Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
An Interview with Jazwares' Jeremy Padawer
406 Plays5 years ago
On this episode, Dave and Erik sit down with Jazwares' Partner Jeremy Padawer to talk Pokemon cards, AEW figures, giving back to the toy community, UFC toyline reveals, Cocomelon, and more!
Follow Jeremy on Twitter @jeremycom and on Instagram @jeremypadawer
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
Proudly part of the Non-Productive Network
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Adventures in Collecting and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, Dave. Hi, Eric. Hey, Dave. Do we curse on this podcast? Yes, Eric. Yes, we do. 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.
00:00:21
Speaker
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. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Adventures in Collecting. It's Eric and Dave, and we have a special guest, right, Dave?
00:00:41
Speaker
We do. So we're going to go right into things because our guest today is very special and is a longtime pillar of the figure community and the collecting community. You may know him from his time with Jack Pacific and is one of the co-presidents of Wicked Cool Toys. He's now a partner at Jazzwares. We, of course, are talking about Jeremy Padour. Welcome to the show, Jeremy. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Great to talk to you guys.
00:01:09
Speaker
We're so happy to have you. Again, thank you for taking the time to join our little toy collecting show today. This is really cool. Thank you. Of course. I'm at your service. I'm ready to
Jeremy's Collecting Interests and Market Trends
00:01:23
Speaker
chat. Let's chat it up. So before we dive headlong into things, when we have a guest on, the first thing that we like to do is we like to ask them what they're currently collecting and what toy line or collectible has you most excited at the moment.
00:01:39
Speaker
Well, I see I'm currently collecting, uh, Pokemon cards, primarily vintage cards. Uh, I just bought a 1999, uh, base set, the first series shadowless, uh, PSA 10 card one through one Oh two. And, uh, that's that, that really hit the news big this week. I don't know if you saw it, but, um, it was the highest price paid ever for a, uh, original base set.
00:02:06
Speaker
We did indeed. Congratulations, by the way. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. That was, that was a lot of fun and I'm glad, uh, I'm glad I had the opportunity to, uh, to do that. Um, but you know, I will say that, that I, uh, Pokemon is a special place in my heart. You know, they, I've been part of the brand for the last 15 years and had the opportunity to see it grow and, uh, what it is today, which is one of the most important, uh, brands in the history of, uh, entertainment.
00:02:36
Speaker
Um, but I also collect, um, vintage, you know, sports cards. Uh, I like, uh, some of the TCGs from the early 2000s. Like I bought a couple of Harry Potter booster, uh, boxes, um, some Neopets booster boxes. Um, and, uh, projects tops project 2020, which is a very cool card concept, like card meets art concept. And of course, you know,
00:03:03
Speaker
I manufacture action figures of all kinds, Fortnite, Roblox, Pokemon, AEW, and Halo is launching this year, so there's just a lot going on.
00:03:15
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things where I think when people talk to you and mention your name, I think a lot of times you are kind of synonymous with the wrestling figure community because of what you did previously with Jax and what you're doing with AEW now.
00:03:33
Speaker
But yeah, Pokemon is such a cultural phenomenon.
Card Values and Social Media Impact
00:03:38
Speaker
I'm 32 years old, so I was right in that butter zone when Pokemon landed here in the US. I remember getting my yellow tag out of the Toys R Us wall.
00:03:53
Speaker
and getting it on Game Boy originally, like the red and blue games and trading the cards at school. So it's very nostalgic for me. And I still kind of dabble in Pokemon, like with Pokemon Go and some of the more modern iterations of things. But yeah, when I saw that you had purchased that lot of cards, it brought me back. Well, I'll play this. So interestingly enough, so 1999 is when they launched.
00:04:21
Speaker
So if you're 32, that means you are 11. And if you think about it, the Pokemon set that I bought, I mean, it's public. I paid $129,500 for it. Okay. Now I'm going to set that into context in a moment. But $129,500, this set in all PSA 10 condition five years ago was probably around $35,000. And five years before that, it may have been 10.
00:04:51
Speaker
And five years before that, it was more like two. So the reality is, whenever you look at a collectible system, it's really only as valuable as the most emotionally impacted people have the money to purchase into it. So what I mean by that is in 1999, the average age demographic for Pokemon was probably, I don't know, six to 12 years old, or maybe 13.
00:05:18
Speaker
Which means today, they're between the ages of 25 and 33. And when you're between the ages of 25 and 33, the odds that you have the kind of expendable income yet is not significantly high. Now, there are some people that have some serious cash walking around money and a lot of them earned it on their own. But the reality is like people my age, I'm 46.
00:05:42
Speaker
You're sort of in the prime of your career. You may have sold a company. You may just be crushing it one way or the other. But given another 10 or 15 years, and I think you're going to see Pokemon valuation spike tremendously because you'll see that the individuals who are part of that brand are now fully, deeply into their careers and lives.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I definitely had some, just looking at it, had a little bit of FOMO because I recently sold some of my cards. I still had them. They were in a binder. And I know that I definitely got hosed on the deal because I didn't know that there was a market for Pokemon cards. Because I definitely had, I didn't have a shadowless Charizard or anything. But I had shadowless first gen cards. You actually had tweeted out, what was your favorite Pokemon?
00:06:33
Speaker
I actually had a shadowless first edition foil dragonite in that set that I definitely sold. So it's fun to think about cards. And I know Dave could speak to it more than I can, but he and my father, they collected baseball cards almost religiously. Oh, really? Baseball cards back in the day, yeah.
00:06:56
Speaker
And so what sort of stuff did you did you collect into? What were you into? I'm 39. So it was the mid late 80s. So that was when everything was worth something, but everything wound up being worth nothing. Let me flip that switch for a moment.
00:07:20
Speaker
So the late 80s cards, so I've recently bought some cards in the highest grade condition from the late 80s. Like for instance, I think I paid $1,300 for an upper deck Ken Griffey Jr. 1989 rookie. I think that's what that card looks like. Just kind of can visualize it. But it was a PSA 10 perfect condition card. And so what I would say is it's interesting. The highest level cards from each one of those sets
00:07:47
Speaker
has value as long as it can be graded in perfect condition. The difference between a PSA 10 and a PSA 9 could be 7, 8, 9, 10 times. And you keep going down. All of a sudden, you've got something that has even the slightest flaw, and it becomes worth a few bucks, where if it was perfect condition, it's worth a real grip of money.
00:08:10
Speaker
And so what I would say is revisit those binders and catalogs from the late 80s and early 90s and look for the very few superstars that may be rookies in those years. And if you can find a pristine card, it may or may not be worth getting it graded. It's definitely something to think about, for sure.
00:08:30
Speaker
I'm sitting over here, so we're in two different places right now. We're both in New Jersey, but practicing social distancing, all that good stuff. I'm sitting here smiling because I know what's sitting in our mother's basement. Yeah, I know what's there too. I do. They would buy full cases. So there's cards from those years that are in original cases have never been opened. Excellent. And so again, take a look at the latest
00:08:58
Speaker
I would say look at psacard.com and look at the population reports for the very specific years that you're talking about. While these sets don't have a tremendous amount of value from the late 80s, you might want to pull the two or three most valuable cards out of it and get them graded. If you get back a PSA 10, heck, it might be worth 10 times what the set was worth, just that one card, because it's graded so favorably.
00:09:25
Speaker
So outside of baseball cards, you have been, and card collecting in general, which it's been fun to watch you open up some of those booster packs and stuff on social media, but your social media presence as of late has been very much so about giving back to the community, and that kind of all started with showing off the one out of 100 Ultimate Warrior.
00:09:51
Speaker
So what spurred the kind of, uh, redirection of your social media efforts and the amazing generosity? Yeah. Well, I mean, life, life changed. I mean, I, so for, for so many years, I, I was, uh, an executive and you guys hit on executive Jackson before that Mattel. And, um, I was, uh, you know, it was, it was great. Uh, but,
00:10:19
Speaker
We got involved with an early stage startup that I partnered in and we grew significantly and we sold it. And now we're partners at Jazzwares, but we had grown a really large company. I mean, we were the global master partner for Pokemon and we have, like I said, AEW and Halo and Micro Machines and just some tremendous brands. So that turned out very favorably for me.
00:10:48
Speaker
And I'm not the type of person that likes to sit on all the donuts. I don't enjoy just consuming. I like sharing. And so for me, I had the platform. We had AEW launching.
00:11:03
Speaker
I knew that I had a bit of a community within the old classic superstars with this aggression, adrenaline, deluxe aggression, all those wonderful things that we did back in the day. And I knew that there were still some folks that may want to hear from me. And I thought, wow, what a great opportunity to pair what I want to do, which is to give back to the community that I really dearly love and feel so much indebtedness to because I can now. So yeah, I mean, like,
00:11:33
Speaker
My objective is to build a social media presence, but to do it talking about the business of collecting, but also to share some fun stuff. And if it's merchandise, then it's merchandise. But that's my philosophy. And I think a lot of people who have succeeded in business tend to hide after they succeed.
00:11:58
Speaker
And I think that that doesn't do any good for the next generation of people that are trying to accomplish the same thing. And so I'm definitely going to do the exact opposite. I'll be way more visible now that I feel like I've achieved a lot of the things that I had dreamed about achieving.
00:12:17
Speaker
Now you mentioned the classic superstars, and that was a game changer back in the Jax days, because there's never been anything mainstream like that with classic superstars.
Strategies in Action Figures and Collector Engagement
00:12:29
Speaker
It celebrated the history of wrestling. What led you to pursue that idea?
00:12:34
Speaker
So when I, when I started at Jax, I was 29 years old and, um, I'll take you back, but as a kid, I grew up in the South. Um, and, uh, a Jewish little Jewish kid from the South, right? Mississippi, Tennessee. And, and I just loved wrestling. I really loved it. And so we had regional wrestling and especially in Memphis, USWA and, and Mississippi, whoever would come through, dare come through Columbus, Mississippi.
00:13:02
Speaker
But you would see all the regional wrestlers and you got a real good taste for these self-made personalities. And then in the early 80s, WWF at the time came on the scene in a major way.
00:13:19
Speaker
Um, and I just had a really good sense for that business. So when I got to Jax, it was one of the very first things I did at 29 years old was say, listen, we need to celebrate the legends. Um, and so interestingly enough, I had the opportunity to have conversations with Vince McMahon and he gave me the green light to approach, uh, legends because really the toy business was challenged at the time. Uh, you can imagine the attitude era was just over.
00:13:49
Speaker
and toy sales had plummeted because toys had been treated like toys and not collectibles. The challenge was, you know, signing these superstars because there was no real alumni roster. So I had to figure out a deal mechanism where I would go out and sign these individual athletes or the estates of, and then if WWE should ever have an alumni program,
00:14:18
Speaker
They could then take over those contracts, create a new contract, and the athlete would essentially get paid twice. But we didn't care because we were going to get to make their figure one way or the other. And so that gave them the flexibility to allow us to do a program. And it was really great. And if you remember, the first wave included Red Heart and Ultimate Warrior.
00:14:42
Speaker
And that was also a huge signal to the collecting community, you know, ultimate warrior, like, wow, like, come on. Cause warrior at the time was at real odds with WWE. And, uh, you know, it's a whole other story, but we, we had some very colorful conversations at that time. So, uh, you can imagine what a fascinating, uh, time it was for me, um, you know, having the opportunity to lead the charge on something at that age.
00:15:10
Speaker
Um, and just kind of taking it on without really knowing any better, uh, that it, that it, that it could be such a big deal later on. I'm, I'm really thrilled that it is that we're still talking about it today. Now, there were a lot of personalities in that line. Um, and you talked about a lot of the, the main kind of now hall of famers. Um, we've heard stories about wrestlers that you did sign, but who was the one that you couldn't sign that, um, you wish you had?
00:15:39
Speaker
Well, I mean look there were the big three for me and that was macho man Ricky Steamboat and Owen Hart those those were the ones that I felt were The biggest misses and for various reasons whether it be
00:15:55
Speaker
intellectual property issues or whether it be other issues, it just stopped us from being able to do those figures. And I think the one thing that that line was very clear is that it was such a broad line. I mean, we literally did hundreds of classic superstars figures.
00:16:12
Speaker
I think that's one of the things that was truly embraced by the community is like wow like we did a b and c Level characters we just knew how to sort them so that you know if we had Someone that otherwise would not be all that Necessarily popular we could celebrate them by maybe doing one every two case facts versus having another very popular a level character being you know two out of
00:16:38
Speaker
12 or whatever in the assortment and being very well populated. And so we knew just enough about economics and how supply and demand worked to make this thing really cool and work with A, B, and C, I would say, level characters.
00:16:56
Speaker
So now with somebody like the warrior, and we mentioned him as part of the giveaway, how do figures like that get selected for the kind of level of promotional items that they were? So like that one out of 100 or that the one out of 10 ultimate warrior, how does that come about? So I will tell you that some of it was just me sitting at my desk and going, OK, I think this is what's going to create excitement.
00:17:25
Speaker
It certainly was stooped in strategy because the objective was to continuously create excitement. And I don't think I overdid it. I mean, there was only a certain number of super limited figures over the seven year stretch that we were doing classic superstars or the entire line.
00:17:44
Speaker
But I just like to keep collectors on their toes and keep them really surprised and ready to buy something on the secondary market or at least cursing the fact that it exists. Because by doing that, you always keep the line at the forefront of people's minds. And here we are today celebrating some of the items that people cursed at the time because they were so limited.
00:18:14
Speaker
But yeah, look that one of a hundred 2004 New York Toy Fair Ultimate Warrior Exclusive is a legendary figure. I was really thrilled to give it away And I think the gentleman who received it has now been displaying it on on socials. I hope that he really enjoys it Yeah
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, it just it's so it's so interesting because it harkens back to kind of like the I guess like the the Malaway culture, you know of toys like it was always nice to have like that full set and then all of a sudden you'd see the commercial or you'd see an ad in a magazine or on the back of a cereal box where you had to clip the UPCs and send it away and you know kind of hope that you had sent away fast enough to be one of the people to get it. But you know when you're when I feel like it's almost
00:19:07
Speaker
It's almost like an an homage to something like that when a when a company You know like Jax didn't like what you did with Jax with those figures Where it's almost like just knowing that it exists is enough yeah, like it's it's such a it's such a fun concept and such a Such a huge part of collecting that's kind of missing now like there are variants and chases and things like that But like those those like really really super exclusive toys. It's it's like part of the best part of the process
00:19:36
Speaker
You know what, I agree with you. But it also signals something else. It signals that the people who are managing the line are also fans of the line. It signals like, wow, there's crazy stuff that could happen here. And it just keeps you excited. And honestly, there's a lot of boring stuff in the world of collectibles. And you've got to keep people on their toes.
00:20:05
Speaker
And now with online culture, half the time you're not even going to stores to hunt for these figures anymore, you're just pre-ordering them online and waiting for them to be shipped. So I feel like there's, to your point, that element of excitement is missing. And the fact that you are behind so many fun lines now with Wicked Cool Toys, or jazzwares, excuse me,
00:20:30
Speaker
I'm curious, do you have plans to do similar things for Pokemon or for Fortnite or for AEW? I was going to ask, isn't there something coming for AEW that's along those lines? Absolutely. Let's just put it this way. All the tricks are going to be pulled out of the bag when it comes to AEW and we'll reveal them over the course of time. I've always had a lot of patience. Remember, I pulled out the
00:20:59
Speaker
Warrior America after what, 15 years? Because I personally, like I said, I like to keep people guessing and excited over the course of a duration. And just when you think that you've seen it all, then you see something new. It is an art form.
00:21:19
Speaker
And it's not just, OK, here's the next wave. There's two of these and two of these. That's just not the way to run a relationship with the collector community. You should always expect the unexpected.
00:21:32
Speaker
So one of my favorite, I'm just going to outright say my favorite, but I know Eric really liked it too. And it was very unheralded as far as I think. It was the Wicked Cool Toys Micro Maniacs, the board game figures. I loved that. So much fun. Awesome.
00:21:51
Speaker
Yeah, I was like looking for different exclusives and stuff like that. I managed to find the vast majority. And it was a really cool original kind of fight style game. How did that idea come to be? And now that jazzwares has AEW, could we see something along those lines for AEW? Or really for anything else?
AEW and Market Strategies
00:22:15
Speaker
I think so. Look, it was a very short lived thing. But
00:22:22
Speaker
There's definitely potential there. I'm curious, are you seeing, now that it's out of the marketplace, did you feel like there was a significant demand for that particular business?
00:22:38
Speaker
I honestly couldn't tell you, but it was just something where- You completed it, didn't you? You have everything. Yeah. I looked for the different exclusives and whatnot and the different paint schemes. But yeah, that was one where I was like, I think this is cool. It was a good price point, to be honest. And I liked the way that the figures, look, yes, they were small, but they were very, very standardized.
00:23:07
Speaker
Very cool. Yeah, I'll tell you what. I'm looking on eBay as we speak and I'm looking at sold items. What do I see? There's definitely a market. There certainly is secondary market.
00:23:25
Speaker
Randy Savage Series 1, 30 bucks. That's definitely many, many multiples over what we had in the marketplace. Fascinating. That's great. I love that.
00:23:38
Speaker
And I mean, in terms of playability too, tabletop gaming is huge. When we were at Toy Fair, and we'll get into how awesome we thought the Jazzware booth was in a moment, but when we were at Toy Fair, we were kind of taken aback by how front and center tabletop gaming is becoming again. We're coming back to almost, I don't want to say a new renaissance of tabletop gaming, but almost.
00:24:07
Speaker
you know, a billion different versions of Dungeons and Dragons, which is, you know, never goes away that that game has been around, you know, Gary, Gary Gygax, you know, he created a literal monster with that. But just in general, like the presence of tabletop gaming is so big right now that, you know, maybe something like an AEW micro maniacs would would do really well.
00:24:29
Speaker
Good idea. Really good idea. You're opening my eyes here. Obviously, we're always looking for another way to experience the brand that doesn't cannibalize from the main item.
00:24:46
Speaker
I think what I'm seeing here as we speak is that there was certainly enough demand for micromaniacs to sell through and then for there to be a really nice, like I said, secondary market business. As I look at this, it's very clear to me that it was something that could have continued to survive.
00:25:10
Speaker
Well, staying on the topic of AEW and wrestling toys, we know the unrivaled line is nearly upon us at this point. And you've hinted at a couple of things. Is there anything else that you guys have in store for that line that you maybe can throw a hint our way? You know, what I would say to you is that we're going to be
00:25:39
Speaker
Delivering a new wave of product approximately every two months and I think that we'll be even going faster than that as soon as we Extend it, you know, we're launching it at Walmart and also at ringside so But I think that it is gonna very quickly extend beyond
00:26:06
Speaker
those retail outlets and at that time you'll see even more development because when you have more retailers you have to give exclusivity and opportunity for everyone to sort of shine. I would say that the first season of the launch is about making sure that we get it right and then we extend and it's been a very interesting time from a manufacturing standpoint.
00:26:37
Speaker
You're it's a situation where you're launching brands and for me I'm launching several brands right smack dab in the middle of a global pandemic that happens every hundred years and The factories are kind of like in the epicenter of where everything began So it's it's it's been exceptionally interesting. I mean like I would say the products great but there certainly are nuances and I think that you'll probably see variations and variants and
00:27:06
Speaker
Um in running changes, uh in ways that you probably wouldn't see normally like I think they'll probably be and I haven't said this yet, but I think there's probably going to be a uh, um a second variant of wave one I think the skin tones are good. They're going to be better So we'll launch and then there'll be a second variant as soon as we can implement a running change
00:27:33
Speaker
just to make sure we get those skin tones a little bit more rich, I would say. So there you go. So there's one for you. And actually, interestingly enough, it reminds me a little bit of I'm sitting here next to this Pokemon set. And the reason why this set is so valuable is because it is the first edition shadowless version.
00:27:58
Speaker
And what does that mean? It just means that the first edition stamp is on it, but also pokemon decided early on in the run That they needed to add a shadow To the box to make it look a little bit more 3d. I guess or give it more dimensionalized um, and I was actually uh having a good conversation with uh, I have a weekly executive meeting with pokemon
00:28:21
Speaker
And I was taking them through that today. And it's amazing. It's been 20 years, so no one remembers why that was done. But here, I'll tell you, it's done all the time. And every time it's done, you think back and you go, oh, man, I should have kept my shadowless cards. Well, nobody knows. Who knew? You know what I mean? Who knows what to look for at the time? It takes time for that to bet out. But I will tell you, we are very likely going to do
00:28:46
Speaker
a variant run of Series 1. Lighter skin tones to start, darker, more ripsed skin tones towards the back half or end of the run. I don't know which one is going to be more rare yet, but that'll be something to look for.
00:29:05
Speaker
it's you know it's it's incredible you know and and again i'm gonna hit i'm gonna hint again at how awesome our toy fair experience was but it's incredible speaking to you and we spoke to mike to camp um oh yeah in the uh the the fortnite the hidden fortnite room um the the
00:29:24
Speaker
It is very obvious the enthusiasm that you have for what you do and like the fact that you are. You know broadcasting running change shows that you know frankly that you care you know that that you you really care about making sure that the best product possible is out there for.
00:29:43
Speaker
not only collectors but I'm sure you you know like you want to make sure that what you're putting out is is of a quality enough that you know you're happy with and it's just it's I personally I love seeing that I know like some people get like ticked off like there was
00:29:59
Speaker
The most recent one I could think of was Mattel had a running change on the baby Yoda, the child plush. There was one that came out that was more pale, and that's the one I'm looking at. And then they put out one that was a little more airbrushed and had some darker details on it. And for me, it's like, OK, well, if you're collecting them and you're leaving them in the box or whatever you're doing, now you have another one that you have to get, which is awesome, because now you have a reason to buy a second one.
00:30:25
Speaker
Or two, now you can compare and you can figure out which one you want, which look you like better. So, I mean, I love that stuff. And what's fun about it is every one of these running changes has a story behind it, but most people are afraid to approach it.
00:30:42
Speaker
But the way I look at it is, you guys are invited to the table of product development. I'm not afraid to say that things change and things evolve. I'm not afraid to say it because I want the product to be better and better. And in order to do that, sometimes you got to catch something as it goes and make improvements on the run.
00:31:04
Speaker
That's probably what happened there You're likely not to find out until you know 10 15 years from now when someone's talking about it on some sort of retrospective And then you go oh, that's why baby Yoda had the you know second look But it's always fun. I love it as a collector. I do I love it So I I'm not afraid of it, and I I've always told my team that
00:31:24
Speaker
That issues in production are just opportunities because ultimately as long as you're honest with the collector community they're cool with it it's when you try to like avoid it and or you try to pretend like it's not part of the process or you don't that's it's almost like it's almost like.
00:31:44
Speaker
pretending like the people that are collecting your product are not smart enough to handle it. I think it's so dumb because what I found is most of the time, the people that are collecting the product would do a better job managing the line than the people managing the line. I've always taken that approach. Because I've taken that approach, I feel like I've been able to leverage the strength of the community
00:32:09
Speaker
And so I think you'll see more of that, too. Yeah, I mean, look, we are definitely going to do some super limited edition stuff. And I'm going to try to figure out a way to include the community and stuff like that as well, so that I don't know how we'll do it. But if we did like a employee edition one day, we'll reserve one and make sure that, you know, some member of the community is the employee consumer of that one.
00:32:36
Speaker
I mean, I don't know yet. We'll see. Sometimes these things happen on the go. But again, when you manage a line closely, you have to give a little bit of room to spontaneity. Because again, that's what delights people. And it drives them nuts, but it also delights them. I was going to say, it makes it fun. It's such a level of attention to detail, too, that we as collectors look for. Totally.
00:33:05
Speaker
When Dave and I were at Toy Fair and we got the tour of the Jazzwares booth, we were fortunate enough to be in there when Kenny Omega and Adam Page were in there with their plastic likenesses and we were asking them questions about as they were holding their own figure.
00:33:25
Speaker
And it was clear too that not only are you letting the community in, but the personalities, the wrestlers themselves have a lot of input into the toys. Kenny was telling us in detail about how he suggested with a color, he's happy that the outfit fits the way that it does and that he can bend this way.
00:33:50
Speaker
How much consideration do you give to some of the personalities that are going into the product? Well, first of all, I just want to speak to AEW specifically. I have never seen an organization embrace the licensing partner and the collector community
00:34:16
Speaker
the way I've seen AEW do it. Cody and those guys get it big time. Like they just get it.
00:34:23
Speaker
They you've seen them promote on their show. They do commercials for us. We're going to be doing some really fun stuff with them very shortly where you see, you know, some it'll feel like old school throwback, uh, embracing of the product. And I think you kind of get a sense of what I'm talking about, but when you see it, it'll be like, remember the old LJ inner Hasbro spots. Like there's going to be some amazing things on the horizon, uh, in that regard, but they just get it.
00:34:51
Speaker
They know that the more their talent are attached to what's going on on the consumer product side, the more savvy the talent will be in terms of communicating with fans. I'd say we're all tied in. I don't know the inner workings in terms of very specifically, does each athlete get to weigh in?
Insights on UFC and Personal Collectibles
00:35:17
Speaker
But I will say that I think that we've had a tremendous amount of integration with the talent pool there. People seem very, very happy and I think it has a lot to do with the seats that they have at the table.
00:35:31
Speaker
Yeah, and it's it's obvious that they do care like that. That commercial that they had at the the pay-per-view that they had in the empty stadium was unbelievable. Like that was it was so cool to see a wrestling figure toy commercial like that at a major event. It felt like it had been forever. For sure.
00:35:50
Speaker
You know, even think of like the little bit of the bubbly set like that's. Oh, yeah. When how often do you see something like that? Down to like the, you know, it's the plates on the table. Well, we're going to be doing more of that, my friend. There's no doubt.
00:36:08
Speaker
So the one thing that we didn't mention about Toy Fair and we were not allowed to take photos of it was the little UFC display that you guys had up. Can we talk about that at all? Do you have any updates on that line?
00:36:25
Speaker
Yeah, and i'll actually break something with you on that so um, and I think that I think that again This is about respecting the collector community and this is about sort of like giving you a behind the scenes peek as to Decisions that are made so ufc wave one the scale of the figures are not in scale with the traditional
00:36:50
Speaker
wwe aw Scale it's not exactly scaled proportionally. They're more like five and a half inch and We are going to celebrate that because there's there are japanese style figures that are in that scale So we're going to be calling that like the beta wave or the the version zero wave And it will be the only wave that we do in that scale
00:37:17
Speaker
And it will be very limited edition in scope and in availability. And then after that, we're going to be able to go into wave one.
00:37:25
Speaker
with the more in scale to the traditional figures, it also gives us a little bit more flexibility in terms of tooling. Almost everything that we're doing is specifically for the character. But as you know, when you're developing human bodies, and especially when you're developing them more realistically, especially now versus the way we used to, they're a little bit more super heroic scale in size.
00:37:50
Speaker
that you can use parts and pieces and allows a much more efficient use across brands but yeah there's a little there's a little feed for you there we had something we haven't announced but it's something that i think will be fun and i want to give you the rationale as to why we did make that change in the first place
00:38:10
Speaker
So that update on UFC is incredible. We both loved the way that they looked. Like I said, we couldn't take photos of them. But we're excited because the cage looked great. The likenesses looked awesome. So very excited to see how that line develops. Oh, awesome. And you heard it here first in terms of the scale. And like I said, rationale and everything else, I hope that you
00:38:37
Speaker
Again, because when you see the beta wave and what we're celebrating, you'll know that it was you'll know why we made that switch later on. It's it's kind of one of those things where it's like the hint is kind of given is got the wheels turning a bit. But yeah, that's that's going to be cool. Yeah. So what the other thing that we like to ask that we generally wrap up with is what's the coolest thing in your collection and what's the weirdest thing in your collection?
00:39:10
Speaker
There's a lot of cool stuff. Again, I've been in a business that allowed me to have cool stuff for a long time. I think my coolest wrestling thing is probably the fact that I have the Warrior America that I think is the only one. It's a one of three, but one of them was given to the CEO and one of them was given to Warrior. I don't think either of those exist anymore.
00:39:36
Speaker
And so I'm actually I'm 99% sure that either exists so the one that I have is probably the only one and then my my Hogan America And seeing those together. It's just really cool So from a wrestling standpoint, I I will say I love those two items in terms of collecting in general every year I do a
00:40:06
Speaker
in a partner summit with Pokemon and Mr. Ishihara is one of the creators of Pokemon. And there's a golf match and I'm terrible at golf. And when I say terrible, I mean, like you've never seen someone as uncoordinated with golf as me. Like I am. Challenge accepted, man. Challenge accepted. I don't know. If you think you're bad, just imagine slightly worse and it's probably me.
00:40:33
Speaker
But so they never put me on the team with anybody that's looking to actually win. But at the end, they kind of raffle the individual posts, the flagpoles, the little fabric component that's at the top. It says Pokemon in the whole number and the partnership year. And I've been lucky. I've won the raffle twice. So I have two of the flags from these Pokemon partnership meetings.
00:41:03
Speaker
signed by mystery shihara and uh That is some though. I mean those are so cool. I'll have to show one on social media soon Um, it's one of my favorite things that I have for sure That's very incredible. Yeah, that's awesome Yeah, so I love that and then honestly there's there's so much there's so much where do I get like when I was a kid? Um, one thing that I haven't really gotten into but when I was a kid I wrote a thousand letters
00:41:32
Speaker
I was 16 years old And I didn't know what to do with my life Like I said, I grew up in Mississippi and Tennessee and I didn't have a real specific vision I just knew that I wanted to be successful And so I wrote a thousand letters to some of the most known and remarkable and achieved people In in the world and I received of the thousand letters I received like almost 200 of them 200 of them back and
00:42:01
Speaker
with answers so I have letters from mother Teresa and presidents and Massive, you know entertainment stars like Jimmy Stewart from back in the day. Oh, man. That's all they're shockingly cool Um, and I just i'll start sharing them too on my uh, my twitter and instagram
00:42:25
Speaker
Well, Jeremy, is there anything that you'd like to plug before we let you go for the evening? Where can people follow you? What do you want them to know about? Anything else that you wanted our audience to know?
Career Journey and Personal Philosophy
00:42:41
Speaker
Oh my gosh. What do I want you to know? I just want you to know I care and I want you to know that we're going to make mistakes, but when we do, we'll figure out a way to make them at least fun for the collector.
00:42:55
Speaker
And that you know will always be forthright in terms of what's going on Especially now because right now again Like if if and again, I'm not saying because I'm not in the background of what Mattel does or doesn't do I work there 20 years ago? But if you see a variant of baby Yoda, and that's probably one of the biggest items they've done in decades It's a real good indicator as to how challenging manufacturing is in COVID years and
00:43:24
Speaker
where you really even can't have your designer sitting there at the factory, which on a launch is like a mind number. But yeah, that's what I want you to know. I want you to know that we're going to be forthright. We're going to tell you the way it is. We're going to do things that probably make you happy most of the time and occasionally piss you off. But we're going to be accessible. And so whether it's on
00:43:51
Speaker
Halo, Micro Machines, Fortnite, Roblox, AEW, UFC, and so on, Pokemon, and so on and so forth. But interestingly enough, the biggest thing might be the launch of a preschool property that I signed called Cocomelon. And you know Cocomelon if you have like a two-year-old, but you don't know Cocomelon if you have like a four-year-old.
00:44:22
Speaker
Eventually, you see ratings and you're like, wow, that show did a 1.2 or whatever. But Cocomelon last week did 1.1 billion views on social media. Oh my God. Yeah. And that's crazy. That's one of the coolest things about toys and being in the toy business is that you really get to chase crazy, crazy dreams. You never know what's going to be next.
00:44:50
Speaker
We went from, when we started this company, we went from being a secondary licensee on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their relaunch to having Girl Scouts oven, cookie maker oven, to bringing back Teddy Ruxpin, to being the global partner in Pokemon, to being the global partner in Pokemon and Cabbage Patch Kids and Micro Machines and Halo and Cocomelon, AEW.
00:45:17
Speaker
To selling the company and still retaining an ownership share that we could then drive one of the top ten toy companies in the world And that's what we're doing with jazzwares So I guess what I just want you guys to take away from this is that? Anything that you dream if you really really really go after it and you stick to it and you get your ass kicked That you could achieve it
00:45:41
Speaker
But it takes a tremendous amount of stick to it. You've got to stick to it because it's going to try to shake you. It's like riding a buck in Bronco and you have to stay on it. And if it kicks you off, you've got to figure out how to get back on. And that's that is the key to success. Follow your passions. And then I try to everything you can to achieve them. And if you do, you've got to give back. And I think I'm in the give back mode right now, as as like I said before.
00:46:11
Speaker
Well, certainly. Thank you for everything that you're doing to give back to the community. Thank you for taking the time to be here. And you guys heard it here first. Stick to your dreams. Never give up. Jeremy said so. That's right. That's right. And if you if you guys if anybody's interested in finding me on Twitter, it's at Jeremy Com. And if you're looking to find me on Instagram, it's at Jeremy Padour. And there you go.
00:46:40
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you so much, Jeremy. We appreciate it. Great chatting, and to the collector community, thank you so much. Looking forward to great years ahead.
Closing Remarks and Social Media Connections
00:46:51
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.
00:47:08
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.
00:47:31
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.