Ask Ken at Palisades

[Luke]

Hey MM

Actually I more or less agree with you - it IS peoples fault that more people didn't email Ken and ask for a 2nd run on the Dr Teeth - but then half a dozen (thats 6 in the UK, not sure about the states) people just wanted it then thats practically peanuts for Palisades to have sorted out. They would have known they had buyers for the figures so why not take half a dozen out of a case before the show and keep them aside. If people had the chance to email in but didn't bother and then complained after that then tough - they had their chance and no dice !

I totally respect what you say, but i am probably of the mind that while i don't think we have a right to access exclusive figures, it would be very nice of Palisades and the right thing to do. While people may be happy they get to help with the market research you also have to understand that the larger companies pay vast sums of money to agencies to go out and find fans like us and get our input - Palisades are getting it for free. I realise that there are all sorts of legal deals in place with people like TRU or EB on the bigger exclusives, but i would have liked to have seen half a dozen hardcore fans surprised by an email saying they can buy the Dr Teeth repaint - even as a PR excercise it'd be fantastic and i'm sure Palisades have a lot more leg room to be generous with the repaints made for the comic book conventions.

A note on the shipping. I did mention that Palisades have a reputation for being late, but i do also realise that as a smaller company they must also be dependant on third part companies and have smaller resources than the big players so i'm not particularly laying the blame at anybodys doorstep - i'm just not suprised that they are late - but most are really beautiful figures and i'm sure well worth the wait !

 

[MM-III]

Luke, I agree it would've been nice... although according to Ken, it was 12 people who responded, not just 6... that might have been a little too many to set aside from the show... and yet not enough to justify a second run.

Oh well, like I said... next time maybe we'll take a call for emails more seriously. Being a completist takes some effort, but an email is not unreasonable.

 

[Zack the Dog]

MM-III

I think Luke said that 6 out of the 12 were people in the UK. Well atleast it wasn't the classic long haried Miss Piggy Fig;-)


Zack) Rowlf the,Dog.

 

[Luke]

Sorry Zack, what i meant was that half a dozen is 6 in the UK but i had actually read Ken's post wrong and took it for half a dozen when it was actually a dozen (12). I wasn't making any statement on where people were located and sorry to everyone for the confusion.

Anyway i guess being 6 or 12 it just wasn't meant to be, people should take more notice and bother to email in future otherwise they've got no chance outside of Ebay. Seeing as there are only around 250 members it would have been impossible to get enough support for a 500 item second run anyhow. I was just hoping (not particularly for myself) that possibly it would be nice of Palisades in future to see what they can do about this problem if it is just a small scale thing, maybe in advance of the shows. We shall see !

In all faireness to them though - they did at least offer to see if there was enough interest in a second run and that response rate is very poor - i guess seeing them at $70 at Ebay has sparked peoples enthusiasm ! ;-)

 

[ResidentLilly]

Wow, lots of activity today. This is a long post, so bear with me.

Seems the debate over exclusives will always rage. And you know, everybody is entitled to an opinion or course of action. If someone decides not to collect a line because it isn't easy to get all the pieces, that's their choice.

I see it as a ****** if you do, ****** if you don't situation that every company gets accused of. If we made the stuff easily available to all who wanted them, we would be sitting on a bunch of inventory when people start to complain about the fact that "hey this isn't the REAL Dr. Teeth". If we make something like that limited then we get hit for being A-holes for not allowing everybody a decent shot at completing their collection.

It's a difficult position to be in, especially as both a collector and as a person who influences the outcome of these exclusive releases. Hey, I would love to have this year's Celebration II figure of George Lucas in an X-wing pilot gear, but I am not willing to pay 200 bucks for it. Does this mean that the rest of my Star Wars collection is worthless? Personally I don't think it does, and the search will continue for me and one day I will perhaps aquire it and perhaps not. Searching and dealing and trading for stuff like that makes me feel alive as a collector. If it were easy for me to complete that collection I would probably get bored, but that's just me. Same goes for Pin Pal Moe, yellow Daredevil, and on and on and on.

Even so, I think that at the very least we have tried to be fair about all of this. It was put out on this (and other) forums that people should write in and let us know if they wanted it. We got twelve e-mails. Why didn't we give away 12 to those people? Because we don't have twelve to give. SO who gets the shaft? Would you want to make that decision? The point was that if there were enough requests I was going to go back and put another order in at the factory. Those requests weren't large enough to cover the minimum factory order. Again, ****** if you do or don't. If we had given away to SOME of the people on that list from what we have left, then some people would be thrilled and other people would hate us for that.

Fact is, no matter what I try to do to accomodate anyone and everyone or no matter how much Palisades as a company (and I believe in the company as being a "good" organization, with a leaning towards being as accomodating as it can) does, we will always have people gripe at us and never be able to please everyone. That's the sad fact about being in a business where there is so much PASSION. And I would not like it if there WERE no passion, or dissenting opinions, or people who thought I was a jerk or people who thought I was doing good.

Anyway, there were a few things I wanted to address specifically:

Now, if I can't have them all, I don't want any of them. I also know many other collectors who have given up on this line. These exclusive may be the death of this line. So, thank you for reading this, and I hope you really think about it.

And I do think about it. There was a guy last week who e-mailed me about this and we had some discussions about it. He also decided not to collect the line because of Dr. Teeth, and I respected his wishes. He gave the "evil toy company" take and after we talked about it a while I think he really suprised me because he decided to collect it after all and he thanked me for even having responded to his e-mail. The guy was cool. But I do respect this person's decision to not collect something. I love the freedom this country allows and it is totally his call. Nobody should fault him for it. I don't.

That's why people are collectors and it's also why you often see people sell their entire collection once it's finished. They live for the challenge, not necessarily the end result.
Anyway, your reasons are your own... but I'm not sure why you criticize palisades for doing what every single other company in the business does on practically every line.

I agree with the first line of this section, as it echoes what I said above. I love the thrill of collecting Star Wars. If I ever do get my hands on a mint on card Boba Fett, which will probably be the last one I get, I think I will then be very bored with collecting.

BUT, he the other guy can criticize if he wants too...I would much rather have him say it than stay quiet. Better that way. But thanks for watching my back.

To be continued in next post...

 

[ResidentLilly]

And the beat goes on (had to break this novel into two posts...couldn't post it.)

Here at MC is where Ken & Co have been doing their research and getting heaploads of help with the line for months and months now. I'm not saying that Palisades are totally to blame for this but - how tricky would it have been to have saved around SIX (that is how many people wrote in) figures out of FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR and sold them via mail order for these people who have contributed to the 'Ask Ken' threads. The answer here is not very - they're only a small toy company, all they had to do was get a customer service rep to stick a figure in an envelope ! If Palisades would have done this and SteveJ would had still been complaining then fine, you can turn round and say he had his chance to write in and he didn't so thats tough, instead he's now another dissapointed customer.

Luke, you and I have fought about stuff before, and I handled it WAY wrong the last time so let me try not to this time. I respect your opinion...more than that I AGREE with it. As a matter of fact, it has already been done. Some of the folks who helped out with stuff ARE getting a Dr. Teeth, although I don't think those are the folks who wrote the e-mails. That was decided after weighing what each person contributed to the cause. One could argue that more people should be getting it, and it is a valid argument. But there are only so many to give and the people who sent the most in as far as help are getting the hook-up.

Hey wait a minute - lay off Steve J, he's more than entitled to his opinion, is it that anybody with any kind of view that Palisades isn't the best toy company in the world just gets crapped on around here - well i've got news for you - look around the net at action figure collecting boards, there have been plenty of complaints in the past about poor delivery times, shipping dates never met or release dates moved etc etc - I think the main thing people can agree on is that they are capable of making some pretty decent looking figures, not all though - look at the normal piggy figure, it's just a snout with a body - she's a hog !

I agree here too. I think the hair up Piggy is the weakest link (sausage link...snort!). And I also agree that people who dissent tend to get piled on. But not all the time...and some times I think the harshest responses are directed towards people who start off harsh...but that's the internet. A constant battleground it seems.

Your comment about our rep for missing delivery dates is irrefutable. Cause it's all true. We have blown ship dates on every line we have put out. Some have been the fault of the factory, some the licensor, some ours. Heck, some of them I blame myself TOTALLY for. I tend to be the harshest critic of the product and have delayed it myself because it wasn't good enough.

I can recall last year having HUGE shipping problems. A lot of people on the boards have complained about it. They are certainly allowed. But none of them will ever know what it's like to be on this side of the fence. Do they think we enjoy shipping late or cancelling items? You might think they did the way some people have gone medievel on our...you get the point.

In any case, I always am trying to figure out ways to get closer to the target date. Muppets Series One is by far the closest, having shipped about 2-3 weeks late. I'll take that over four months any day of the week. (One line last year was so beefed over by the factory it was four months late. What a horror show...)

I agree with you Luke & SteveJ
and another thing we all should make wagers that the figures won't be out on time again, I hope they come out on time but I dought it because EB games will probly change the date again and this will be the 3rd or 4th time!
I ask Ken,question about a week & half a go Ken still haven't answer my question about Animal and about the other figuers
That bugs me!

There have been a lot of questions I miss from time to time. Sorry about that. I do this when I am home for the most part (participate on this forum I mean) and stuff slips by. My fiancee gets a little miffed when I spend too much time working or playing on the net (rightfully so). But if your question involved shipping and store release dates, I don't know that stuff. I only know when it leaves the factory in Asia. All stores have their own distribution networks and they get them through at their own paces. If that's not the question then tell me what it is...sometimes I need a reminder. E-mail me directly if you feel I am missing a post. I will eventually get to any question as I am able.

Ken probably didn't answer cause he doesnt know. Once the figures leave the warehouse Palisades no longer controls them. They are put on a truck and sent to a distrubution center where they have to get inventoried and sorted and repacked then shipped again. All this takes time! The fact that EB has changed their ship dates is because they always get their dates wrong.

Don't know if that's true about EB, but the first sentence might be. After it leaves HK, I don't know anything about where it is. Outta my hands.

Like I mentioned in a post earlier in this thread, maybe if the board started a petition of sorts, and the majority of the board signed it, requesting the Dr. Teeth variant, then maybe there's a possibility that Palisades will sell that and the upcoming beaker via the site.

You could start your petition. But it might not matter at this point. Here's why. It is still a business. A petition is not a guaranteed sale or promise to buy. Let's say you start a petition. Everybody and their Aunt Petunia signs it. Some buy, some don't. We have an inventory problem. Lose money. Bad thing. See what I mean?

That's the whole thing I mentioned above. If we do that we would have people praising us for being cool and we run the risk of sitting on a bunch of product that WE would have to sell on E-bay! If we don't do it, we get a bad rep. While a petition would be interesting, it isn't something that can result in a production run, unless it is HUGE. And even then it's no guarantee. When I suggested the e-mail thing we were actually saving the data and we were going to get order commitments and all that. A petition is like an opinion poll. Great to get a general direction or feel...not as great on production analysis.

In all faireness to them though - they did at least offer to see if there was enough interest in a second run and that response rate is very poor - i guess seeing them at $70 at Ebay has sparked peoples enthusiasm ! ;-)

The 70 dollar e-bay thing is bad, but I say that it is up to you guys to be patient. Don't buy it at 70 dollars. Don't let the scalpers succeed in price gouging like that. The thing that makes that not work is that someone out there is gonna pay 70. They shouldn't, but who can stop them? If we could just take that away from the scalpers we would have a lot more power as collectors. That's my two cents from the collector side of my brain.

Whew..this was long. Sorry. But I wanted to get to all the stuff that seemed like it really needed gettin' to.

Ken

 

[gorry]

hey ken. i'm gathering all the information i can on these figures and they look great so far.i'm lucky because my mom got me a dr.teeth repaint.i may not get all the exclusives but i'll try and i'm not gonna stop collecting just because of that.just wanted to know,i read in toyfare magazine that fozzie would come with chuckie.i don't know if someone said he will somewhere down the line or if someone already asked this question,but that was one of my favorite skits.

 

[Luke]

Hi Ken,

I totally see your point, and agree with you totally (for once). I'm glad to hear you are helping out those that have been helping and contributing, and i'm sure doing all you can. Thats all we can ask - and I hope people take you seriously next time when you ask people to email in. Good luck !

 

[ResidentLilly]

Luke,
Who's the foxy mama in your image under your name?

As for the question about Chuckie from gorry, he was GOING to come with Chuckie, but we found we were not able to fit him in the SKU for a lot of reasons. Budget, time and a few other reasons. I am thinking Chuckie will come out some time. At least I hope so. The current Fozzie will have funny nose/glasses, microphone, rubber chicken, hat and logo base.

Ken

PS...Apparantly TRU has received their shipment. That's a rumor, but that's what I heard. That means they (Series One) could be on TRU shelves in the next 10-14 days or less.

 

[gorry]

yeah i knew chuckie got the boot for now i just wanted to know the reason,thanks!