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Yo Joe! A Special Roundtable Discussion with the Hasbro GI Joe Team
498 Plays4 years ago
Yo Joe! This week Erik joins voices from around the GI Joe community to talk at a virtual roundtable event with Emily and Lenny from Hasbro's GI Joe team. Hear about the latest news and developments surround the classified and O-Ring lines and more!
Big thanks to Hasbro and R&CPMK for arranging this interview.
Follow Lenny and Emily on Instagram
Stay up-to-date on the latest from Hasbro @hasbropulse on Instagram.
Follow us @aic_podcast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
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 the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:02
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. And I'm Dave. Welcome to Adventures in Collecting, where we talk toy news, culture, and halls, along with our journeys as collectors.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome back to the Adventures in Collecting podcast.
GI Joe Roundtable and 2022 Toy News
00:00:31
Speaker
What you're about to hear is a special roundtable interview that we were able to do with the GI Joe team. Buckle up, make sure you visit the bathroom before you start playing because you're about to hear two hours, yes, two whole hours with the GI Joe team.
00:00:50
Speaker
featuring a bunch of other really awesome toy blogs, everybody from His Tank and The Toy Insider, Toybook. There's a lot of really great questions, some really great answers, and of course some brand new information about what's to come for the rest of 2022 and even into 2023 and beyond.
00:01:13
Speaker
So with that, uh, let's, let's cut away here to the interview and, uh, and here from Lenny and Emily on the GI Joe team. First of all, hi guys. It's nice to, nice to see and talk to you again.
00:01:29
Speaker
Um, so I have to, my, my brother, Dave, who, who couldn't be on the call today asked me to, uh, prioritize this question for you guys. So, uh, now that, uh, that Sarge is back in the fold, are there plans to bring back any other famous faces like William refrigerator Perry? You know.
00:01:50
Speaker
That seems like a great question for future us to be able to answer. It has been, it's been so much fun to get to start working with Sarge. This contract has been underway for quite a while. So I'm honestly 100% shocked that somehow the news wasn't leaked and that we actually got to have this amazing surprise moment.
00:02:07
Speaker
which was so cool and so kind of unusual for us. But I think that as you know, the line keeps ramping up, there will definitely be more collabs in our future. Exactly who those will be, we can't say, but that, you know, we would obviously be very excited to start welcoming back some of our famous real life Joes back into the fold. Come be classified figures, guys. We're family now.
Potential HasLab Projects and Vehicle Scaling
00:02:30
Speaker
They were all awesome. So, you know,
00:02:32
Speaker
They were all awesome. We're ready to do the Super Bowl shuffle all over again. But can you replicate that with action figures? Because I feel like that's going to be somebody's got to be able to do it, right? Who doesn't want to football mace? You know what I mean? Oh, all right. Fran, you are up next. How's it going, guys?
00:03:01
Speaker
Good to finally see you guys. It's been a while with COVID and all the shutdowns and whatnot. Yeah, we haven't seen this. Hopefully we can get back to conventions soon. Yeah. So my question is about a classified HasLab. When are we going to get to that? The six-inch classified line is the anchor of the brand, I think, right now. What's the possibilities of seeing something like that in the future? Because we all got our wallets ready.
00:03:29
Speaker
Oh, I feel like it would be very dumb of us to say that was something that would be off the table for the future. The whole HasLab experience with the Skystracker was so much fun. And classified is kind of our baby right now, and it is the modern iteration. It is super hot not to pat ourselves on the back or anything. But I think that we are very, very excited about some future potential for a classified HasLab. So I can't say when.
00:03:54
Speaker
but we are politely asking if we can. And I will not hint to what we are asking for, but I don't think anyone will be disappointed. Nice. Very nice. Great job. I mean, some of you may be disappointed. I don't know what's exactly inside your brain, but you know, we're pretty excited about what we're potentially proposing. I want to see a thunder machine because I think that's something that wouldn't see retail and you can throw in maybe dreadnocks that couldn't make it to retail.
00:04:20
Speaker
You know, that's also something like his tank could probably make it to retail. Yeah. I wonder how big would that be six inch scale? Cause we traced out just for like funsies. When we did the sky striker, we were like, do we want to do this in six inch? And Lenny sketched it out and his daughter could comfortably fit inside of the sketch of the six inch scale sky striker. I got to find the cardboard cutout. The cardboard cutout is pretty funny. It's Amelia sitting in there like, Hey.
00:04:46
Speaker
But some other machine probably be about 12 to 16 inches probably. That seems reasonable. And I think that that's one of the keys in thinking about this. All of us, the first thing we think of is could we do a flag? And then we're like, well, that would be like 20 feet long. So, no. But even like doing something like a whale would be, you know. I'll let it be red.
00:05:11
Speaker
Big. Big. It would be big. And so that's one of the kind of push and pulls with figuring out which of these vehicles can we really comfortably scale up. Not to necessarily say it would be a vehicle and not one of the playsets, but I think that there are a lot of really fun things that we will be able to explore in the world of classified HasLabs.
Non-Plastic Packaging and Its Impact
00:05:30
Speaker
And I promise that that is definitely something that we are really excited about being able to bring to the table.
00:05:34
Speaker
I think another tidbit that's kind of fun to think about too, it's like to help read tea leaves and stuff. It's like, what is affordable for people? Like there's a threshold. I think we've seen with some of the Hazlabs and some of it, like even like other companies and some of the items they're doing, like you can just kind of read the room and you see what's too, too expensive. And then I think that takes some things off the table. Unfortunately, like I would love to do Rolling Thunder.
00:05:58
Speaker
Right. Could you imagine? Could you imagine? But yeah, you know, like you start like a pterodrome or something, but it would be like, you know, enormous. You need like a full room for a pterodrome in six inch scale. You could do a pterodrome. You just do one section. And then if you buy 10 sections, you can put it together. Perfect. It's a kid's bed. Yeah. I wonder if we could do like maybe the middle gets like a beanbag chair or something so you can turn it into like a seating piece for your living room.
00:06:29
Speaker
It's incredible. All right, Chris, you're up.
00:06:39
Speaker
Hello, guys. Long time. Long time. Great to see you again. I have, well, first of all, amazing reveals, by the way. I had a blast watching that segment. And you guys are always so fun and just it's such an entertaining watch as well. So I really enjoyed that watching you guys. It's great. Well, I think out of all the brand teams, I think you guys, I don't know, there's just something a bit more
00:07:05
Speaker
more fun that I enjoy watching about you guys. Not to take anything away from anyone else but I love you guys. Anyway, loads of questions so I'll just jump to one that's kind of formulated that's probably quite important for most people watching or you know that will be watching.
00:07:21
Speaker
with the recent reveals of the Marvel Legends or kind of non-plastic packaging. And also knowing that Hasbro are kind of going towards the non-plastic across the, you know, on more of a, you know, larger scale, including GI Joe. I was wondering if we're going to be seeing in the very, like in the near future, that apply to the classified brand and what that might look like for classified, please. And thank you.
00:07:51
Speaker
The short answer is yes, yes it will. So it's going to be rolled out basically across everything at Hasbro, including all of our action brands and our six inch figures. So full transparency, remember how I've been talking about all of these supply chain issues and all of the delays and how sad we are that product is late.
00:08:08
Speaker
We were, we had really, really great intentions for GI Joe to be totally plastic free by fall of this year. Um, and it's because of all of the delays, it's not quite going to happen. Um, so what you're going to see is that some of like, we'll have exclusives that are plastic free that may not have been delayed as much that will still have, you know, uh, the,
00:08:30
Speaker
The Zarana Dusty Crimson Guard wave that came out will be the last mainline wave with plastic packaging. That's something to be helpful. The wave that comes out next will be our introduction to plastic-free. We're really actually pretty excited about this change in packaging because we're looking at it as an opportunity to give a new experience for fans. We're thinking, without a plastic blister, GI Joe's come with so many accessories. How can we really make that into an exciting experience?
00:09:00
Speaker
and we showed it a little bit with the viper 3-pack that we did that was that ecom exclusive and so that was kind of an early iteration of what we're doing for plastic free packaging so what you'll see is instead of having the the classified artwork just on the side with the window that you can see the figure it's going to be full artwork on the front it's going to be beautiful give us an amazing chance to continue kind of
00:09:24
Speaker
showcasing the artistry and diversity that all of this artwork brings to classified series, which is super cool. But then in turn we were like, okay, so what are we going to do inside to really make this a special experience? And so we gave you a little bit of a preview, but inside now each of the boxes will actually come with, Lenny, what are we calling them? Like a footlocker, like a little storage friend that will be actually a box. Can I show them one? Is it one for a figure we've revealed?
00:09:53
Speaker
That's for a character revealed. Yes, that's fine. So like this, sorry, my light is ruining it. That's amazing. It'll be a different color depending on your faction. And then it has, oh, I don't want to give the reveal away the number.
00:10:16
Speaker
but it'll look like that, right? And then inside, it's empty currently, but you'll have all over graphic wrapping paper that has GI Jill classified logos and Cobra prints. And then all your accessories will be in there. So make sure when you do it to unfold, like you're getting a, like a Christmas present.
00:10:35
Speaker
And then what we're going to do is everything that's a PVC part will be packaged within cardboard so that it doesn't warp. It actually might help warp it even more. But we have to find out in time to see how that actually goes. But what I found, it's pretty cool. And what I actually do is with my samples, I throw them in here.
00:10:55
Speaker
And I keep my samples in the little boxes, which is pretty rad. And we even put like a little keypad on there. When you say samples, you mean toy samples, you know what I mean? Yeah, my toy samples. So it's like a nice way to kind of sort your extra stuff.
00:11:11
Speaker
And we've talked about it too, like it kind of creates, I gotta keep on closing the number here. Yeah, you already blew it, it's fine. Yeah, we know what it is, mate. Okay, yeah. So anyways, basically you can set them up and stack them and kind of have like almost like a loading dock kind of like battle area, which I liked about it. And then the color is really cool too. So yeah.
00:11:32
Speaker
Definitely look like. That's amazing. Just kind of attached to that, there was a lot of, I'm sorry, I know this is like kind of a second question, but there was a lot of kind of concern for people that collect, you know, they want to see the figure and be able to kind of make out what is actually, you know, like the best paint apps and all that kind of stuff. Is there any, have you thought about that in any way, shape or form with this particular packaging? Like, is there any, can we expect like a window or a door or anything like that on them?
00:11:59
Speaker
That's a hard one with the six-inch figure. Across the board, we've done a ton of packaging studies to figure out what is going to be the best execution. What we figured out is that regardless of how small, if there is an open window on the front of pack, you can pop their heads off. To us, the worst experience is you going to the store and finding all of our figures now headless because people have gone in and just stolen their heads.
00:12:24
Speaker
So what you're going to have on the box is so they are they're totally closed box, which is something that you'll see across all of the six inch figures as grown out. So this is exactly thanks to talk. So we we don't want to we want to make sure that you're having the best experience possible. So it'll be kind of
00:12:41
Speaker
flat across the board, the only exception that I believe will be transformers on some of their items just because you can't pop their heads off. I know, right? I love being able to say that in an interview. But what you'll see on the front of pack is going to be like a little product render. So you know what the product looks like. And then on the back of pack in scale,
00:13:01
Speaker
we'll show the product and we'll show all of the accessories so that you'll still know exactly what you're getting in the box, what the color is, everything should be okay. We like to think that our paint apps on GI Joe figures are usually pretty good. Of course, if there are ever any problems, you're welcome to reach out to consumer care and we can help to clear those out and make things better and take things back to the factory. Our QC is going to have to go up. Yes. We're going to have to really make sure because
00:13:30
Speaker
We don't want to have to ship people parts. So we want to make sure that the things we ship come out really well. And a lot of that is us working with the vendor or the vendor following through. So I don't know how much we can talk towards that, but I do know that we understand that that's going to become a threshold where we got to operate a little bit. That's great. That's great. I appreciate that. Thank you.
Attracting New Generations to GI Joe
00:13:54
Speaker
And with I know that we haven't asked about this, but what I'm sure one of the the kind of on the I may as well say it now because eventually the questions going to come up even later down the road. Oh ring figures plastic packaging. They have been for 40 years. What are we going to do about it.
00:14:12
Speaker
We're going to do something exciting and different for O-ring packaging for the first time. There's going to be a new packaging execution for that. Once we have models to show you guys, it's going to be really exciting. But again, we're looking at it in terms of what are modern collectors looking for? What additional value proposition can we be giving people to help address some of the
00:14:35
Speaker
you know, complaints that we've been hearing about what the current iteration of the packaging looks like. Um, so stay tuned for more kind of information about that. So we'll essentially be treating that as a, this is, nobody knows about this outside of our team yet, but we'll basically be treating it as a soft reboot of the orang line, um, for modern GI Joe fans, which will be really exciting. It's, you know, a chance to try something new and see how it goes, which as you know, toy people is really like what we're here for. We want to try new things and,
00:15:02
Speaker
Trying to make people happy. And fans generally love change. Oh yeah, no people, toy fans, who collect retro products are really, really huge fans of change. So it's going to be great. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. That's awesome. And to the next person, sorry, I've taken up too much time. James, you are up. And just letting you know, Daniel, you will be after James. Audi, I'm going to actually split this.
00:15:30
Speaker
going towards the future of collectors by looking at kids. We've spoken on some of these calls in the past about the legacy brands, and G.I. Joe being a big one, that is going to require a new generation of fans down the line, namely kids, to keep this going for the future. Snake Eyes line, I know a lot of us liked it, but it didn't necessarily resonate the way we'd hoped, and the movie didn't quite do the box office that folks were looking for.
00:15:59
Speaker
What is Hasbro doing right now to really keep the brand moving and attract new collectors that aren't all of us from this era?
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think that there is, I mean, astute observation, definitely something that we kind of know we need to figure out for the future of the brand. Because in 20 years, who is going to be really excited about what will be the retro of 20 years and who will be the people who will be really nostalgic for the brand? And so that's something that we're kind of looking at it in terms of long-term planning of how do we
00:16:34
Speaker
Reach how do we reach kids these days is it a new animated show in the vein of real american hero is it tick tock clips is it video games is it you know some is it a meta verse of something but trying to figure out how we can.
00:16:50
Speaker
To kind of digress a little bit, I think that one of the beautiful things about GI Joe is we keep reinventing ourselves. It has not been one version for the last 60 years. You know, every 20 years we have a new toy line. There are new, a new like toy iteration. We have new content that comes out. We're not afraid to try new things. And I think that that's one of the beautiful things about this brand. And so in the future, we are really trying to figure out, you know,
00:17:14
Speaker
what makes the most sense for how to appeal to the youth without sounding like an old person. What is going to reach them and what will be a meaningful enough experience to them where when they are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, they look back and they go, oh my God, I loved that version of GI Joe from my childhood.
00:17:36
Speaker
You know, I think to that point, of course, I think that begs the question of brand extension and all that, what will it do to get kids into it and all that. As a designer, I believe in other play patterns besides action figure. But I think currently on G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe classifies are not just for us.
00:17:55
Speaker
When we made GI Joe Classified, a part of it was like, how do you get younger kids to go, I want to buy that roadblock. Who is that guy? I remember at a toy fair two years ago, I was with Fran and Chris and a little kid came over and was like, dad, who is that? And pointing at roadblock. And we're all like, oh man, it's happening. It's happening.
00:18:16
Speaker
and that's what we wanted it to do and i think you're right how do you do brand extensions i get kids to pick up and go like that was my toy when i was a kid but i suspect hopefully we did good enough job where people will get to pick up that roadblock toy that they got that their dad bought them like now when they're like in like twenty what twenty forty two and i got this roadblock toy when i was like five in twenty twenty so i'm hoping the cycle continues because at the end of the day action figures.
00:18:46
Speaker
are action figures. I remember when I was a kid with kind of action figures that always resonated to me and I'm like gi joes are top notch right because the articulation the details the aesthetics all that stuff so hopefully we are continuing that legacy and hopefully we'll you know kids when when I'm old and gray and you know there's uh youngsters making gi jokes like when they're older I have a couple
00:19:07
Speaker
collection of these vintage classified figures. Hopefully that happens again. And then the next designers make the next thing, which is like whatever hologram action figures or whatever by that time. So who knows? Hopefully that answers the question. It's not a visionary's reveal. You've just given us the power of magical light. Stay tuned. Toy for 2023. All right. Thank you.
00:19:35
Speaker
All right, Daniel, you are up, and Matt, you will go after Daniel. First of all, hi, everyone. I just want to second what Christopher said. Your guys' live streams are an absolute delight to watch. Thank you. Your guys' enthusiasm and your chemistry, just enthusiasm for the brand and everything, are really, really top notch. So great job on that. Thank you.
00:19:59
Speaker
We love watching them. A question that's been asked before, but it was earlier in the line. Are we any closer now to troop builders on Hasbro Pulse? Oh, yeah. Pulse really likes us, like without being just super cocky about it. Pulse is really into us. So we are we're actually working on kind of an extended presence for G.I. Joe on Pulse. So stay tuned for kind of what that will look like heading into the new year.
00:20:29
Speaker
But we are we're really excited about some of the stuff that's going to be coming up and we're hoping to kind of continue that expansion in the future. And, you know, when we once we're kind of, you know, we're still a baby line pandemic baby. We've only, you know, this is like what third year that we're going into. It's so hard to keep track. But I would love to get us to the point where we can start doing kind of the Marvel Legends approach of, you know, simple coffin boxes, cheaper troop builders that like, you know,
00:20:55
Speaker
maybe one accessory, one dude, but that people can just buy out the wazoo, which is, I don't know if you guys have seen some of the collections of like alley vipers and bats that are going on right now, but they are incredible. And we hear you and your excitement for troop builders, and we definitely share that excitement on the team. So I think that 2023 is going to be a really good year. Great, thanks so much. Without giving too much away.
00:21:24
Speaker
It looks like it's me next. I will third, everyone. It was a great presentation. Kudos to the Sergeant Slaughter. Forgive me if this has already been asked. Please. Because I might have missed one or two questions. But on Sergeant Slaughter, that was such a huge hit for me. I'm a giant wrestling fan anyway. And so I feel like there's so much crossover between those markets just by their own.
00:21:52
Speaker
the biggest challenge in developing that figure, even just kind of bringing it to the classified line in general, because he's such a fan favorite. And looking at the landscape of like WWE and AEW, is there someone you have on your dream list you'd love to bring to this line? Yeah, across the- I just went for one. Oh, did you? Oh my God, it was incredible.
00:22:18
Speaker
Sorry, sorry. No, no, no. Is there someone that's on that dream that you'd love to bring into figure form in that life? So I don't know all the character's names. My buddies took me. I like, I like, I don't follow wrestling as much as I used to in like the attitude era. Cause
Designing Sergeant Slaughter and Creative Insights
00:22:30
Speaker
I was like in college time. So like, you know, stone cold and all that, but, uh, the dinosaur man was incredible. I'm just going to say, so good.
00:22:41
Speaker
But yeah, sorry, that guy was awesome. And I just love the intensity of it. Sorry, I got excited because AEW, I'm a new fan. Yes, awesome. Yes, I am all about AEW now. The hardest part from a design standpoint was getting him right. There are other slaughters out there, but there are no real American slaughters out there. So we wanted to make the real American slaughter.
00:23:07
Speaker
And if you notice in the design, I tried to make him feel like he was coming out of the cartoon. I wanted him to, you know, I mentioned like he was like, you guys are eating bomb bonds and playing video games. That episode, he comes walking in and this beats the crap at everybody and like everybody doing pushups because they're afraid of him. That's what we were trying to do with him. The hard part about that was was finding a reference for his face because he's an older gentleman now. And back then,
00:23:37
Speaker
when picture fidelity, I was trying to find pictures of them, it was so hard and then it was him iterated into a cartoon. So you'll notice in the sculpt it's going to be like him younger cartoonized but classified real, if that makes sense. So he's still got his jaw, he's
00:23:59
Speaker
I think we nailed it. Tony loves it, which makes me feel really good about it. Cause I did go back and forth on that sculpting, but I drew his face like a lot. Like spent days, my wife is like, stop drawing that man's face. Like I gotta go.
00:24:15
Speaker
There's his drawings plastered all over your house. It's like a forensics. Yeah. But I think we got it right. And Corey, I forget who he used as a sculptor to work on it, but the sculptor did a really good job. And I think from a design standpoint, it's like getting his likeness right. And then what he what he should come with too. I think he comes with some fun stuff. You'll find that his price points really good too. And accessories are
00:24:43
Speaker
The first time I saw his, his special accessory, I went, Oh my God, this is adorable. Which is not like exactly the reaction you want for a GI Joe, but it's pretty good for me. But it's, it's there because it's, I remember the commercial as a kid and being told to buy GI Joe is by this awesome wrestler dudes calling me a maggot. And for some reason I'm like, yeah, yeah, I need to go get them. Yeah. Mom, dad, we go to a store now. So yeah, it's a nod to that. Um, but I think from a design standpoint, that was the hardest, uh, Emily from the marketing standpoint, anything you think?
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah. I, Sarge is so sweet and he, I truly was terrified that he was this like larger than life, angry, like angry dude who was going to come out and scream at me. Oh my God. He's so sweet guys. Um, so he has just been so lovely to work with and he is so, so positive about GI Joe and so excited about the brand and so excited to be back. And so like that kind of level of.
00:25:39
Speaker
Enthusiasm is, I mean, it's really infectious for the rest of us because, you know, if somebody else is excited and they're like the person you're making into an action figure, which like, holy shit, that's so cool, is kind of magical. And so you will, you are not, that video that you saw of Sarge is not the last that you will see of Sarge. So we are.
00:25:56
Speaker
Exciting things are our foot. Awesome. Thanks guys. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, and the, in case anybody's curious, one of the secrets of our live stream success is that we like each other in real life and we don't bother to write scripts. So we're just winging that entire thing. I'm not sure I should have admitted that, but like that's kind of it.
00:26:17
Speaker
What was the energy drink? The drink and it was a unicorn. The cotton unicorn flavor, cotton candy flavor. It was like... It tasted like unicorn blood. Yeah. That's the other secret. Energy drinks and a very, very blank run of show script. Yeah. Oh, and Whitney just jumped on. So I'm glad she missed that comment. Great. She missed the unicorn blood. Keep going, guys. I just said it out loud again.
00:26:45
Speaker
Oh, all right. Brett, you are up. All right. I'll also reiterate. That was a great live stream.
Repaints and Exclusive Releases
00:26:51
Speaker
And now we know what the secret is to get our videos pumping as well that drink energy drinks. And we'll just leave it at that. So the first half of the reveals was a lot of repaints.
00:27:06
Speaker
which is great because it's an opportunity to maybe get figures that we missed and all that. When deciding what you're going to do is repaint, what considerations do you all take in to figure that out? I mean, the supply chain issues right now, part of it? Is it how quick stuff sells? What are the factors?
00:27:26
Speaker
You want me to put a marketing spin on it first and then you can talk from a design perspective? Yes. Yes, kind of to all of those things. One of the things that I will put out here in the universe first is, remember that really cool O-ring line that existed in 1982? Remember how many of those were redecos because guys would go out on sub teams and get fancy new outfits?
00:27:48
Speaker
So basically we are kind of porting that mindset over into classified. And so for us, Lenny will probably talk about this more, but a lot of it comes from storytelling. So what makes sense in terms of the sub teams that we are currently using in product? Who do we feel can kind of be put into those new outfits for their special missions? And so a lot of that is, you know,
00:28:10
Speaker
There are considerations other than just, what stories do we want to tell? And that is, OK, for these figure molds, when was the last time we used them? What is the grace period between them that we need in order to make the alterations for the new versions of the figures? And how does that factor into the supply chain? So that is a piece of it. But when we're working on creating the characters, it is, to me, it's predominantly story-driven. Please, Lenny from Design.
00:28:36
Speaker
Yes, it is story-driven. However, there is also constraints from tooling usage standpoint. So let's take who came out recently in type. So the COVID troopers that we called officers on accident. We had those available from a tooling standpoint. And if you guys have noticed, the line is very young. Marvel Legends has 12 years of tools.
00:29:04
Speaker
hundreds upon hundreds of action figures they could pull from to recolor on our line we have so how many do we have out now 50 so we have 50 but some a lot of them a lot of them reuse each other right so if you notice in the supply chain issues a lot of them reuse each other
00:29:21
Speaker
So if one is being used, you can't make the next one because the way the lines work of making the toy. So that is contributing to the delays as well. So if I go and redecor somebody who has to get made into a main line or have to use the legs of somebody to make somebody else, it's going to cause a crazy jam up. So yes, 100% story. We could do story every time. I come from Transformers where we
00:29:45
Speaker
We basically did programs on everything for Target, Walmart, and there's a little mini story involved. We're going to do that here. We're going to make new stories. We're going to pull stories from back in the day. That's where Tiger Force is. We're going to do other things coming in the future. Another big practical thing is what do I got available to use?
00:30:05
Speaker
I was not going to upset the fans that I gave them 10 million versions of the same character. So sometimes you get a little bit of a rock in a hard place. But then, like you said, it's an opportunity for people to get a figure that didn't come out. It means that they couldn't get the first time. It may not be the exact color way that the other one was or offering, but it's got the vibe of it. So it's it's a balance. It's a balance. I wish I personally wish I could do every every single figure brand new. If it was if it was Lenny, bro.
00:30:35
Speaker
Lenny bro would do every figure brand new even even tiger force versions of but things cost money We only have a certain amount of resource and budget to do it. So I have to be grown up and you know budgeted And to reiterate those are going to be officer figures Lenny oops
00:30:57
Speaker
They are your officers and we are excited about them. Yeah, we are. I think that they're fabulous, but I agree that all of the, it's more storytelling, but there's, you should see the back end schematics we're doing where it's like, all right, we need this dude's boots to go over here so that we can do this one. And okay, if we kind of move the dates around on this, how does that ultimately
00:31:18
Speaker
impact everything. We refer to ourselves as the little brand that could, but that's one of the ways that we're able to do what we can, which is pretty fabulous. It is building up our library. I wish we can go as fast as people would like it to go, but it's just the way we have to do it right. Otherwise, it'll crash and it will burn. Yeah. Is that aggressive for this meeting? I didn't mean it that way. That's fine. We've said worse things. Hey, okay. Yeah, it's true.
00:31:50
Speaker
Well, Scott, your turn. Alright, hey everybody, Scott is only here with Toy Wizard. Glad to see everybody. Emily, you're on GI Joe now. Does that mean you're not going to come out to power morphicon or are you still going to make an appearance?
00:32:07
Speaker
Hey, Power Morphicon sounds like fun. Send me some info. I could always be down for a fun trip. Awesome. I know you guys wanted to talk about what you revealed, and you've been derailed a little bit by everybody else's questions, but I'm going to try to keep us on track. You've said several times the special accessory for Sergeant Slaughter, and he's holding such a wonderful nice belt on his shoulders.
00:32:33
Speaker
I would just have to assume we're going to get something shiny in that box, but we're not going to say.
00:32:41
Speaker
Can we go over the repaints exclusively to where they're going to be released at? Tiger Force Duke, I'm assuming that's Target for Cobra Island, Tiger Force, Python Patrol. Zartan and Storm Shadow, those are going to be the retro cards, so that's going to be another Walmart special release.
00:33:04
Speaker
That leaves our Renegade version, Snake Eyes, is a fan retailer to be everybody gets that Snake Eyes? I may as well just say it. He's actually mainline, so he'll be available everywhere. Okay, there we go. Awesome. I thought it was interesting that we got that version of Snake Eyes when the Commando version could have been such an easy repaint, Lenny.
00:33:29
Speaker
You know, no, it couldn't actually because parts availability plus. Well, that's that's a great thing you brought up. I never thought of that head is brand. I wouldn't use the commando snake eyes head for that. If you look at it, there's some subtle details that are really different. And then.
00:33:47
Speaker
He's actually, everybody thinks, I remember my friends where it was called rock climbing. He's actually ninja force. So he's got a lot of like ninja details on him that I want to make. So we have kind of, we kind of a policy where it's like, if you can't make it right, don't make it because I want to make things from the source that are as accurate to what they're trying to emulate as possible. And that even goes for things that are brand new and novel that haven't even been in line yet. Like if it's like,
00:34:16
Speaker
I don't know, we're gonna make up character, new character. New character has to be done right. You know, even if it's a partial, right? Like you gotta get just, the story has to come. So yeah, I wanted to make, I wanted, that was my snake eyes. When I was a kid, that was my first snake eyes. Like- It's a really good one. It was the first one to give us all black snake eyes. And at the time for me, it really threw like, what are you doing? Why are you making them like this? And after a while, like, nah, he's cool.
00:34:45
Speaker
And I remember being on the stoop in my parents' house in Staten Island. The stoop, that's right. I call it a stoop. And this rock climbing with him, again, I thought it was rock climbing snake eyes. And I remember just stopping. GI Joe's, I think, had this effect on all of us. You would stop and just look at him and just look at all the details and marvel at how cool this is. And somebody made this thing. And he was one of them that just really got me pumped. And don't get me wrong.
00:35:11
Speaker
I have looked at how to do that. I've done iterations on how to do that figure already, because I mean, these are my snake eyes. But ultimately, I scrapped it. I was like, I can't do this yet. We got to do it right. So, yes. And I didn't mean to be blunt in the beginning, but it was like, no, I want the right parts. I was coming. I would assume we would have gotten a new head sculpt for that, just as when this guy's time comes along,
00:35:40
Speaker
We'll get this stuff off his chest, which would be really cool. What about Sergeant Slaughter? What's the idea for deployment on him? How are we going to get Sergeant Slaughter? That one is still a secret. I mean, it doesn't really matter, right? I need to double check on that one, but I believe it's Fan Channel.
00:36:04
Speaker
Fan channel for Sardis Live. I think it's fan channel. So it'll be fan channel and Pulse. There's a chance that it's also Amazon, but don't quote me on that one yet. I would hope not unless we got some supply chains taken care of. And there is, there will be plenty of them. And then the Bloomin' in Just Two Pack is an Amazon exclusive.
00:36:24
Speaker
Hmm. That was not on my list. How did I not write that down? That's a really good version of Blue Ninjas, especially with the heads that gives us everyone has to buy two right off the bat. Sure do. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Some of us even more so when you give us a troop builder that is actually another troop builder with the Blue Ninja two pack. Yeah. And I think that we were
00:36:52
Speaker
We were, I won't give away the game, but we were like a little bit worried when we did our troop builder three pack. We were like, Oh my God, this is really expensive. Are people actually going to be excited about this? And I think we saw it sold out in 25 minutes, which is incredible. Even, I mean, like Crockmaster and Fiona sold out in like six minutes, but that's like phenomenal for us. But it's, so it's really cool to see kind of a positive fan reaction to doing those multi-packs. And I think is further encouragement for us to continue that in the future.
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah, you can keep throwing troop builders at us all day long, and we will never stop buying multiples, like you said, of alley vipers and bats. There's no limit for how many of those we can have in our collections. Would you say there's a threshold within a year? Because when I'm planning, it's a question for you guys. There are a threshold of troop builders within a year, right? Because I'm like, there is no threshold, Lenny. There you go. There's your answer.
00:37:48
Speaker
I would say the collector's biggest issue is the fact that we can't buy enough of True Builders.
00:37:56
Speaker
I myself have one single bat. I don't have an alley viper at all, and I have a single bat. He just has his regular yellow version bat. We don't have the orange bat or the red bat or our fire bat or our jungle camo bat. We can never have enough bats, alley vipers, troopers. It just goes down the line. There is no limit to those that we could buy.
00:38:20
Speaker
We are we are cognizant of the fact that fans do tend to buy more troop builders than maybe like a single like you may only need one Serana you may want like five alley vipers. And so we are going to be working with pulse in particular in the future.
00:38:35
Speaker
to see if we can start raising some of those purchase limits, especially on Pulse exclusive items. Because if it's the only place that you can get a troop builder, we want to make sure that people can actually troop build with them. That's really important to us. And also we've seen some of the comments about bats and alley vipers still being hard to find or people seeing like lone gung hos that are places. We promise that bats and alley vipers have been steadily shipping out since December. So the
00:39:01
Speaker
The odds are if you can't find them, somebody has already bought them at your store, which is wild. But I think that every time we release figures, it's further incentive for retailers to continue upping their order quantities. That's what we're seeing steadily year over year. People are ordering more and more of these to make sure that we can fill that fan demand, which is awesome. It's exactly where you want to be like, oh, people want more of these? Awesome. Let's make more.
00:39:29
Speaker
I was going to say very much. I appreciate it. And of course, thank you for doing the roundtable, too. We really enjoy having these times to have one on one talk with you. Of course. Eric, you had something
Supply Chain Solutions and Design Process
00:39:42
Speaker
in.
00:39:42
Speaker
Sorry, I was just going to say to answer that your question, like I think troop builders, like if you look at it in terms of like commodities, right? Like if you're if you're going to shop, if you're going to a grocery store and you're and you want tacos for dinner, chances are you already have taco shells at home. Like you're just going out to get like the like the meat, the cheese.
00:40:04
Speaker
Like if you if you make pulse a destination and I see James dropped a Comment in the in the chat like if you make pulse the destination where it's like we will always have army builders in stock there are no amount that you could know too much like there's not too many that you can release in one year because as People can afford more, you know, but everyone has different budgets. They could always use pulses that destination where it's like, you know what? I
00:40:30
Speaker
this month i have enough to grab two more cobra troopers and i have enough to grab two more alley vipers and you know that just like you know taco shells you can go and get them they're always going to be there whereas the the kind of like single use characters you know for the lack of a better term uh you know because otherwise if you load up on on these army builders at retail
00:40:52
Speaker
it's gonna clog eventually on clog pegs send send a bad message and you'll prevent some of those other characters from getting out there but you know if pulse loves you guys so much just
00:41:04
Speaker
That's actually a really interesting idea. And one of the things that I don't know if we've talked about at all yet is that we are, GI Joe, because we're an owned and operated property, we sometimes get to be test and learn brands to kind of see how things go. And so one of the things that we are doing as a test and learn is as of the products that should have been released on 8.1.22, but now are slightly delayed.
00:41:26
Speaker
we are moving to a solids only brand. So remember how I was talking about when stores were getting assortment packs and they had alley vipers and bats and one gung-ho and the way that you knew that there would been figures in the store was because there was a gung-ho sitting on that peg looking for a new home. So that won't be a thing anymore.
00:41:44
Speaker
So all of the figures will be solid packed in one box of just those figures. So there will basically be dedicated pegs at retail for each of those figures and boxes, which I think it'll be something exciting. It'll be something new. On mainline, that's going to roll out in 2023. And then exclusives, that's already started to happen. So for the entire year,
00:42:06
Speaker
for 22. That Tiger Force wave that's coming out, those are only available in solids. All of the Walmart retro cardbacks only available in solids. We're trying it out. Retailers seem excited about it, but what that also means is when we've been manufacturing both the assortments and the solids, you have to divide your manufacturing time up for those. Traditionally, what happens is the assortments go to brick and mortar stores and the solid packs go for Ecom. It's easier to fulfill pre-orders if all you have to do is pull
00:42:36
Speaker
one out of whatever box instead of sorting through to figure out, oh no, where are all the gung-ho's that we need? And so what we're hoping is that this will also kind of, because we've seen in the past, we've done pre-orders on items, not necessarily just on GI Joe, but across all the brands where sometimes you'll have figures hit store before your pre-orders are fulfilled. And that's an assortment versus solids kind of a thing. So now we'll be able to hopefully
00:43:05
Speaker
you'll see things hitting brick and mortar and pre-orders fulfilled closer to the same time, which is, I mean, happy for everybody. We all want things to be a little bit more easy. That's a terrible way to phrase it, but we're hoping that that will help as well. We've been living through the 2020s. We need things to be easier. Yeah, I really do. And now, a word from our sponsors.
00:43:32
Speaker
And now back to the show. So one of the things that I thought was really interesting in the livestream was when you guys were talking about the Crimson Guard and the fact that you kind of made that late stage change to the scabbard and the fact that it could be ported into the hip as well as the backpack.
00:43:52
Speaker
Um, and you mentioned that you guys make changes throughout the design process, you know, as, as you kind of get to play with things. So what I was curious, cause it seems like that one came like really late in the design process that the way that you were discussing it. Um, are there any other big changes to like figures that we either have already or figures that have been announced where like you got one of those EPs and you realize like, Oh, it would be so cool if we could do this. And you know, like how, how far along in the process, like the latest.
00:44:21
Speaker
That that you guys have had to make a change like that. Um, I'm thinking
00:44:27
Speaker
I mean, we've made color changes to some figures after they've been released. I would say most figures at EP get color changes because of our process. We actually are all digital now. So most of our figures are digitally painted and then we will see the product painted from the factory. And that's the EP the first time I see the plastic with colorant in it. So that's a back and forth. So I'll have like dummies
00:44:53
Speaker
of like, I don't know if the blue ninjas until the color is right. And it's like, you go back and forth until you get the color right. And it's like mixing pigments. Is there enough color in the plastic? Is it the right shade of red? So forth and so on. And we usually get like two to three rounds, four rounds if we're really lucky, but that's pushing it. And my PMs will kill me.
00:45:20
Speaker
If I run it late, but most of the time the changes will happen at like the last stage of sculpting. So normally what happens with the GI Joe is I present to the team. I go, here's the new design for the Crimson Guard. And I show them all the stuff that's going to come with and like a cool 2D illustration. And then from there, team gives me sign off.
00:45:41
Speaker
emily and marketers and everyone's like oh good job okay they say no it's terrible change that i do and then we said that to you no you never do um so then i'm doing pretty good baton kind of thousand i think anyways um we uh then from there i create inputs so basically a schematic the schematic drawing but then i work with my engineer and cori my sculptor
00:46:03
Speaker
we sit down and we talk about how many molds we think the figure is going to be, what needs to go in each mold. We're pretty exact on GI Joe. Again, we're the little brand that could, so we're really mindful of all the money we spend and all that and what we're allotted for the year. I'm pretty exact as to what I wanted to be going into the sculpting process, but then during the sculpting process,
00:46:27
Speaker
We may see something like, say we put a holster on like a chest of a character, on like a harness, and we find that it's hindering the articulation or posability, we'll move it because that's not going to work. Because in theory, 2D design, even schematic, I draw things pretty much like it's going to look when it's a product, like I'm very old school that way.
00:46:50
Speaker
But there's things you can't account for like plastic thickness might make that holster way thicker than I thought it was going to be. So then we'll have to move things around. So in the case of Crimson Guard, I was like,
00:47:01
Speaker
we were looking at it and we're like, what if we could put it on his hip? And I remember when we first tried to put on his hip, there wasn't enough wall thickness to make the peg long enough to actually hold tolerance so it would actually stay on. So if you notice on his hip, almost like more material, like it's a batted leather is where it gets plugged into just to kind of hide it a little bit more.
00:47:23
Speaker
But mostly changes like that will happen at sculpture because Corey and I do not like to make those changes when it's been ported over to the factory because it could cause some other issues or aesthetic issues could happen too. Things could get warped and it might be too late for us to change it before it goes to actually getting casted and molded.
00:47:47
Speaker
I would say the last change of sculpt is where a big functionality change will happen, but we do work with our partners in Hong Kong, in China to make minor tweaks from a, say an arm isn't articulating all the way, we'll cut some meat out and stuff like that to make things work. So if it's not aesthetically going to hurt the product, we'll do that with Hong Kong and the vendor.
00:48:11
Speaker
If it is going to hurt aesthetic of the product, we make sure that gets done by us. Just because we're going to be, we're a little closer to it. And we know aesthetically what it has to be. So it has to be done by us. But if it has to be something that's more functionality and you wouldn't notice it, we work with them on that side. And again, we're on this thing until it goes into a box.
00:48:35
Speaker
You know, it's changes can happen pretty late, but for the most part, the Crimson Guard that happened at sculpture phase. Hopefully I didn't rant too much, but no, I think that's that's fascinating. I think one of the things that I think most collectors don't realize is how many steps are from like, you know,
00:48:54
Speaker
where the product actually comes out of your brain onto paper, and then the next step, and the next step. I would love, I don't know if you guys are allowed to, but it would be awesome if you could post one of those exploded schematic views of the figures, just to kind of show this is the kind of stuff that goes into the thing that is now on your shelf. I would love to see that. I think we can. I know the Transformers team's been posting stuff up, and we're pretty, on GI Joe, we do, I literally have drawn every single GI Joe that's out to date.
00:49:24
Speaker
um it's kind of why i love the job like this is like i'm in heaven like this is like what i like i wanted to do this ever since i'm a little kid i've been doing it since i'm a little kid right so um i would think it would be cool i wonder if we can because some of that has trade secrets on it would probably have to strip it of call outs and stuff but for you guys to see what a mechanic it's it's kind of like a mechanical drawing really it's like i show the views
00:49:48
Speaker
And we try to do it as verbatim as possible as what's going to happen in the final product. Now, 2D drawings may look more pleasing than a 3D sculpture. So at 3D sculpture, that's when Corey and I go back and forth and I'm like, dude, man, we got to change this.
00:50:05
Speaker
Wow, what was I thinking? We have to overlay on top of it and then be like, maybe do it like this instead. So I think we can. It's just a matter of what our rules are. But I know the Transformers team has been putting stuff up, which is pretty cool. Lenny, let's work on this. And remember how we've been hyping Yo-Yo June for like four months? Maybe we can do something for Yo-Yo June. Maybe show the Crimson Garden. Oh, that'd be fun. Cool. Thanks, guys. Yeah.
00:50:34
Speaker
All right, Fran, you're up. Oh, I was wondering if the brand team had a chance to check out GI Joe March Madness on his tank. I will be honest. I have picked up a second brand recently, and so I have not had a chance to check out his tank. How is March Madness doing? I'm going to go look right now. Yeah, we ran like a bracket, just like the NCAA tournament style, and we had the fan vote. Amazing. There it is.
00:51:04
Speaker
How fun classified series most wanted. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just, you know, some fan feedback, you know, everyone wants their, once their figures made, you know, everyone has their favorites. Something to take a look at. A suggestion for a tool that you already have. You can do the dreadnought ram cycle because you guys already have that.
00:51:30
Speaker
Oh, that'd be fun. Repaint people would love that. I know people are looking for more vehicles in the line. No, I know it's probably be a lot easier to put out smaller stuff, you know, like even Zartan swamp scare, you know, stuff like that, or like the old, you know, the old shooting ranges and sandbag bases, stuff like that.
00:51:53
Speaker
you know, it will help you build out dioramas for pictures online too. And you set up stuff wherever you are in your house, you know, depending on what level of collecting you're at. And it's so exciting when we see, you know, when people are passionate enough about the line where they're saying, you know, these are the characters that we want to see. And I always want to say like, I 100% hear you. And I know that there are like OG characters that we have not yet gotten to, but we're not going to blow all of them in the first year, guys. Then what would you come back for?
00:52:21
Speaker
So we are kind of strategically piecing out a lot of those really highly desired characters. And again, I think that you will be very pleased by some of the things that will be coming out and I mean, for the rest of this year and for 2023 in terms of things that we'll be able to execute on. And then I mean, God knows what we're gonna do. We're just starting to plan 24 in terms of like, what stories are we going to be telling for sub teams and where do we want classified series to go?
00:52:48
Speaker
Because we really kind of look at classified series as kind of its own little GI Joe canon universe, where we're trying to tell the story with toys and we're trying to give everybody the best experience that we possibly can because so much of GI Joe is story driven. And we think it really does help with those dioramas to be able to have the accessory pieces and have stories that tie together in ways that make for compelling shelf displays, compelling photos, really cool stuff that people can do.
00:53:18
Speaker
Thanks. Cool. Thank you. Great. Chris, your turn.
00:53:28
Speaker
Hi. Yes, another question. Sorry, I'm multitasking. It's terrible. That's okay. We're not offended. We do all the time. I'm still looking at the March Madness poll, so. Okay, yeah. My second question was about Tiger Force and the Python Patrol. And obviously, the Cobra Island theme had a kind of
00:53:52
Speaker
it had a period of time is what i'm getting at and then it switched to tiger force and python patrol obviously i'm a huge tiger force fan and python patrol really i just love ridiculous decos clearly but i was wondering if there was a similar
00:54:10
Speaker
are you going to be doing a similar time period is what I'm getting at? Because I'm aware that there are a lot of really awesome characters that you could do with Tiger Force. And I don't want to get to the end of this theme and not have like, you know, lifeline and tripwire and roadblock again. And, you know, all those characters and also hit, run, tunnel wrap, blizzard, sneak peek from the European exclusive, which I know you're a fan of Lenny considering you did out back first. That was amazing.
00:54:38
Speaker
So I was just wondering if is it likely that we're going to get a cut-off point and then a change of theme soon, or are we going to get an opportunity to see the majority of these characters as what I'm getting at?
00:54:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's that's a very valid question. So the way that we've been kind of looking at it is retailer. We're, we're giving retailers ownable stories right so that you know, you know that target is currently the home of Tiger force and Python patrol, you know that Walmart is currently the home for those
00:55:09
Speaker
gigantic oversized retro card back figures, which are so cool. And so we will full disclosure, remember when plastic free, we will only be able to do those giant retro card backs for this year. So this will be the only year of those figures, there will be
00:55:26
Speaker
Spoiler alert, eight of them total. After that, we can't do that anymore. That's really one of the executions that we are being forced to retire because we just don't think that it will be as compelling plastic free because it's not going to be that cool retro vibe when you're holding it in your hands.
00:55:45
Speaker
That being said, we will be transitioning Walmart to a new kind of sub-team story. The way that we're thinking about it, so Cobra Island lasted for two years. We could at least get two years out of Tiger Force and Python Patrol. We'll touch base with retailers to see if they're interested in continuing the story, having a new story start up. But I think that after that time period, we certainly wouldn't
00:56:07
Speaker
exclude the opportunity to do like one-offs of additional tiger force or python patrol figures that may pop up at target may pop up at other places so to us like that certainly isn't off the table because we want to be able to continue those stories with things we may have missed and then you know we could do anniversaries of them in the future there's there's a long and exciting future for classified that will let us run through a lot of these figures which will be really fun.
00:56:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think you can draft off of Transformers a little bit where like the exclusive doesn't always live there. It'll live there for a period of time and then you'll find another you'll find somebody else who belongs in that sub team or in that story arc that had done the retailer just because we have to refresh for the retailer, right? We have to get them excited and what what can they excite the their
00:56:55
Speaker
their consumers with right so it's like tiger force can't live there forever but we still gotta do like life lifeline roadblock i gotta get to everybody um so and then we have mold for some of the other characters that were in tiger force that we haven't gotten to yet which will come later so it's like you know like you will see them other places
00:57:14
Speaker
Attached to that, it's not another question, it's within it basically. Is it possible to see Tiger Force appear in the standard line rather than as a theme? Is that a possibility going forward? That's what we're saying. I don't think that we're discounting any possibilities in the future, but I think that that would probably be a little bit further down the line, but maybe we do a main line wave of Tiger Force in a couple of years. Who knows exactly what that is going to look like
00:57:45
Speaker
Like redecos, I always want them to be kind of, I always want them to be compelling. Like I know as a kid and as a collector, I'm always like, I want it to be more sometimes. So I try to put a head in there and try to put a new weapon. I try to change the loadout where I can. So it's like, it's got to have two or three of the elements, different loadout, different deck or different deco or something. Right. It's got, it's got to have not just, not just deco update. If I can, if I can put more stuff in there, it will.
00:58:09
Speaker
But if I can't, I can't. There's things I can't control. But I think that being said, when we start seeing the new characters in the years to come, there's going to be other iterations of them, say Tiger Force, Knight Force, whatever colors they had back in the day, that we may not be running a program. And it would be a bummer not to see them in that color. So they'd probably find their way into mainline, Pulse, or whatever fits them, whatever works. So.
00:58:36
Speaker
That's great. Thank you, guys. That's answered my question exactly as I wanted to hear it as well. Perfect. Glad to make you happy today. Thank you, guys. Well, first of all, everybody's doing a great job of answering questions that I had written down. So you're filling in the gaps for me here. So now I'm starting to go down some different paths here.
00:58:58
Speaker
I'm going to kind of throw this one in with the overall view of being kind of in like year three of this and everything and seeing classified evolve amid all of these weird challenges of doing business in 2022. What are the biggest obstacles you've run into working on this line and what are the biggest rewards that you've personally come across in working on this brand in the last couple of years?
00:59:28
Speaker
Ooh.
Team Challenges and Personal Stories
00:59:32
Speaker
I was, so I came into the line about, you know, six months, six months after we'd announced a product. No. Yeah.
00:59:41
Speaker
Oh my God, time has no meaning. Okay, so I came onto the brand a year ago, June, so do them after self. But we were in, we all know what was happening from fan sentiment at that point. We totally underestimated the successive classified series and we did not make enough product and maybe some robots for buying them all from Target.
01:00:01
Speaker
And so fans were fans were frustrated and they were upset that they couldn't get these figures and they didn't understand why this was happening. And so I think one of the challenges for me when I came onto the brand was, oh, God, how do we make people happy again? Like, how do we how do we say that we are we're working on fixing this? How do we convince all of you that we are on your side? We have your best interests in mind and that we are not just trying to totally screw you over as like a big corporation.
01:00:30
Speaker
Sorry, Whitney. Whitney's our PR person. That was my biggest challenge of what was the sentiment going to be about this? I was, full disclosure, terrified when we did our PulseCon panel. It was the first time that all of you were seeing me as part of GI Joe and it was either going to go
01:00:51
Speaker
really, really well, and everybody was going to love it, or it was going to go really, really poorly. I was going to be the girl who ruined GI Joe. You have no idea how happy I was. It went the good way. I think that we were very, very incentivized to figure out how to fix things and that it really did boil down to supply chain issues in a pandemic and nobody thought this line was going to be
01:01:16
Speaker
as popular as it turned out to be. I would say we are now manufacturing five times the amount of figures that we had originally gone to market with. That's under what retailers want us to do. We just can't meet the capacity. We have had to increase the manufacturing times
01:01:33
Speaker
twice over to meet demand for these figures. That's one of the things that's also being factored into taking longer to get us to shelf. I mentioned it a little bit on Tuesday, but stores have set quantities that they need in order to start shipping out product or to put things on shelf. The bigger stores like Targets and Walmarts or GameStops that are chains will wait until they have those bigger quantities in.
01:01:58
Speaker
The larger the quantities of figures that are ordered, sometimes the longer it takes to get out on shelf, which means that it will be a better experience for everyone once they are actually on shelf because you're not going to have one Walmart setting one place and nobody else can get it. It's that everybody will get them at approximately the same time. We are really trying to create the best possible consumer experience for everybody to avoid that frustration.
01:02:24
Speaker
We know that there was a little bit of a swing and a miss with the Ally Viper and not pre-ordering. We learned our lesson. We will execute pre-orders on everything now and not just necessarily leave it up to stores to do it however they want, but I think that that's really kind of what this is about. It's learning from what has happened. It's, okay, we need to make more figures. It's, all right, we got to pre-order everything.
01:02:47
Speaker
Okay, ooh, the supply chains means that our transportation time is now twice as long because all of our product is stuck on containers in like a port somewhere. All right, how do we address this? And so I think I got way off track, but I think for me, that was kind of my biggest challenge coming in of like, okay, how do we level set expectations and how transparent can I be with everybody about this? Because I want all of you to know as much of what we know is possible without like giving away trade secrets or whatever.
01:03:15
Speaker
But like we want you to feel like we care because we do and that you're kind of part of our crew But I think the best part for me so far has been getting to work with this amazing team like we are We are a small team We are a scrappy team and we are close and we get pretty obsessed about the products that we work on And it's kind of across the board that all of us feel that way and so it's it's been so much fun I spent so much of my day with lenny
01:03:40
Speaker
And it has been so cool to watch him work and see all of the amazing things that he is putting into these figures and the little fiddly details that he talks about has been, it's been wonderful. So I wouldn't trade this for anything. I would ditto.
01:03:57
Speaker
Pretty much everything Emily just said, like in the beginning, I mean, like I met Chris and Fran, I know you from Transformers and all the cons and stuff. And like, you guys remember how nervous I was when we were, I was like dying. I was like, Oh my God, everything. And again, I had that fear. I'm like, am I going to be the guy who killed you at jail? And I remember the toy, the first toy fair that they were out, we were all standing there looking up at it and you were asking us our opinions. It was, it was great.
01:04:23
Speaker
Yeah, we were brutal and negative. But no, like, you know, from the onset, even before we had a figure line, like it was like, my boss at the time, Jared was like, Lenny, go ideate what GI Joe is going to be.
01:04:39
Speaker
go he's like spend all your time on it like that's what i talked about like i did all these iterations i did 2d drawings i did kit bash drawings i'd like went nuts and it was like it was kind of my dream for a minute and like that's what oh my god i can't believe i had this opportunity like when i first got into toy design i was like my sister was a fashion designer she's like
01:05:01
Speaker
you should go to toy design at FIT. And I was like, what's that? She goes, well, all these drawings you do, you can make them into real stuff. And I'm like, oh my God, that's awesome. So then I applied, got the job. And I always wanted, I always loved GI Joe's. I was a GI Joe kid. I would tell you guys to pull them apart, put them back together, redesign, always designing. And the fact that 12 years into my career,
01:05:23
Speaker
15, oh yeah, about 12. They were like, hey, go do the thing you wanted to do as a little kid. I was like, uh, yeah. And it was, it was, that's what, oh my God, what a cool experience. What like, I can't trade that for the world. And I've been, I feel so blessed to have that, have had that opportunity. I'm starting with the positive. I should have ended with the positive.
01:05:45
Speaker
You know what I mean? It's been awesome. You know what I mean? And the fan acceptance and like, and like, we really are passionate. Like the team, like we're skunk works and we're small, but we're building there. You know, we're building the company sentiment in the brand as well, but there always is. I mean, GI Joe is the, we built the house, right? But at the same time, it's like, it's, we got to build it back up. Like it's like, there's a lot of, there's a lot more competition now than there was when we were kids with GI Joe, right? So now we have to prove ourselves.
01:06:14
Speaker
Um, so it's been great. It's been awesome because everybody's so passionate. We're, we're kind of like next level with our passion. Um, but the one thing that is, that has bumped me out is like, we can't get them to people. Right. And I'm like, I'm spending all this time, like designing this stuff, putting my heart and soul into it and Corey and my engineers, like we're, we're like in it, like every little detail is getting scrutinized and.
01:06:37
Speaker
Then we get the, and you're going to be delayed this amount. And it's like, you think about it, like you, you, you're cooking a pot roast and then you can't have the pot roast. You know what I mean?
01:06:53
Speaker
You cook this delicious meal and you can't have it because I can't have it either. I don't get the final final. I have a lot of other males that you could have. Yes. Yeah, I can slow down on my leftovers for my redecos and partials.
01:07:08
Speaker
And my mom, so my mom is the best. She watches all of our live streams and sends me comments about them and says, Oh, Lenny did such a nice job on this and such. And she's, she's screenshot at a comment. And she was like, this is so funny. And it's somebody going like, I love my pre-order collection. We're like, yeah, that's kind of what we basically warned everybody is that
01:07:29
Speaker
we are going to end up with overlapping pre-orders that would not have necessarily been a thing according to our original on shelf dates if those were still able to happen and it's been hard and it's been frustrating and we have been working incredibly hard that everybody on the team to figure out
01:07:45
Speaker
how we can make the best out of this, what we can do to fix it. I think that we're in a much better place than we were six months ago, but now it's the trickle effect where, okay, we basically had a six-month delay and that all of that product is going to start hitting shelf and then, oh my God, we're going to have all of the 23 product too.
01:08:07
Speaker
I think that over starting in the fall, things are going to be good for GI Joe on shelf, depending that China doesn't shut down again. If it perspectives that I've been doing twice for, I got my 15-year plaque, it's a big 15. I think 16, I got that last year. I'm doing it for 16 years. I remember when a week slip was a big deal.
01:08:31
Speaker
And that was before the pandemic. So it was like, you're going to have a weak slip on that product. And it was like, oh my goodness, a weak slip.
01:08:39
Speaker
Now you guys are seeing the delays we're getting. It's like, this is completely unprecedented, right? It's like, it's very stressful for us. I feel like maybe I'm being a little too open about it, but like it stresses us out like crazy. And I know it stresses a community out like crazy too. So we're right there with you. It's bugging us out too. But hopefully you guys will pay our patient with us and you'll be there with us throughout the run. But yeah, it stinks really bad.
01:09:09
Speaker
No my watch yeah. Lenny and I can basically talk forever will just keep running our mouths and then Eric now i have time to show you my second creepy doll that sits in my window.
01:09:23
Speaker
Did a lengthy adventures in collecting podcasts where my creme de la creme story at the end was my haunted bride doll. And I got a lot of Instagram messages about her. I'm surprised you're not recording from your haunted attic with the fall away wall.
01:09:40
Speaker
So spoiler alert, I bought a house in last August and it's a house from 1948 and there was a windstorm one day and I went upstairs to the attic and one of the pieces of paneling had fallen off of the wall and it turned out there was a secret crawl space in my attic. So you're like, all right, Emily, no.
01:09:57
Speaker
So you shine a flashlight into the crawl space, right? Because I'm not going in there. And there's a rocking chair that's knocked over with a bunch of pillows stacked on top of it. So at this point, you think, all right, Attic Ghost, we'll just kind of leave this situation here. So my 13-year-old niece, Vanessa, came to visit, and my mom told her about the crawl space. And she's like, Auntie Emily, let's go figure that out. One of our family friends was here, and they were very brave.
01:10:22
Speaker
went into the crawlspace and we found an empty HDTV box, which means somebody has been back there recently, three really ugly framed paintings, the rocking chair, three pillows, and a wedding dress.
01:10:37
Speaker
Like a wedding dress in a box, like somebody had preserved the wedding dress. Uh-huh, I have a lot of questions about it too. Then we're like, oh my God, who does this wedding dress belong to? So in the most normal thing I possibly could have done, it's a big attic space. I don't have a lot of stuff up there, so it's pretty empty. We, in the middle of the attic, the rocking chair is set up with all the pillows and the portraits around it.
01:11:00
Speaker
And the wedding dress is on a hanger hanging from the rafters so that it kind of moves in the breeze. The train is all spread out. So that's my attic. Welcome to Cranston. Wow. Wow. I thought you were just telling us about a film you saw the other day. That's incredible.
01:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, I like to keep a couple of weird ones tucked away just for occasions such as this. That is so creepy. I am legit creeped out. Not to plug my own podcast, but if you want to hear in detail about the creepy doll, definitely go listen to that episode because, boy, does that have a story. Yeah, it does.
01:11:47
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.
01:12:04
Speaker
Visit them in person at 106 Main Street in Little Falls, New Jersey, or online at ChubsyWubsy.com. That's C-H-U-B-Z-Z-Y-W-U-B-Z-Z-Y.com. And tell them Adventures in Collecting sent you.
Character Art and Planning Adjustments
01:12:20
Speaker
You guys have been commissioning so much incredible character art for the line. Is there a possibility of seeing that
01:12:29
Speaker
uh release some other way maybe higher res people would use it as you know backgrounds wallpapers icons things like that yes we're working on that um so the so uh what's it uh classified series artist series collection i believe is the official name franchise will tell me if i'm wrong but it's getting its own logo there are plans to kind of do a rollout program around it to better leverage that art because it is so amazing and i do think that
01:12:56
Speaker
you know it's it's unusual to have a brand that commissions a different art piece from a different artist for each figure that we do but i think that that is one of the really cool things about classified and you know kind of
01:13:09
Speaker
represents the hodgepodge and melting pot that is GI Joe is to be able to have, if you so choose, to have those boxes art side out to see all of those really cool different snippets of character art that do kind of come together to form this amazing line. So yes, there are plans. Yes, we are in the works. And yes, we are excited about it. Awesome. That's great news. I got to step away, but thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Keep up the good work. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right.
01:13:39
Speaker
My question's basically been answered. I was going to talk about the supply chain and the impact of that and maybe lessons learned, maybe positive ways it's helped you all. Ooh, positive ways it's helped us all. I think it's given us a little bit more time to reflect on the line.
01:14:03
Speaker
which is kind of a weird way to think about it because how am I going to formulate this to sound like I know what I'm talking about? Sometimes I start talking and I don't exactly know where I'm going to go and I just kind of hope I'm going to get there, but I haven't had any coffee today. So I'm lagging a little bit. So I'm stalling for time while I formulate a sentence, but it's, so from a development standpoint, we are, we're on track with all of the development for our products. So it really is kind of the manufacturing kind of end piece, but it's created this kind of,
01:14:32
Speaker
Product gap and it's given us a little bit of extra time which is interesting and not something that we usually have so we actually had like a month. Where we kind of got to sit down and reflect and figure out like okay this is what we think is going on with twenty two how is this going to impact twenty three do we want to change any of our character selections do we think that this is the absolute strongest offering that we can put out and so.
01:14:56
Speaker
I think it's given us a little bit more reflection time, which is not something that we would have had if we had kind of kept going at a regular pace, I guess. That's not a not a particularly amazing answer, but I think that it is it's been interesting to kind of take a little bit more time and see if there's anything that we want to change. And we did change a couple of character selections because we felt like it was a better kind of representation for what we wanted to the story that we wanted to tell with the line for 23.
01:15:24
Speaker
I'd say that and it gave us a little bit more of a hardcore crash course in the backend of development, like from after we're done on our part and understanding where pieces are and where they're going and where they're getting moved to, and then becoming a little more savvy to avoid stuff like that as it might approach. Because back in the day, we wouldn't run into this stuff.
01:15:52
Speaker
the world, right? The world right now, things are shut down for weeks on end. So it's like, how do you avoid a slip? What can you do to not tie something else up with something else? So yeah, I think it's a great learning experience. It's just, you know, it's a lot of the boring stuff that we're learning, but it's boring stuff that will help all the fun stuff later, like the character selects and sculptural detail and stuff like that.
01:16:18
Speaker
And I think kind of piggybacking off of that, I've gotten to go to meetings that I never would have gotten to go to before where they're asking my opinions about, you know, I'm going to engineering meetings that I wouldn't normally be invited to. And maybe our head engineer mutes me and I'm not allowed to ask questions for 17 minutes. It's a challenge. And maybe I fail and he laughs a little, hi, Bill, you're great. But it's, so I think that it has been this kind of really cool opportunity. And now we have this knowledge and we are, we're continuing to figure out ways to help kind of plan against this in the future. And so now we're,
01:16:48
Speaker
you know, we are buffering all of our transit times in the future to say like, okay, if it's taking this long, we're going to add an extra buffer onto this to help see if we can combat this in the future. And I think that those will be learnings that we'll be able to take away long after God, I hope when the global supply chain fixes itself. But I mean, it's really cool. Excellent question. Yes.
01:17:13
Speaker
Just a confirmation, the Amazon Blue Ninjas are gonna be an Amazon pack? Correct. Okay. I had that as with the question mark, like, is it? That does not have to be your question if you'd like to ask another one. No, no, no. That was just confirmation on that question. Okay, perfect. And then I have a request, a fan request, Lenny. Sure. Brendan Fraser as Sergeant Stone.
01:17:40
Speaker
Just, you know, just putting it out there and just throw it out there and then in the ether, it doesn't have to happen. But if it does, you know, it'd be pretty nice. He's been in the media a lot lately, right? So he's coming back. People would love him. You guys are looking for new people to bring into GI Joe. Brendan Fraser as Sergeant Stone. It's just, it's, he's so dreamy and it would just make everyone so happy right now. Bring us all together as fans.
01:18:09
Speaker
Under Brendan Fraser. Yeah. No one, no one doesn't love Brendan Fraser. That's all. Brendan Fraser will be the stone that we all come to, to bring. I was trying to mix names together. There's nothing else you can do. You have it there with two words. Brendan Fraser. Boom. It's done.
01:18:28
Speaker
You guys are doing just a really great job with all of this stuff involved. I'm really glad to see the progression of stuff coming out. I'm glad for the clarification on parts and why you can use certain figures and you can't use certain figures and that little tooling aspect of it had flown right by me and I work in the industry quite a bit and I found it horrifying to find out that you're not doing Paint Masters at all anymore.
Digital Paint Masters and Future Releases
01:18:55
Speaker
It's all digital Paint Masters now.
01:18:58
Speaker
So when production gives you a piece and you're just like, oh no, this blue is not at all supposed to be blue. That's his face. It should be pale. You know, I've seen the horrible things that come out of China where they just make a guess on things. And, I mean, we're still, we provide a schematic of course, but like, you're right. Like it's like,
01:19:26
Speaker
Screen to reality of complete, you know, blue on a screen is like not blue in reality. Well, whose screen is it? I mean, that's why we have Panatone books is to call out a very specific color or fabric books. I just got introduced to a needle book for a thread, a thread book. Oh, yeah. Or for patches and stuff like, oh, wow, there's a thread book. There's another book to add to my drawer of books to make sure I don't get a color wrong.
01:19:56
Speaker
Oh yeah. It's very interesting to find out that you're working completely without the traditional sense of paint masters. Yeah, it's a new process and it's a learning curve, I gotta say. We're getting more savvy, it's getting even better and better and better and I think it's going to be very streamlined very soon, but it was definitely a learning curve.
01:20:18
Speaker
But from what we're getting, some of the last samples that came in was like, oh my God, it's like right spot on, right? And it's like, in a way, it could help speed up the process, right? It could buy us a week here, buy us two weeks there. So I think it's really born out of efficiency is why we're really doing it. So I think the efficiency is going to get there. However, it was a learning curve on the collector brands in particular, because of how intense we have to be of how much things have to look exact.
01:20:48
Speaker
But I gotta say the Dusty in particular came in. We're still tweaking him a little bit from what you guys saw. But I mean, the last sample I just saw, I'm like, oh, okay, he's done. And that was like the second sample in, so. And thank you for the goggles on the helmet and another pair of goggles for the face.
01:21:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that was that's we didn't have that. We almost didn't have that. But we fought for that. We're like, you know, they're going to stretch. They're going to stretch. No, it's suck. You know, I know with the Cobra Troopers, that's that's an issue I've already had with my goggles is that putting them on the helmets and putting them on the dudes, they stretched out a little bit. It's where we learned it from, actually, because we were like, because at first we're like, I don't go back because it has some give. But I think the
01:21:36
Speaker
I don't know if it's actually the top, the head is so, the Cobra Trooper head is so dense. The durometer is so dense that I think that there's no give in the helmet. So there's no give and take, essentially. So basically you're putting those goggles on a jig to stretch them out and they'll never go back. So we learned it on that one.
01:21:57
Speaker
It was actually Cory. Cory was like, dude, we got to do two. I'm like, you're absolutely right, but we can't. So we ended up doing that. There was a little extra cost because you got to paint the goggles and then you got an extra material cost and stuff, but it was totally worth it. And good news, if you are a ding dong and don't realize that which set of goggles you have, you can stretch the smaller one to go on his hat. Yes, you can. Let's just not talk about that. Let's forget we heard that completely.
01:22:24
Speaker
You guys gave us an update on a bunch of the figures that were previously announced in renders going back to the last live stream. Are there any updates on the Kamakura figure that was announced a few months ago? Maybe you find out more in June. Maybe you don't find out more in June. Maybe you do.
01:22:47
Speaker
Yo, JoJo. That was one of the questions. June. It's June. So what we wanted to do is, you know, we've seen a lot of the O-ring figures for the year already that haven't hit pre-order. We've seen Kamakura who hasn't hit pre-order yet. So we didn't necessarily want the expectation to be that
01:23:06
Speaker
When we show you digital renders, you will immediately like, where's Mindbender? So we didn't want the expectation necessarily to be that as soon as you see one of the digital renders, you will get to pre-order it exactly the next time. But we promise that they will all be going up for pre-order. I saw somebody say, did they decide to pull Kamakura from the line? No, no, no. He's still there. He just hasn't launched yet. So it's OK. If it's helpful, Kamakura is the other Amazon exclusive for the year to go with the Blue Ninjas.
01:23:36
Speaker
Easy. Bring it on. Give me more. That literally just made it worth it for me to stay on for that last 10 minutes for that answer to that Kamakura question. Excellent. Thank you so much. I think Fran's muted. Fran, you are muted, but it looks like you were talking. Oh, are you excited? I just had an extra question. The retro card in Zartan, does that color change?
01:23:57
Speaker
No, he does not only the pulse conversion color changes, but color changes. So you guys know it's like an additional 65 deco ops to do that. He expensive, expensive.
01:24:13
Speaker
Is there any updates to what figures releasing next since I know a lot of the pre-orders are scrambled? Is there any inside Intel on what figure we can see that that's going to be hitting soon that you guys would know about? There's a lot of fans are trying to figure out what's next and what's coming. In terms of what people will get shipped out to them next or what we're going to be pre-ordering next? What we're going to receive as pre-orders?
01:24:37
Speaker
Okay so next up so the first Tiger Force wave that we did at PulseCon so all of the PulseCon figures should be coming really soon. So those were originally I mean you guys saw the dates kept kind of pushing out on those which we finally got them to stop pushing which was really exciting. So those were originally I mean you saw the original date so I don't have to lie about this those were originally supposed to be February of 2022.
01:25:02
Speaker
and ultimately push to an 8122 for setting in brick and mortar. I believe that the way that it's working is as soon as warehouses get all the stock they need, they'll be able to start shipping those out on pre-orders. So my guess is that we will see pre-orders fulfilled before we see those hitting brick and mortar, because those still are, the mainline assortment is still like in an assortment box. So Target and Walmart can just wave that into their pegs, but those should be the items that you see coming next.
01:25:33
Speaker
And then the next O-ring 2-pack, the Culbra troop builders should be coming soon.
01:25:40
Speaker
This goes back to, again, the livestream, the fact that you're introducing a Tiger Force version of the RAM cycle for the first time and kind of updating the lore with new things. And Lenny, you know I've asked you this before, but now with some new things coming into the line, are we any closer at getting new original characters that will
Balancing Nostalgia and Innovation in GI Joe
01:26:04
Speaker
make their G.I. Joe lore debut in the classified line? I want to.
01:26:12
Speaker
I keep on saying I want to, and I think yes. It's just a matter of like, I think it's weird. I got to like sit down and then think to myself, I'm like, does somebody want this or this? Right? So again, I think I mentioned as somebody when I was kind of make gifts for people essentially, right? Like my job is to make a gift. Like what would you like? What do you know? So I try to make things that people can relate to or want or have known or have some context with. That doesn't mean that new things are off the table.
01:26:42
Speaker
is that when I'm weighing out the risk reward, essentially, we got to kind of, I think what leans more towards things that people are familiar with. So we'll do a character that people are familiar with over a character that people are not familiar with. And if we do a character that people are not familiar with, we have to see where the opportunity fits best for that character so that they can thrive, essentially, right?
01:27:09
Speaker
man i would love to do a bunch of new jobs i told you guys all you do is a kid was customizing the drum right so it's just a matter of like where does it strategically fit right so it's like um yes yes but i could not say when
01:27:23
Speaker
I think, too, you were talking earlier about ways of getting new generation, new kids into the line. And I think right now it's fun to see how you're taking all of these nostalgic heroes and villains that we played with when we were kids and giving them kind of a modern spin, like giving Lady J a GoPro, for instance.
01:27:42
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I think those kind of modern spins are, you know, tracks into getting younger generations to kind of resonate with these characters. But I think the way to really get like a new generation is with the new generation. Right. Making new characters that like really, you know, take advantage of of, you know, modern entity and, you know, really kind of draw in new audiences. And plus, like, you know, I think
01:28:12
Speaker
You're preaching to the choir here with the audience that you have in front of you currently. But, you know, new Joes are new Joes. And like, that was so exciting as a kid, like when, you know, before the Internet. I mean, that's what they were doing to us when we were kids. Think about it like the dreadnoughts look like a little movie that we all probably know and love. Right. So it's like.
01:28:34
Speaker
It's like, they were totally fashion designing. And I say it a lot, GI Joe's fashion brand. So it's like, you got to look at what's going on in the world and what's cool. Pattern wise too, all of a sudden the pattern's got neon colors in the mid 90s and early 90s. Weird. So definitely that's why I love the brand so much too.
01:28:54
Speaker
you can play into the world around you to do innovative design. It's not necessarily something where you always have to iterate something that was made in the past. We can update stuff, hence the first wave, right? So yeah, I think so. I think we'll get there again. Emily will probably double confirm. We have to just make sure that the bet is there. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I think it's going to be great. And when we do it, it's going to be amazing.
01:29:26
Speaker
Can I jump in one more thing that tuned in? I'm literally almost out the door. The Dr. Mindbender. That was fantastic. Oh my God, is that not a great figure? I know some people were upset that he looks like how he used to look. That's what you've been arguing for this entire line. He not only looks how he used to look, he's better than I ever dreamed.
01:29:54
Speaker
really, really is fantastic. I never even thought I would grow up to be a man with the mind bender mustache, but I am. And I see him come to life. Well, it was an interesting one. That was an interesting one too, right? It's like we talked about it. We're like, should we update him? Should we do the, I think it was like the nineties version where he had the coat on and more than we thought about it, it would do the coat later. Exactly. And it's kind of like,
01:30:21
Speaker
He had such a particular look that it was just like he really just needs finish, right? Oh, that's Dixie Ramsey's hands. That's my cat.
01:30:34
Speaker
Um, but it's like, it's like, it's fit and finish with him was fit. Right. So it's like, how do we take that old school figure and adjust it? And then there's things we did, like the old school figures, like you couldn't do a lot of anatomy play. We did a lot of anatomy play. You notice he's got like, sorry, Ramsey's hand is cracking me up. Um, you'll notice a lot of like, like the way the shape of his head, like we did on gung ho, like kind of the role in the back of his head because he's so jacked, you know,
01:30:58
Speaker
We're able to do stuff like that, making his head a little more pin-like. Let this play around with the human form and textures and stuff like that. So it's there. But again, design standpoint, thank you. I really appreciate that. That means a lot.
01:31:15
Speaker
How could you change him for the first release? I don't know. Why are so people upset that he's jacked? Like he was jagged. Like he's supposed to be an interrogator. And the people forget about that. His file card is he was a Cobra interrogator. This man made him a scientist. He did CRISPR before CRISPR. Yeah.
01:31:37
Speaker
Like this guy made, he made an emperor. You think he can't make himself jacked? Like, you know what I mean? So we talked about that too. Like maybe he should be more of a lean body. And we're like, nah, we gotta go jacked. And so, yeah, high button. Yeah, it's seriously my favorite upcoming figure. Is that my favorite figure? Thank you, that's awesome. I think you're gonna be pleased. I can't wait to show his stuff. He comes with some funny stuff.
01:32:06
Speaker
I'm really looking forward to it and looking forward to that road pig sometime down the road. I'll get you a way. Monstrous bodies look like in the GI Joe line. To speak in which I want to do things right. For me, road pig has to be brand new, spanking everything, one and done. It's got to be huge. Absolutely.
01:32:30
Speaker
Thank you guys again so much for bringing so much passion to the line. Us old school fans, us new fans, we really appreciate it. Thank you again. Thanks for coming, man. Thanks, Scott. All right.
Fan Desires and Customization Opportunities
01:32:48
Speaker
Dr. Mindbender gonna be available. Is that a PulseCon exclusive or? That's a great question, which I'm not allowed to tell you yet. Okay, I don't think anyone knows that yet. No one does know that yet. Yep, that one is a, I'll check and see when I'll be able to tell you that information. Okay, great. And an accessory for Dreadnought, we definitely need grape soda cans.
01:33:12
Speaker
No, I'm right. We need grapes and chocolate donuts. You need to get a little chocolate donut box and a grape soda can. You got to get that in there somehow. We need grapes. 100%. 100% crushed soda cans and stuff too because it's bashing them on their heads. That's a staple. You know what I mean? How many times has that been in the comic books?
01:33:32
Speaker
100% with you. And I think that goes to say sometimes we don't have the money to make a particular character, right? So just shouldn't do them because I don't want to release something and then we didn't give it, it just deserves what it deserves to be put into it just to get another character out there.
01:33:53
Speaker
Um, because it could come out stinky. You know what I mean? Like, you know, you need the right body type parts. You need the money to make new parts that are particular to the character. And on GI Joe in particular, I'm actually finding it's a lot more like a black series line than a legends line.
01:34:11
Speaker
right, because the reuse is actually not as much. We're like in the middle from a standpoint, like, you know, there's this commonality between parts. But a lot of the characters back in the day, parts are sculpted right onto those those parts of pieces where later on, you sort of see the reuse stuff, the reuse stuff happened on the original 13, of course. But then there was like, oh, this is make brand news. And then you started seeing characters that were mixes and matches of each other. So I'm finding the same thing now on the six inch line, right, where it's like,
01:34:41
Speaker
you know, you can't just take the gung ho vest and throw it on somebody else and then call it a character that has a very particular look, right? So that might be an opportunity for a new character, right? So again, and the money is, I keep on saying money, but you know, when the funds are right, the resources are right, the time is right, then we can get those characters going. And I think ultimately people appreciate, when you do something, do it right.
01:35:09
Speaker
Don't do it because, you know. Right. I just think fans would appreciate that accessory. Like I, the Dr. Mindbender loadout, it's so vast. There's so many cool parts, the brain, the pump, and like all that stuff going on in there. You know, some kind of deluxe pack, you can throw that in there. I mean, I can't wait to explain how those work too. Yeah. That'd be fun because we had some fun with that stuff. Cool. Thanks.
01:35:37
Speaker
One last thing, Hasbro Pulse online, right? Is there any way we can get 3X shirts? Because I haven't been able to order a shirt, a G.I. Joe brand shirt, because I just don't, I'm not a big, you know, chunky guy, I'm just big and tall. And I only fit in the 3X. Let me ask them about that for you. Yeah. Looking into getting a few of those in the store. Yeah. And we're- They're quite small too, so I know what you mean.
01:36:06
Speaker
And we try to be as inclusive as possible with sizing. So I'm sure that, yes, let me see what I can do. Sure. Thank you. I appreciate that. I would love to order every shirt that you guys make. I would order one of each. Maybe something else to think about. A lot of people are 3D design things. Yes. So maybe there might be a way to put out something for us to print at home that, you know, some kind of design that you could give us to print with.
01:36:33
Speaker
are joe's like a footlocker even if it's a footlocker you know something that's an interesting proposition we we you know with the times changing and everything like printing i know i do it for things that i don't think you guys are going to make you know so i've been i've been printing vehicles i mean some of the stuff too is incredible like some of the stuff that these guys are making yeah and i think it's we it's like i think it's a bigger
01:37:02
Speaker
It's a bigger conversation for us, right? Because it's like, that's opening up 3d source files and stuff like that. So we would have to be, it's a different animal for the company as a whole. And I think there's definitely people talking about it. Um, it's just a matter of how do you implement it in a way that, um, is, I use the word strategically that has strategic, strategically behind it. You know what I mean? Hasbro 3d printer that you can,
01:37:27
Speaker
You know, sell to the public. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There we go. Or like a subscription service, a free file subscription service or something like that. Yeah. And people are getting into it. I mean, it's a craft. It's definitely like a big trend. So it's like, how do we, how do we do it in a way? It's like.
01:37:44
Speaker
I'm a big fan of Skyrim, so I do a lot of Skyrim modding and all that sort of thing, which that's got an open source material. So I would imagine people much smarter than me in other departments of the company would have to figure out how that worked, essentially. Because again, you're opening your IP up to everybody and you're a little bit of trade secrets in there too. So how do you do it in a way? A lot of things that you guys would not be willing to do, but
01:38:09
Speaker
Um, you know, GI Joe, I think out of all the brands that exist, not even outside of Hasbro, it's the most customizable brand. People are into customizing GI Joe's a lot. Oh yeah. Big part of the community. So it's just something to think about, you know? Yeah. It's very cool. Anyway, thank you for
Conclusion and Community Engagement
01:38:31
Speaker
your time. I really appreciate it. It's been eventful and I had a good time and there we actually got some good information.
01:38:39
Speaker
Awesome. Thanks for joining, man. Good talking to you. Thanks. Good. I can't wait till we get back to actually in person, you know, I really miss San Diego Comic Con. Yeah. You know, I think it just adds something special, you know, when we get to see that stuff and, you know, seeing each other in person is always great. Yeah, we'll get there. Thanks for taking the time out to do this. Appreciate it.
01:39:03
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. Find more about them both on our show notes.
01:39:20
Speaker
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.
01:39:43
Speaker
This has been a non-productive media presentation. Executive producer Frank Kablaui. 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.