Originally posted by MuppetQuilter
I don't think it needs articulation. I wouldn't turn articulation down, of course, but it would definitely up the price and require a different grade of PVC (is grade the correct term?).
What I do NOT want to see if Palisades skimping on the paint and sculpts. I will pay extra for top notch paint jobs and good, interesting sculpts. That sort of quality is far more important to me than articulation.
Personally i think it does need articulation. The real hardcore fans might be able to stomach it, but the toy world seems to have moved on from non-articulated stuff. The whole vibe i get from Palisades is that they want to break the mould so to speak on action figures - top anything thats been done. You just couldn't do that with a non-articulated figure.
As to the paint jobs. You might be ok paying a premium price for higher quality paint jobs and sculpts but the question is more whether the 'average joe' would. These need to appeal to a broader range than just us few hardore fans - they need to be economically priced while looking good, so that basically the line will get bought. If you look at the Simpsons mini figures pictures i think you'll probably find that what they are doing for $10 would be pretty acceptable if Palisades were to come out with that for the Muppets. They have a high paint job, articulation, look great and are in very interesting themes and poses - i don't think theres any kind of need to top that because there can't be THAT much to add, it'd just mean you'd be pricing the sets away from the mass market.
Originally posted by MuppetQuilter
About the Mega line. As I understand it, Ken did look into the voice chips idea (maybe for the regular figures and not specifically for the big ones, but the point is the same). The licensing costs make this impossible at the present time. I know Simpsons has it. But Henson is well known for charging a bit more than the going rate for things-- perhaps it is just cheaper to get the rights with Simpsons. Also, is the company that makes Simpsons figures biggger than Palisades? I think it is. It is possible a larger company can more easily manage the up front out of pocket expenses of such licensing deals. Palisades is a pretty small company and they definitely put quality first, so they may just not have the capital to do things on that scale.
Yes Ken did originally look into the voice chips for the regular line and that was the end result. However with the mega line, you basically have a little more money to play about with because the product is selling at a premium price. Currently some of that money is going into extra articulation but the regular figures already have many more points of articulation than anything else on the market so it's questionable whether any more is needed - certainly a few extra aren't going to make a massive impact on the figure that would actually be noticeable to anyone other than real hardcore figure collectors. What i'm saying is that if they scaled back on that there might be the resources to get the voices.
Ken mentioned that when he looked into getting the voices he was told he would have to go back and pay the original puppeteers (and i guess Jim's estate). This seems like a mix-up to me though because I think that Henson thought being a classic anniversary line Palisades wanted to sample clips from the original shows in which case they would have to pay the original puppeteers and rights owners for the original shows like has been said. There is a way around this though - you just do exactly what they did with Muppets Racemania (The playstation game). This was produced by a fairly small independant games company and was just distributed through a larger one so they didn't really have that much money either. What they did was use the current puppeteers to record voice clips fresh, and for the characters with puppeteers no longer at Henson they got the current ones to recreate the voice and people like Bill Baretta did a great job doing Rowlf, we've now got Eric Jacobson who could do Fozzie and Miss Piggy. Henson have the new studios and are more than equipped to do this so it's something that Palisades might possibly be able to lease out.
Depending or not on how the current puppeteers are on contract you may well just have to pay them a standard voiceover fee, and as for Henson, since the ownership changed i think you'll find them very much more accomodating as to what they'll license out and for how much - the company and EMTV has very little money right now which is why they've relaxed things for the anniversary and we've seen Muppet lingerie, it's now cheaper and easier to use the Muppets so companies are now doing so. I just hope there IS a way around all this because it would really give people a solid reason to buy the larger figures and if they had the voices and tons of videoclips for Racemania then someones already managed to do it successfully before without breaking the bank.
Saying all that - LOL - i repsect your opinion totally Annika - just wanted to debate it and maybe explain things a bit clearer incase there is some hope !
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