmental of it.
00:24:59
Speaker
And I actually couldn't have been, i was more pleased two or three years later looking at them with the end result than it was while we were making them. And you can you can see the craft of the project. It's still, you know, a kid in his early 20s doing something for the first time.
00:25:15
Speaker
But all of us were sitting home was half my family sitting there looking at each other like this really did come out wonderfully for for where it started. And so anyway, that whole process did very much inform what this has turned into when it came to screenplay writing. you know I took a full-blown crash course in all the ins and outs of world building and storytelling, despite the fact that I was working with one that was built for me.
00:25:41
Speaker
In that context, I had so many decisions to make when it came to a cohesive narrative that there's so much problem solving that I did within that that specific sphere. And the fact that the only one that was going to get it done was me.
00:25:54
Speaker
It was every single day, my getting up sometimes at 5 a.m. just because the moon is in the right spot and I need the shot. You know, I'll go out in my onesie and it's probably 20 degrees outside and i look like a crazy person running around skin tight clothes and in the a.m. with cameras set up the middle the street. But You know, mostly it was a testament to dedication and I didn't stop until it was done.
00:26:18
Speaker
And I wouldn't let myself stop until it was done and pretty much put myself through film film school by myself to to tell that story. So what's interesting is that when I came to the end of that and had enough space from that story to kind of examine, huh, OK, so not only did I get to the end of that and decide that I don't hate filmmaking, Which can happen if you get into something real yeah that you're very passionate about and get to the end and be like, why did I ever decide to do that? I've never felt bit that way about something I jumped into to this day. But one of the first things that occurred to me when I was out of the headspace of, okay, so I translated someone else's story to as close perfection as possible.
00:26:56
Speaker
What the heck would I do if I had my own story? Pirates was the first thing that came to mind. i think I kind of took a little bit of a break from from Spidey for a little while and revisit some of those Disney films the next year and went, why is this the only corner on that genre? Why is this the only place where anyone has ever touched on this type of world building?
00:27:17
Speaker
But it was a one-off thing. It well, you know, Pipe Dream, if somebody ever did hand me the money for an actual film budget, yeah, I'd take a stab at a brand new Pirate series. I'll fast forward two and a half years later, and that's work what I'm doing in a far better context. I like making toys so much more than I like making movies. And that's quite a But making toys has been infinitely harder because the stakes are infinitely higher. I did those movies out of sheer passion. I did them for myself.
00:27:45
Speaker
These are for everyone else. These are to make sure that the the toy community has well represented pirate line, hopefully for years to come. And this is, you know, betting a majority of my wife and I's resources on a brand new IP in an unexplored realm, so to speak, and to hopefully have the opportunity to do what I love and have always loved for forever. That's as long as I'm alive, I would like to be doing this for people. And these are that first stab at it. And i couldn't be happier with our our first round, honestly.
00:28:19
Speaker
That's yeah, that's that it it's a great story. and And, you know, I think it is. To a degree, you know i'm I'm not a, Dave has actually has made films in the past. i'm i' um I'm on the other side. I do i do have done a lot of music over the years. And it's it is fun to revisit some of those old projects, like you said, you know with a different head space, with you know years of additional knowledge and you know a different frame of reference to go back and be like,
00:28:51
Speaker
i can't believe I did that. Like I like I'm glad I have that committed to tape or to film and, yeah you know, and and go back and and kind of re-experience it and and learn from it. And I tell people this all the time.
00:29:06
Speaker
There are things that no matter what you do, like for a living, whether it's a retail job, whether it's a food services job, whether it's a a craft project, whether it's a massive undertaking production,
00:29:23
Speaker
There are elements of those processes that will connect to things later in life that you never, like never in a million years would think of whether that's time management, whether it's some sort of organization, whether it's the way that, you know, you interacted with somebody like, like there's always this opportunity to pick up these like manatory resources. yeah Yeah. Yeah. These little tiny life skills that yeah unlock other parts.
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah, precisely. i was 19 when I started that project and I had this much people skills. And so the only reason that you have me ah on here now is is part of that that experience getting in front of people. And, and you know, i was...
00:30:09
Speaker
like I just said, as a teenager directing crowds of sometimes 15 to 20 people at a time. And that was not something that I anticipated doing. And that was all the scenes I had to start with were that, you know, all the intimate, thing you know, the intimate, you know, Peter Parker, Aunt May and Uncle Ben stuff. That was a little bit later. I started with Peter Parker at high school. So that's, tons of my peers in one place that I'm having to try to control as ah that's a peer of their own. So there's a lot of people skills you got to learn in there in order to do that well and not make people hate you by the time you're done. Because at the end of the day, I was still the only 18 year old there that had the mission to to get something done. The rest of them were there to hang out. So it was a little different. Yeah.
00:30:55
Speaker
But there's so many different people that I met and throughout that process, and there's so many people that I've met through this process that have been and equal part blessing. And I would not have had the the wherewithal to accept the help that's been given to me through this process had I not done that one first.
00:31:16
Speaker
Yeah, one of the things, especially with like processes like that, anything with, you know, deep story, deep lore is that the the story is never done. And one of the things that one of the things that stands out immediately is how lore heavy this line feels. Characters have history, rivalries, entire campaigns behind them. How deep does that mythology go and how much world building? You talked about the Bible a little bit earlier. um How much how deep does that go? How much world building is mapped out?
00:31:49
Speaker
We spent the amount of world building that's already baked in. probably should have taken, you know, is several years, but it took several months because we couldn't really put it down. My wife and I, once we decided that the the opportunity was there and we were going to take the chance,
00:32:09
Speaker
We just didn't put it down until it was fully there. So there's enough world building here, frankly, to, you know, we mapped out enough products to the extent that I had characters, six, seven characters at a time per faction. And some of those characters we had already mapped out.
00:32:28
Speaker
who would share tooling between them. And that's something, you know, these these are figures that you're you've not even seen in wave one here. So there's so much baked context for each and every one of these characters that, you know, you could get to the end of like wave six for this first round of the Curseys collection and start your kind of second series of stories and have context that you know is already baked into some of these figures you're seeing now you know you'd have payoffs six seven years in that connect in ways that you wouldn't so the lore is heavy there's a ton there and there's a ton on the surface that you know is relevant now that would still be relevant later
00:33:10
Speaker
um the amount of meetings I have with my production manager and and every now and then I'll have a concept that'll just slip through because I'm talking and he's like that sounds even more incredible than what we're doing right now and I'm like oh right I'm supposed to keep that to myself but so there's a ton of groundwork inside voice yeah there's so much context to what makes this what it is there's so many characters that are already mapped out it would basically be you know okay Wave one's done. Hopefully everything's in people's hands. You hit the button, you know, hey, horseman, here's
Kickstarter Journey and Challenges
00:33:42
Speaker
what's next. Rather than, you know, sitting around waiting that this art that you're looking at right here from our buddy Noah at Edge Comics. That's just a teeny tiny taste of some of those concepts that are in that in our back pocket. A lot of them are very well fully realized. Some of these guys that are just kind of lurking in the shadows here, you know, they have full engineering breakdowns that we have in the background.
00:34:04
Speaker
And now, a word from our sponsors.
00:34:12
Speaker
This segment is brought to you by our friends at Chubsy Wubsy Toys. A traditional mom and pop toy store in Little Falls, New Jersey, Chubsy Wubsy Toys brings you the best new toys from the brands you love without the hassle of pounding the pavement searching for them at larger retail stores.
00:34:28
Speaker
Visit them in person at their brand new home at 101 Newark Pompton Turnpike Suite 1 in Little Falls, New Jersey, or online at chubzywubzy.com.
00:34:41
Speaker
That's
00:34:47
Speaker
And tell them Adventures in Collecting sent you.
00:34:53
Speaker
And now, back to the show. I just love the how deep, like even down to tooling and reuse and all that, like how much, yeah how much thought has been put into it? Because there's a lot of that, like, you know, you see a Kickstarter and it's like, yeah, I haven't really thought about the the sausage part, but like. Yeah.
00:35:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Here's eight characters all with completely different tooling and some have animal legs and some have human legs and it's like, Yeah.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah. It's really, really difficult to start off something that's completely new and have a a manageable amount of brand new tooling right out the gate. You know, that's why you see, especially as the the toy making industry has changed and evolved and had to adapt to certain restrictions, you know, even Hasbro's seen.
00:35:47
Speaker
rising costs in every avenue, even though there's somebody that can start to absorb some of those things, there's a limit to that. So if you want to do ambitious toys, you know you're also going to have some ambitious tooling requirements right out the gate, which is the whole point of a Kickstarter. That's the whole thing that we're getting started is first primary production costs and that that tooling cost which is what makes these guys so detailed and intricate and we we wanted these toys to wear the story since everything was so lore heavy we wanted every single detail on them to be purposeful uh but not so hyper specific that you know you can't really give a lightsaber to just anybody you you could you could you could give spider-man a lightsaber if you want but doesn't
00:36:33
Speaker
doesn't really work so we wanted to have you know an ip that was a blank enough slate that you know does the map that captain death moid have at his hip is that story specific yes it is but it's not inscribed with so much detail there that you're like okay i can never take myself out of the context of what this world is built to be it's always meant to be what you would like it to be the world building is meant to be complementary to that yeah And and, you know collecting action figures versus making action figures are two very, very different lanes. But, you know, a so ah savvy collector understands the concept of reuse and, you know, and and tooling and things like people who have who've been around this stuff long enough, like you can can understand, oh, you know, this figure got made. So that way, the next six.
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah. You don't invest a hundred grand in a set of tooling and then use it one time. It's not a very smart business. Yeah. so yeah And while, you know, there, there are people out there though that, you know, knock some of these companies for, for reuse, you know, it's, it's part of the business and it's yeah part of the way that the process works, yeah but it's part of the survival.
00:37:46
Speaker
Yeah. and And, you know, the the going around of Kickstarter is basically like effectively like getting the community to be your angel investor, you know, yeah and um and it's it's it's a great way to go about it. But, you know, in terms of the process, um what was what was kind of the the biggest maybe hurdle or challenge or earth new thing that you kind of weren't expecting from the process that that you learned so far?
00:38:15
Speaker
I almost feel like it's unfair how few challenges we run into, to be honest. I mean, we're in the middle of the biggest challenge right now, which is crossing that finish line. But at the same time, the community that we've spent a year reaching out to has shown up so thoroughly within this this month of getting this off the ground that...
00:38:36
Speaker
I think maybe the biggest surprise I've run into is just how well it's gone so far. the the simple fact that um that people have that the line has resonated with folks so, so well as is, is really, really encouraging, flattering to a much more superficial extent.
00:39:00
Speaker
But, you know, those are all things that that come from, you know, taking a leap of faith like that. You don't really ever know what to expect. And so seeing that so very, very close, is about 20 grand or so away from that.
00:39:13
Speaker
that base funding goal, which is very, very, very achievable. um Honestly, if everybody in the campaign as is went and grabbed another captain, you'd already be there. So that's that's just how close that is.
00:39:25
Speaker
um I'm trying to think of something that just kind of knocked my socks off in the middle of the process. I think, honestly, the biggest surprise when crafting the three main figures that we have currently was just, you know, i had I had some rudimentary tools when it came to conceptual design. I only had so many things at my disposal to present a finished idea to a company that frankly, you know, they have no interest in, in hyper critiquing or analyzing something that they're commissioned to do. But at the same time, I was fairly intimidated by putting yourself out there and having a concept in front of you.
00:40:03
Speaker
You know, you're putting your heart on a plate for four horsemen. What are they going to think? yep And they took everything in stride. You know, I had blind drawings on notebook paper for them to follow.
00:40:16
Speaker
And that's a testament to a lot of their skill and translating, some of these ideas and then I'd take you know digital sculpts and hand colorize them for the paint master process and in something like Krita on my laptop and our colorist would go in and translate exactly what we were looking for you know it's one thing to have the the roadmap for what you want and then to have specialists come in and translate that in exactly the way that you ah hoped and anticipated, you know, Charybdis was a big, big surprise because he only took one pass like every single time.
00:40:51
Speaker
Once that concept was in the sculptor's hands and we verbalized everything we wanted from him, it was one and done. And the same thing happened with the process. So these guys were kind of begging to be, they were asking to be born. And that's one of those reasons why as an artist, I'm extremely thankful when I look at this um And I don't have a single thing I'd change about these guys. it's not very normal as an artist who go back and meticulize over things for the rest of your life trying to make it perfect. And these are not that. They're exactly what we hoped they would be.
00:41:23
Speaker
the The other thing that's really cool, too, about, you know, seeing this from the outside is... They look and and I mean this as like as like a compliment. They look like they're part of Four Horsemen's world to like like they look like they could in in a far off adventure crossover with something that comes out through, you know Mythic Legions or figure obscura.
00:41:49
Speaker
um They have that certain kind of like Four Horsemen. quality to them you know whether it's in the deco and detail know the kind of structure of them and i think of that part of it too is probably going to be attract very attractive to a specific group of collectors right like i i think there there's something there's something there like we we always talk about um you know with with indie indie toy makers and indie toy designers this like weird concept of of
00:42:23
Speaker
new but familiar and that can mean a lot of different things you know that whether that's you know like i'm familiar with space marines but not these or in this case like i'm familiar with pirates and mythic legions but i've never seen these before and hey wow like that's a venn diagram that i didn't know existed in my head and you know like i i see this kind of thing and it's like oh wow well like geez, I mean, this is, again, like it can fit right into that world.
00:42:55
Speaker
That was part of why they conceptually kind of took to their own overnight. I had only recently come into examining and experiencing Four Horsemen products and two Christmases ago, it was before my wife and I were even married yet, shortly before anyway, she gifted me the figure Secura Jacob Marley.
00:43:16
Speaker
And for anybody who's handled that can probably yeah see where that inspiration came from. And I held that guy in my hand and went, one, i had no idea there were action figures that looked and felt like this. This is what I have had in my head for 15 years of of what I would do or if I if i could create the ideal action figure.
00:43:38
Speaker
didn't know it already existed and came from these guys. You know, of course, ah we brought our own flavor to what that is, but I very literally, quite literally said, if I can't make toys like this, i don't think there's any reason in making them.
00:43:51
Speaker
From the meticulous and purposeful, you know, way of achieving reuse, of've seen Hasbro, you know, use the same body on 18 different skin tight suit, you know, superheroes. And after a while, that really does get,
00:44:06
Speaker
monotonous because it has one paint deco on it and after you've held it the first three times you're kind of over it but when it comes to horseman products you know i have not as many as i wish but i have numerous guys that all use half of the same parts library and it feels like a new toy every single time so i went this is the only sustainable way to produce something this cool and have it this special each and every single time And so we felt that we were in great hands when it came to bringing this idea to them. It was ah no a no-brainer to make sure that this genre was within that sphere. I wasn't interested in these being
00:44:46
Speaker
and just pirate guys. They needed to be something more. They needed to be something very special.
00:44:57
Speaker
So, you know, it's been big for Indie toy lines. You know, we've talked about it. We we always talk about how we're a a when and not if podcast, when it funds, not if it funds.
00:45:08
Speaker
um But, you know, like you talked about, it's it's still a a big kind of like angel investment leap of faith for crowdfunding and original property.
00:45:20
Speaker
What's been the most surprising part of the Kickstarter experience for you? I think having to adapt to the very notion of you know putting yourself out there to that degree means pacing yourself with a project that large you know in sequential steps that make everything sustainable. And Kickstarter can be a little counterintuitive in that regard. of It feels like having to over-promise. As a new creator, you know there's a format to making sure that it stays exciting and fresh, and part of that is making sure that you have a new offering. consistently if not through the beginning of the campaign extending to the end and so going through and making sure that that experience for backers was as fun as possible and yet as realistic as possible budget wise was more of a challenge than we expected because we've led with more product than we anticipated we've spread the tooling out a little further than originally planned
00:46:26
Speaker
And so making sure that that structure was intuitive for backers when they went in day one and could understand everything that was going on. We wanted the whole page layout to be as professional as humanly possible for a brand new creator. And despite the fact that the whole theme is is piracy, we wanted it to be very organized and digestible um and to make sense to people because there's there's nothing more concerning for an angel investor to go in and be really, really excited about the idea and then get into the fine print at the bottom of how all that fulfillment and stuff is going to work.
00:47:03
Speaker
And to to find some of the details a little hazy or a little vague. And we wanted all of that to be extremely transparent, extremely clear and extremely realistic. There's also nothing more confusing as ah as a you know an investor to look at a page and say, oh yeah, you know you'll have these in a few months.
00:47:22
Speaker
That's baloney. That's not how that works. You know, you have to yeah literally create the steel molds from hand from the the folks in China working on that themselves. All these are painted by hand. So it takes a good long investment, a far longer investment of time than it even does money. So projects like these can sometimes take a year to a year and a half to two years to make sure that all your quality control and everything is dialed in properly.
00:47:48
Speaker
to the greatest extent. My initials are QC, so I don't really let up when it comes to that. i love having my weekly meeting with our our production manager because I i get to make his eyes bigger every single time I have a concern that he's like, you know, sometimes we don't talk to people about that concern until they have that problem in their hands. I'm like, no, I'm anticipating that now. We're not going to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in and still have toys with weak wrists and weak hips. We're not going to do that. So those are things that I'm anticipating now and want to make sure that the factory is
00:48:23
Speaker
ready to be irked and annoyed about the 17th time I brought it up. So that's what we're anticipating. So there's a lot of education that I buried myself in before launching because I didn't want backers to be confused what they were looking at. There there should be a way to convey, you know, within the best of your ability, there's certain hurdles that no one can anticipate that you will inevitably run into in the middle of production. But backers need assured of when that happens, how it will be handled.
00:48:53
Speaker
So it's it's interesting, right? We've we've been doing this this show for seven plus years. I think it'll actually be eight years like wow in September. yeah um And you know we we like to say like affectionately that we love all of our guests, like every every guest we've ever had on. But there are some people that like you know when they when they sign off, it's still like a mystery. We're like, what?
00:49:19
Speaker
for Who who really like is this person that we just interviewed? Like, you know, I feel like in the last 48 minutes, I know exactly the type of person you are. And I love that. That's good. That's encouraging. Love that.
00:49:36
Speaker
and And that type of transparency, I think, is is really important. So like kudos to you for for yeah you diving and doing the amount of research you're doing. It's one of those things where like.
00:49:48
Speaker
there's casual collectors, there's collectors that go deep and then there's collectors that kind of transition and they're like, I you know what? The thing that I really want is not out there. I'm going to go and and make it happen. So like, you know, by the time this airs, it'll air on June 1st.
00:50:06
Speaker
You were in your the final week of funding. you' You've escaped the the plateau of that, like, everything from the the first week to the last week where, like, it's just tumbleweeds rolling and like, the credit Kickstarter plateau.
00:50:22
Speaker
Yeah, I wish the tumbleweeds rolling was more literal. It's almost been more comparative to an actual... Voyage on a ship there's so many because backers have the freedom to go in and adjust add take away from whenever they would like so there's very very normal um Ups and downs to what it is that number will constantly just move as it goes as long as you have a healthy campaign you're probably always going to see that but it doesn't make that right any less stressful while you're watching it. You'll hit a new high and then Memorial Day will happen and folks will go back in waver for a little bit and then the last week will come in and and generally, you know, you'll have new folks come in that have the same if not double the pledge that last guy did or that last guy has, you know, gotten over the hangover and decided that he can't afford all the pirates that he was after and come back and adjust it after that point. So there's all kinds of idiosyncrasies of yeah maintaining that
00:51:20
Speaker
Momentum. That's the word I was looking for, which frankly, honestly, is a fantastic segue to what we've been teasing for the beginning of this week, because we've always had kind of ah ah an ace up our sleeve when it came to that.
00:51:32
Speaker
That. um mid-campaign plateau and we didn't lead with any Kickstarter exclusives to begin with because we wanted folks to pledge for as as much as they wanted right out the gate. Let's not make you know any measure of scarcity overly soon, but we have, i think at the very top there, we are teasing in the course of probably the next few days. Tomorrow there will be more details.
00:51:57
Speaker
of what that campaign Kickstarter exclusive will be. And that's something that's going to be available specifically during that last week of the campaign. So for anybody, you know, sitting on the fence that still isn't sure, chances are we're expecting to see you in a week. And we're also expecting folks to be very, very excited about this thing. We wanted to make sure that we had the the perfect, most purposeful concept to throw in at the end of the campaign. We were not interested in it being this kind of, oh gosh, it's slow. Here's something else to buy. no we wanted it to be intentional.
00:52:31
Speaker
And this figure, I'm very, very excited for him. Yeah, yeah. um And it is always interesting how to see how yeah the the different you know makers and designers manage that momentum. yeah Some people just kind of like embrace the collapse that happens in the middle, and it's just likes like, hey, it's no man's land. i'm going to live in this DMZ for the next 30 days, yeah and then in the and the last week you know make this kind of final push. But it it has been thrilling to kind of
00:53:06
Speaker
you know, watch you c chug along here and, and, and like you said, like, you know, manage, manage the waves of the ocean here. But, um, you know, with this being the final week of funding, if there are any folks that are on the fence, um, what, what would you, what would you say to them to, to kind of give them that last little motivate motivational boost over?
Importance of Backers in Kickstarter Success
00:53:26
Speaker
Well, this is something that, um, you ah Here's a a great little addition to that, you know, what's been most surprising about launching a Kickstarter. I can see all of that movement within the campaign. You're able to watch those metrics as it goes on. So while I won't quote any actual numbers, we have a lot of people that have chosen to follow the page and I know are waiting for those last couple days.
00:53:52
Speaker
um probably at least two times the amount of folks that have already pledged. So there's a percentage of that that that will just convert that last those last couple days. And so I'm very, very excited for those people that are already waiting, who I know have the intentions of coming back. But I will say to anybody who's still wondering, still trying to decide how they're feeling, this is it.
00:54:14
Speaker
It's now or never. There's not a a backup format. There's not a different, more... I guess slower paced way to have a Kickstarter like this. There's not a different format to allow things to be funded at It doesn't seem like a more manageable pace is necessary considering how people have ah have shown up already. But there's not some secret pre-order. There's no big bad toy store to come in and save it at the end. It doesn't work like that. This is very much the angel investors that are watching, the angel investors that are already in, and the ones that are just waiting for that last email from Kickstarter. This really is how to make Tide Realm come to be.
00:54:56
Speaker
This is the moment. And there probably won't be something like this ever again, or very soon. i can't imagine anybody attacking something quite to this degree.
00:55:13
Speaker
with It's not a pat on the back to me, it's just the fact that we've established so much infrastructure that the minute wave one is off the ground like that, the minute production goes into play, everything that is on the back burner in the background just becomes that much more likely. All the requests that we get on a daily basis of things that people haven't seen yet that the tooling already doesn't allow for They're ready. They're waiting. There's things that the minute the horsemen can have their hands on, they will.
00:55:42
Speaker
And so we want to provide that for years to come. And that starts with this. The minute that tooling exists, Tide Realm exists, and it's manageable on our part ever after. um if Even if there did need to be a second Kickstarter for something like a Wave 2,
00:55:59
Speaker
everything becomes infinitely more sustainable because you already have existing tooling. You already have an existing fan base and you already have existing product that are a testament to what you're providing. So it's the biggest, most challenging hurdle right now.
00:56:13
Speaker
And anybody looking to get in now seriously couldn't be a better time or ah a cooler investment. And you're something that I, I know I've gone on a little long here, but something that I really appreciate. Not at all. Not not at all. As a,
00:56:27
Speaker
as a and An investor myself, um because I've done a few crowdfunding ah campaigns as a fan, and the HasLab Unicron was one of the first things that I ever saw that was kind of really breaking those boundaries what an action figure Kickstarter could be because that object was unprecedented. You know, you're you're spending in certain people's cases, you know, a mortgage payment on one guy. So that was a whole other conversation. But being part of the process and post campaign, watching that toy come to life and seeing things like check models and test shots and stuff.
00:57:05
Speaker
One of my favorite things was when they they took that big washer dryer unit box that he came in and put it through the testing of, um showed people what it would be like while it was in route. They put it through all this damage control stuff. They dropped it. Yeah. So those are things on yeah that you can only provide if you choose to as a creator. And those are things that you will only see with an indie line like this that is taking you through that step by step. It's a little bit more intimate than, hey, Asperger's got the new pre-order up. This thing's been in a warehouse for a year and now it's time to order it.
00:57:40
Speaker
You know, you actually get to be a part of the creation of this. So this is not so much... It's not even kind of just a pre-order. It's something that you as a first time investor get get to retain and have every right to enjoy that piece of, i created this. you know We may have boxed up this world and crafted it for you, but you as a fan are part of the reason that it exists, period. You're part of the reason Tide Realm exists.
00:58:08
Speaker
is in people's hands to start off with. And that's something that we as collectors don't really get to have very often. You literally get to own a piece of something that is is not just a part of you, but you contributed a part of yourself to it.
00:58:22
Speaker
That's just really, really cool. That's something that I have the honor of giving people, and I can't wait to get to work.
00:58:30
Speaker
Well said.
00:58:34
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. um So, you know, I think the last thing here before we we we we head into our final question is, you know, like Dave said, you know, we are we are a when podcast on an if podcast. And so far we have a nearly perfect record.
00:58:52
Speaker
um I'm not going to name any names in terms of ones that may have come up a little bit short, but right. You know, we have a nearly perfect record when we say that. So our batting average is high.
00:59:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. um When Tide Realm becomes reality, ah what what's what's the way forward?
Expanding Tide Realm into Multimedia
00:59:12
Speaker
um Obviously, we talked about more more waves, we talked about more characters, but any other medium? yeah Are you looking into potentially doing some some comic books, maybe some animation? you know what's what's the big What's the big hairy goal?
00:59:26
Speaker
It would, oh man, I mean the big hairy goal is is for it to stand on its own two legs and in several, that three prong kind of multimedia trick that IPs go for is is, it works for a reason. So you want action figures, you want a video game, you you want probably, you know, the Jerry on top of that conversation is movie. That's stuff that's pretty natural for you know, for my mind to go to in in this scenario, but they're all very aspirational. You have start small and that could be something that, you know, maybe I actually look like a full grown adult by the time I accomplish, but they are all things that we've thought about numerous times. Comic books are tricky because the the comic book industry is rather fickle.
01:00:10
Speaker
um I'm not a big fan of, digital comic books, digital art is one thing, but I want to handle that object. I am not really interested in looking at a screen. I would like to have that trade paperback. And that's something that consumers aren't really very tolerant of anymore. It's all about ease rather than intimacy. And so you kind of have to find a balance of what's going to be the most productive to put your time into. We have had an audio book presentation of the first year's worth of story.
01:00:42
Speaker
live during the campaign and honest to goodness, I had every intention, well, it honestly, it did get recorded, but of having over 30 chapters for the entirety of the campaign and with the workload to manage the actual campaign and make sure that people have actual toys to buy, we had to shrink that vision down just a little bit mid campaign. So there's about 15 or 16 chapters on the YouTube channel for people to listen to. And it's well more than just Quaid droning on about pirates, there's sound effects and music and it's meant to be as much of ah an immersive experience as possible. So we'd love to expand on small ideas like that and keep stuff like that going. Comic book art would be lovely, even if we're mostly telling stories through the box art, you know, that would be a ah very, very good start. Yeah.
01:01:28
Speaker
But we, on a personal note, it's overly ambitious currently, but I think this world would just be phantasmagorical, to use a completely made-up word, in the video game sphere. I think the Tide Realm Isles would translate wonderfully into ah either a first-person game or, you know, there's a lot of kind of battleship-type stuff, which would be cool if you could merge the two into one experience. I have so many cinematic visuals in my head head that these sculpts are already fulfilling that i could I could just see that video game. I could see people.
01:02:01
Speaker
falling in love with that realm because there's so many different places to explore. These three characters, these three captains alone open up three completely different aesthetics that you could spend hours within. I love the Transformer games that let you play with each faction. You could either be yeah Autobot or Decepticon. And so this was something that would that would fit within that very, very well. And this is just the tip of the iceberg for factions within this this realm. There's dozens of of character types within this.
01:02:31
Speaker
I could also see this go in the route of like trading cards, tabletop game type thing. yeah Like, yeah, an was also something we thought about. Yeah. um The again, just that that style of play and, you know, the the the overall aesthetic and everything. i think i can see it kind of, you know, clinging on to something like that as well. There's quite a few quite a few mediums that would be complementary to it. We wanted to lead with the most exciting one first next to a movie. And frankly,
01:03:01
Speaker
There's nothing cooler than something... stuff I love at the end of a Transformer film where you see the little phrase, you know, inspired by Hasbro. I'm like... I love that the toys were first, honestly. yeah I mean, look, we're getting a brand new Masters of the Universe movie right this summer that is in inspired by a bunch of action figures. You know, it's funny you should mention that. I know we haven't gone meticulized over the offering, but if you scroll to the stretch goals... There's something a little special for some of the Masters Universe fans that we've baked into some of our aspirations for this this end of campaign stride. There's a little that sidebar that has all those tabs there. There you go.
01:03:42
Speaker
you a little further up there, it's at the 175K mark.
01:03:51
Speaker
So he'll be above that. Well, yeah. Oh. but we got some visuals of him up above there. Let's see.
01:04:05
Speaker
One, two. Oh. oh Okay. Look at that. There's even more up further. Because ah it it only took within the first three days for us to have the numbers we wanted to to unlock.
01:04:19
Speaker
Excuse me. Good grief. Unlock all the visuals. of all these stretch goals. But up above these guys, there's actually individualized loadouts of that full product.
01:04:32
Speaker
This is just the map of the ah the layout of the stretch goals.
01:04:40
Speaker
yeah As you can see, Quaid is a little long-winded when it comes to his campaign structure here. Wow. No, but all these, but that's that, I mean, that's one of the, one of the really great things here. And we're going to, we're going to give you the opportunity to give the the full plug here at the end. But yeah, there is the guy that you're talking about.
01:04:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. He's, that's so cool. Very familiar, very familiar colorway. Very coincidental color scheme. There's nothing, nothing that possibly could have informed that going in. No, I love the swappable rib cage, too. That's ah that's and cool.
01:05:14
Speaker
It's one of my favorite pieces on that sculpt. It's really easy to get on and off, actually. Very, very cool. It's our but also is rib cage. Yeah, that's awesome. So before we head into the plug here and and run through the campaign, we do have a traditional final question that we ask all of our guests here on the show. um And Dave is going to it's but actually been a little bit since we do. Yes, we've had.
01:05:43
Speaker
Yeah, like like a new guest to ask the original question. So, um Dave, would you like to fulfill your role as this podcast, James Lipton, and and ask our final question?
01:05:55
Speaker
Why, yes, I would. Our final question that we ask all of our guests. What is your strangest and or favorite piece in your collection? It can be one of each or it can be both.
01:06:09
Speaker
Oh, man. that's it That's a tough one. I'm a fairly, I don't know how i describe it, vanilla collector, honestly. I don't have very many oddities.
01:06:22
Speaker
But there's got to be something I can think of. I mean, I was just talking about my that HasLab Unicron, and still to this day, he's one of the my favorite things I own on the planet, which is an interesting interesting adjective there to use in in his case. It was just kind of a world-changing addition because it was something that I had dreamt of since I was small, smaller than I am now, which is saying something.
01:06:48
Speaker
um And so he he just kind of – That's a great answer, though. I mean, that that that piece for a lot of people is, i think, in terms of like the HasLab offering, yeah right, like since HasLab has been a thing, i think there are three pieces that depending on the the collector you and you talk to, there are three answers that tend to be the kind of like the the the Plymouth yeah of.
01:07:18
Speaker
of haz labs and it's either unicron it's either sail barge or it's the sentinel like those those three things are for some collectors you know are are and for for me it's the sail barge i'm looking at mine right now and i smile literally every time i look at it well and that's um that's how you know it's money well spent if you can't get that stupid look off your face every time you look at it no matter how long you've had it that was worth it Yeah.
01:07:49
Speaker
So if Unicron's the answer for that, then it then let Unicron be that answer. yeah its in that This is the only way this was possible. Like it's something you've always wanted. There's never been a way to have it until this.
01:08:04
Speaker
Well, he's unprecedented. this It's so weird to be kind of living my own version of that story. with my own toys. The stakes are exactly the same as they were with that object. You're just not investing in something that you know you can't exactly hide from the wife when it shows up at the door because it's bigger than the door. These these guys are a little more subtle than that.
01:08:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. ah Yeah. Yeah. That sail barge box was pretty large. I was going to say, I think the sail barge was infinitely, you know, probably the same conversation, but that's like it's nine feet long.
01:08:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's one of those things where it again, like I'm i'm looking at it right now and you could see the grin if you're watching this, you could see the dumb grin on my face. But um yeah, it is one of those things where and and Dave, you can attest this, like when new people come over the house, I'm like, unless you want to see the sail barge?
01:09:01
Speaker
As someone who's seen it many times, it's still really cool to look at. well Yeah. Yeah. And I've I've I've not actually ever seen the Unicron in person. I've seen enough pictures of it to be able to describe it in great detail. But yeah, um yeah, i've I've never actually been in the same room as one. I was astonished by once he finally came in after however long that interminable wait was.
01:09:26
Speaker
um There was not a single photo that ever really gave you any conceptual understanding. There was no way to behold the magnitude of that object until all 15 pounds of it is in your hands trying to manipulate it onto the stand. it was...
01:09:45
Speaker
Yeah, that's a day i'll I'll never forget, despite how mediocre it sounds. This is a highlight of your life when you're 90 years old, laying in bed, gasping your last breath. Oh, I still remember when I opened that basketball transformer. It was a big deal.
01:09:59
Speaker
it was a big, big deal. it's It's the Citizen Kane Rosebud moment. ah yeah Instead of a sled, it's a transformer. Yeah, precisely.
01:10:13
Speaker
All right. So with that, let's leave our listeners, our reviewers with a rundown of the campaign.
Call to Action for Kickstarter Support
01:10:20
Speaker
Let's plug this thing. We've got a week to get this over the finish line. um So so quaid where and we will. Where can folks back this? And, you know, we have the visual up here, so we'll we'll do a quick run through the offering.
01:10:36
Speaker
Obviously, what's cool is that when you go to Kickstarter, even if you just type in action figures, this will pop right up. It's one of the first ones you'll grab. So it's not going to be difficult to find if you go to any of our socials being...
01:10:48
Speaker
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. There's a Facebook group even if you're a particularly heavy nerd and want to see my wife and I drop little lore snippets that you don't get anywhere else. So there's a ton of places to go find it. um It's actually really cool. Some of the metrics that I can see within the campaign, it's nice to see.
01:11:08
Speaker
You know, we've gone to Kickstarter for a reason. That platform is primarily what's bringing eyes on it, but you can see where the external references are of the people coming from other pages. And that percentile is really, really heavy, too. So hopefully that just means that our marketing is doing very, very well because people are coming from places like Instagram and Facebook.
01:11:27
Speaker
um But there's there's honestly, it's at this point, it's hard to get away from. If you're looking at it, you're going to have that link in front of you pretty quick. So this is just one more avenue to do that. And I really, really appreciate the platform here, you guys, because it means the world to to share again and to be in the last week when folks are going start seeing that gentle rise until you get to day one and two. And that's probably not going to be so gentle after that point.
01:11:54
Speaker
Yep. Yep, for sure. But ah yeah, so we've got you know three different figures to at the base to choose from, or or all three, right? We've talked about the the design and the articulation and everything. It's it's what people have come to expect from you know your modern action figure. You've got all the different accessories. You've got all the different hands. ah And you know as you can see, you if you're if you're watching this here on YouTube, you can see some some size comparisons like we were talking about before, right? Like these fit in with your other modern action figure collections.
01:12:33
Speaker
um They have the kind of detail and deco that you would expect, again, from a modern action figure line. And yeah, you can you can be part of the process here and ah bring these characters home to your collection. i Yeah. um We will make sure that we put links to all of this too, like in the in the the show notes, in the description. um Make sure we get people direct access to this from from ah from Adventures in Colliding.
01:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's perfect. One of the pieces of feedback that we've gotten from a lot of the people seeing these guys in person at conventions, so our good buddy Terrence St. John, who I met in the Mythic Legion's Cabal, has been repping for us in person at several venues over the last several months. And so the last place people will be able to see these in person is ISHCON this weekend.
01:13:34
Speaker
That's from the 29th, I think, to the 31st. And so they'll be up for two or three days. And one of the pieces of feedback we get all the time is just how exquisite the paintwork is.
01:13:45
Speaker
um And that's very much what we wanted to bring to the table was this dark, deep sea, grimy. oh These figures feel lived in They're not this. They're not a plastic toy. They are a plastic toy, but there's no texture on them. That's this kind of shiny.
01:14:01
Speaker
You can tell that this is fake for lack of a better term. And ah toys that have that, that's not an inherent negative. That's part of what makes them what they are. But we wanted these guys to feel realistic and gritty and war torn. And so all the the finishes are very matte and very weathered. And that has translated so superbly. Our wonderful paint master artist, Eric Miller, did Deathmoid and Charybdis. And then Sherry from Four Horsemen as well. She did.
01:14:31
Speaker
Sorry, he did Death Moid and Morningstar and she did Charybda. She actually practically took it out of Eric's hands. and set This one's mine. because he has so much unique detail you just don't see all that deep sea coral stuff from very many toys so anyway um that premium paint deco is something that we were very very very interested in establishing for this line because it's what makes them feel so premium and lived in and unique um and that realism was everything to us when it came to developing these guys
01:15:04
Speaker
Well, Quaid, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us and to share, you know, your passion and the story behind these. and Um, we, we wish you nothing but the fairest of seas, uh, here, here on out, um, you know to the end. And, uh, and like I said, you know, we'll make sure we put links to this in the show notes in the description. And also if you are listening to this, um,
01:15:28
Speaker
you can visit aicpodcast.com forward slash links. There will be a section on there. we We have a section that we always have on our, on our link tree for, um you know, crowdfunding projects that, you that we're passionate about that, that we love that, you know feature our guests. So we'll make sure that there is a link there too for the entire final week of the, ah of the campaign. And yeah,
01:15:53
Speaker
And yeah, and we and we can't wait to have you back on again when ah when these are all in hand. Absolutely. You'll probably see some maybe ugly crying for sheer joy, but, you know, we'll work our way through that too when we're there.
01:16:10
Speaker
Love that. Love that. um Yeah. Well, I think, Dave, with without ah without any further ado, it's time to time to send us home. So get us out of here.
01:16:22
Speaker
Grab your maps. Grab your compass. set It's time to set sail.
01:16:29
Speaker
Thank you, dear listener, for hanging out with us today. Subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen, and then tell your friends to do it. Thanks also to Joe Azari, the golden voice behind our intro. Our music is Game Boy Horror by the Zombie Dandies.
01:16:42
Speaker
Find more about them both in our show notes. Follow us on social media at AIC underscore podcast on Instagram and Twitter. Stop by and say hi. Show us your toy hauls and share your toy stories. Maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode.
01:17:00
Speaker
Don't try this at home. Voidware prohibited in some assembly required. Each sold separately. Not a flying toy. Consult a physician if your toy run exceeds more than four hours.
01:17:09
Speaker
This has been a non-productive media presentation. Executive producer, Frank Hablaoui. This program and many others like it on the Non-Productive Network is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License. Please share it, but ask before trying to change it or sell it. For more information, visit non-productive.com.