Jumbo Popy, reissue ????

[lexcars2007]

Hello all RJ'ers...I was wondering why no one has every done a reissue of any Jumbo ..except Voltron that I know of. I see all the amazing work Rj'ers do with customs, like Bourno and Kitser and so many others. I love the way all those jumbos were made so many years ago, and wonder why has there never been any villains made Was there a reason ? The toys were made for children right, so why only the hero ? I know the toys had problem with the fear " My kids will shoot their eyes out, or maybe some got hurt with the shooting fists. But why can someone get together with NERF and make a safer version for kids to buy now ? My kids love them, and any time their friends or neighbors come over, the very first toy they go for is " DRAGUN" and then all the other shoguns " I don't have any POPY yet, or I know that would be the first toy grabbed !!!!! My boys take the smaller 5" Shoguns everywhere they go, and people are always asking me where can they get them for their kids....because little Joey is over there crying, he wants the toy so bad I alwaystell them to try ebay, but when they ask the cost...well looks like their kid will never have that toy. I feel Mattel could reissue them at a better price, lets be real, how much would it actually cost to make Mazinga, or any other Jumbo Material cost less than 5.00, labor 35.00 tops..O.K. actually it should a lot less, considering it cost 11.95 for a new shogun in 1979....I once talk with a high up, from mattel, who said it cost .03 cents to make 1 barbie doll...So how much would it actually cost for plastic and some paper decals I have been sketching the Villains from Starvengers, and Gaiking, Daimos, Grendizer and such, so as to create the bad guys, that were never built. Now how do I make the prototype, to show to the big to companies like Mattel, Miracleproduction..etc ? And does anyone have any input on this, villains that need to be made...and not just in the jumbos, but in the smaller diecast versions. Honestly I would rather pay 25.00 for a diecast toy that will last forever, than buy junk ( like what is made today ) for my kids. And I'm sure not the only parent, parents who grew up with these toys would either buy them for their kids, because they loved the toys when they were little, or just buy the dang toy for their self because it brings back childhood memories !!! So please throw out any ideas suggestions or hate mail......I will try to post some sketches I have, right now I am working on the first bad guy from Starvengers......Also the reissues should have their correct colors ;D ;D ;D ;D Thank you all

[1oldrobot]

heya! actually....there were reissues, i guess, if you count the unifive almost duplicates of gaiking, gm, mz, and what they did with garada. as for bad guys, there are the original popy 9 ir 10 bad guys that came out waaaaaay back when. they were limited in number and not the scope of the series. the reason why, and i never see it mentioned on RJ, is that in older school japan they are superstitious about making idols of bad guys. as for shooting kids eyes out, there needs to be more of it. in japan, frivolous lawsuits are practically nil. it was the mattel people who peed in their pants when some idiot kid shot a raydeen fist down his throat and choked to death. me being an american who used to feel entitled to a free ride, split my head open skateboarding in the subway in japan about 17 years ago. i filed a lawsuit. went to court. two judges laughed as they asked me "now what do you think you want from us again? did you see the signs that read to act responsibly in the subway? if you cant read the signs, get out of japan." i fell in love with that sort of thinking at that moment and was glad i split my head open, because i deserved it. a few of us up here are working on customs as i type. be patient for a few weeks and if what makes it to this board catches on, there will be more.

[1oldrobot]

had another beer and my browser is still open so ill elaborate some. repro'ing is in equal parts easy as it is difficult. it breaks down to how much work folks are willing to do, which proportionately translates to a ratio of shut in vs. social life. beer! more beer! things dont get done!

also, working out the method of doing a repro takes some figuring out. ive been experimenting a lot with vacuum forming, and though it is easy, fast, and cost effective, it is not a cure all method. working with individual molds and cold casting and roto casting requires a person to do ALL the work. someone has to physically rotate the mold carefully for 15 minutes until resin starts to go off.

blow molding insnt really an option for any of us, and it is the best way to make these types of forms. blow mold machines, ready to go with no problems are between 7,000-20,000 USD, you need facilities where you can heat your PE and have adequate ventilation. to make the mold itself for each piece is hugely expensive.

maybe if we all united forces here on the forum and collectively started a toy company, wed have just enough talent and money to get the attention of a big toy or film company that would cry "proprietary!" and sue us to no mercy and wed be back here talking about JM's like hank hill and his buddies say "yep" while sipping beer.

no one really knows the limits of patience of the japanese proprietors of this stuff. japan hasnt been completely taken over by corporate mergers like america has, so some of the old guys who started the scene are still around and maybe appreciate fandom, rather than punish it and order legal teams to squeeze blood from turnips. putting that first foot forward and testing a tolerant giant is kinda scary to try.

personally, id love to start a toy company in a down economy just for fun. small enough to close the doors and pull the curtains if anyone comes around asking questions, but big enough to crank out molded toys that are completely finished to the box.

after some of my projects, i figured out it would be pretty hard to do it all alone. JM collectors are few and far in between, so to actually have a central space where people could come and go and build stuff would be hard to do.

thats why i became fascinated with 3D printers. i told one of my artist friends about my JM collection and how id like to make some. it went through the grapevine and a guy with a fancy shmancy 3D printers emailed me asking if i wanted to try his machine to build pieces.

it turns out this would be REALLY expensive to do. maybe in a few years things will have evolved enough to sending files to each other. "VOLTES V" "GETTER LIGER" etc.

but making them from scratch is pretty fun. not easy.

i dont think toy companies care about jumbo stuff too much, and traditionally the lines are not successful. they are more of a supporting series done in promotion of something bigger, like a new tv show, etc. merchandising experts are the central decision makers at toy and merchandising companies, and novelty is by far outweighed by trendy/disposable.

aside from megazords, JM's are very much things of the past.

ive also seen adults and kids alike freak out over my cool toy collection. but i think thats novelty freak out, and not trendy freak out. both are short lived spending sprees, but i think theyve got it figured out to where disposable crap is more long lasting in the marketplace.

i also dont think japanese toy companies would be too interested in talking with non japanese designers. i sort of understand because appreciating the designs and toys is one thing, but being able to see where the flavor and market is going is probably best suited for the locals. thats a very politically correct way of describing it.

if someone has enough guts and an assembly line, though, that person could make anything theyd want cost effectively.

[lexcars2007]

I had seen some work done with the 3-d printer style, great work, but yes it's not cheap. Well then lets talk cost, how much would it cost to build a full jumbo from scratch..just the material, now how much would it cost if you bought the materials by the truck load ? The more you do, the cheaper the cost....right ? I found a company that does blow mold injection fairly cheap, the real cost is the molds....But thats getting too far ahead, first thing needed is a prototype, But who to build first And those Uni-five jumbos are pretty sweet, but the price tag......

[devoidofemotions]

unifive have tried and failed...and that is sad because i heard the next in line is combattler V, and they stopped the production because they are losing money. Something, somewhere is wrong.
Super7 is now trying with some succes I think because they are trying to put in newer characters like star wars and transformers into the classic JM style. Initially I WAS LIKE WHAT?! but when i saw the storm troopers...i was liked it. So i think their concept might work because now the circle is bigger..it involve not only JM fans, but star wars and transformers fan...who knows Super7 might introduce a marvel line...IRON MAN HULK BUSTER JM?
I wish them luck ;D

[1oldrobot]

prototypes - i do some prototype sculpts for work, but that doesnt really carry over 100% to making toys. ive got one in the works that is sort of finished. for the learning curve, i have made a "reject" stockpile of different stock pieces like fists, legs, etc. i saw some custom fan art in one of the sections of this site and came across some really incredible work. i think if there was a guaranteed means to repro, a lot more people would come out of the woodwork to sculpt.

as for cost, im still trying to pin that down. materials alone after a basic assembly line is set up will be about 20-30 bucks. BUT someone has to assemble it, clean it up, etc. im not to the point where i can calculate a start-to-finish cost per item basis. those last details will at least double the base cost.

if i could blow mold it, it would be far less expensive after the fancy machine was all paid for.

[lexcars2007]

So without labor cost 80.00 tops ? and your not a large corporation .....Then why the hell does a large company need to charge 200.00 for 1 item ? Mattel made them in 1979 for 14.00 and I bet they made a ton of profit !!!!My dream is to see them being sold in large chain stores, at a price most can afford. The new jumbos are great for collectors, but what kid wants a toy that don't shoot a fist or missile ? But maybe we can get together and make a great product for RJ'ers and all other JM fans ?

[mikedeco]

The problem is not the price of the materials itself, the problem is everything around.

First if you want to do an existing character, there's copyright on it, and I'm pretty sure that if you want to redo an existing toy, there will be copyright on the original toy itself.
So, once you have pay those fees, you have the price for the prototype, then the molds, then the materials, the paint and the stickers, the handling of all that, the boxes, and the shipping.

Once you add all this, just divide by the number of pieces you want to produce and you will fall of your chair when you see the price per item.

Like said before, U5 didn't succeed with this and the retail price was more or less ok, it's just that it's a so small market that it's hard to sell enough to balance the price to something attracting. It's true that the more it's cheap, the more you will sell but even cheap you will not sell millions of Jumbos today. Evaluating the market and the amount of pieces you can sell is super hard. Just look at the Toynami stuff, they've only make 500 of them but you can still find lots of them on ebay and 500 is not a lot if you consider this number of toy collectors out there. Ok, maybe those are not a good example as they're pretty sh*tty, but there's other example like that out there.

I've even try to get a quote for some replica in a really small production run, and for only 25 pieces, it was around 20.000$, this didn't include the paint, copyright and all the rest, so even if you go underground and do it without the rights, you still end up with something roughly at 1000$ for a piece without any profit and none of the hours spend on it in the calculations, add an extra 250$ for each piece for that (unless you do it for glory and don't need money to live), and now the challenge is to find 25 people ready to buy a piece at 1250$, not so easy. You might find more if the price goes lower but like I was saying before, unless it's going around 200$ to 300$ for a piece you will not sell that much, and to go around those number it require a big production and lots of cash in advance.

[lexcars2007]

Those reissues? First of all, did you ever see any in toys R us, or Wal-mart ? any lo9cal big name toy store ? I did not, making 500 pieces, is just stupid if your trying to make profit. because the molds have already been made, and the materials are cheap. so why not make 50,000 of them, and push them in every store out there...Why, greed, because when they only make 500, the value can only go up..Look how many Gundam models are sold every day ? thousands ? millions ? And if they made a Jm gundam, they would sell just as many, if the price was 45.00 each...but they wont do that for fear of flooding the market. Take a few awesome pieces of your collection to wal-mart, put it where everyone can see them, and put a list there for people to sign if they want to buy one ? you would be suprised how many names get wrote down. EVERY singe kid that my boys bring over, goes crazy wanting to play with them.. And if the marked would be flooded with reissues, then the value of the originals would drop. As long as the reissues looked exactly the same as the originals. Just my thoughts,

[lexcars2007]

I got a great test, Start a new thread, that says you have reissues of a very rare Popy jumbo, the box, the toy everything is exact as the original one, and they are selling for 50.00 each..see how many people ask to buy one...I bet more than 25, and there are not that many people on this site, broadcast that around the world, then how many people want it ???Millions ?

[1oldrobot]

maybe 200 would be interested? i think what youre saying is "marketing." hugely expensive. test market, potential failed run. every business looks at it this way. they have to make a case against new toy lines versus greeting new ideas with open arms.

as for limited numbers of toys to 500, i think those toynami releases were 300 bucks direct when they came out.

for a small to medium sized company, if their budget is 20K for molds and prototypes, then the math is pretty simple.

500 x 300 = $150,000 minus cost. they did 2 lines simultaneously, so thats 300,000 USD in sales, and maybe 25% goes away to costs and overhead. it was a pipe dream to make a quarter of a million bucks.

line sucked. totally failed. im sure the folks at toynami still roll in bed at night with recurring nightmares of jumbo voltrons falling face down. good. thats what they get.

maybe they still broke even on that line. but hardly a success for a business.

i think you may be over estimating the demand out there and just how much people will really "get it" when they see quality japanese toys. i think most people are blinded by walmart quality of just about anything and everything and "fine dining" is frozen pizza. you can try to teach an uninterested part of population about this stuff, but i dont think theyd worry too much. before a store stocks a product, they ask the supplier "who are you and how many people out there know your product?"

lines like "new, revolutionary, groundbreaking, and high quality" used to mean something. the new corporate culture has turned those into very bad words in a retail environment.

i love jumbos, too, but most people do not like what we collect. taking people from their silly batman movies to yelling "habunai da yo, gurendaizaa! garada ga majingaa o bakugeki shimsh*ta! chikusho!" while playing with jumbos, no matter how much marketing, is probably not going to happen. some of these characters we love are effectively long dead in the realm of kids entertainment. and no one around here in the USA has a clue as to what they are or where theyre from.

"that there a voltron? you got lots of voltrons, man." is a typical response i get when non artistic people are let into my studio via my friends inviting people over.

thats probably the opinion of most people. they can sleep at night without a dangard ace. i cannot.

[devoidofemotions]

Such is the irony of vintage collecting or antique collecting?
When the item is re-issued in huge quantity, the value drops and suddenly the item is not perceived as valuable anymore. This is my observation especially on the SOCs..when bandai decide to re-issue because of popularity, for eg the grendizer spazer deluxe set...suddenly many people are in fact disappointed and lost interest instantly and no confidence in future SOC launches. THis is what happened in Singapore. A very good example are the fewtures when the artist passed away, the value shot up because it is dead stock.

Personally , I still like the real vintage played with feel, especially when the box comes with really scribblings played by child, vintage tapes on the boxes, it makes me feel OH THIS IS A FOSSIL .

haha

[lexcars2007]

You have to remember one thing ! What Joe worker wants to pay 250.00 for a toy that their kid might break in 5 days ?? No one... Toynami made 10,000.00 from their Go lions, buy making 500 of them, if they made 10,000 of them and sold them for 60.00 each....600,000.00 big difference. cost to build one, if they sold for 250.00 ea. then the cost was less than 20.00 for everything, thats 230.00 profit, 230.00 times 600,000 = 138 million....my math seems better than theirs...and who bought the Go lions ? toy stores..wrong, it was comic book stores, or private dealers, who read they were for sale on the internet.. it cost .03 cents to make 1 barbie doll..How much does Staples sell the power adapter for an I pad for ? 25.00, I bought one from Ebay for 5.36 shipped, and they made a profit. so it might cost 2 dollars to build one.I think mattel or Popy need to wake up, pull out their old molds, and start putting their great toys on the shelves or every toy store around the world..not comic book shops, or model shops, but Target, Wal-mart Toys r Us etc....I'm working with a large Comany that deals with Mattel to issue such a toy, but I'm trying to put out the villains first ? maybe it will fly, maybe not ?

[1oldrobot]

nah, wont fly. and i think it costs more than .03 cents to make a barbie doll. maybe the plastic material base costs that much when purchased in huge quantity, but i still dont think it can be done nearly that cheaply. it may cost .03 cents to open the mold on a per item basis.

the $250 toy that joe blow buys and breaks after a week is an xbox360. hugely successful, even during the hardware failure era of its first 2 years on the market. marketing is the real push and a lot of the real cost, not the greatness of the product speaking for itself.

thats where kardashians and justin bibblers come from. zero quality and tons of hype marketing.

if youre working with a big company on this kind of endeavor, keep in mind, the guy who issued all the Unifive jumbos was promptly fired and forgotten due to his willingness to put the company in jeopardy with his unclear views of their corporate objectives.

unifives werent too expensive when they came out. comic shops, etc. are a must. thats the geek market in the USA and other places that arent japan. in japan, youll see this stuff in geek shops more than you will at izumiya or takashimaya department stores (though takashimaya has a pretty good high end toy section). i do believe the unifive series was at toys r us in japan.

specialty market stuff has to remain in specialty market outlets.

i dont have high aspirations for my custom jumbo jobs. i hope people like the sculpts and that i am able to make a quality toy folks will identify with. ive seen the jumbo market proven to fail 3x in my lifetime. the market has been tested, the data is there.

jumbos turned sour for mattel. i dont see them doing back flips when someone brings up jumbos and mentions how cool the bad guys are. and i really hope to not have to hear another japanese character name get mangled by someone in a comic book or toy store here.

a few weeks ago when i was toy hunting i mentioned garada to a "hardcore geek."

"whadja call it, hyuck hyuck hyuck!" dork had been calling it GaRayDa. might as well have called it "Laredo."

id get rid of all my jumbos and japanese toys if civilian football watchers stocked up on reissues.

i dont think theres any easy way around this one, my friend. its a collectors market because it certainly aint no picnic for manufacturers.

[lexcars2007]

dammit...I'm ass deep in this project.......I got a few EX Mattel workers, that started their own company, to make some prototypes, They don't seem to be too worried about copyrights they said they will even do any JM I give them, makes me wish I had a Robot factory BF !!!

[lexcars2007]

I understand about the need for comic book shops, but retail is retail, you need a store every child in the world goes in, on a regular basis. I have 3 kids, 8, 5, and 4. When we go toy shopping at our local Toys R US, they don't care if the toy they see, is in a show they watched...they love this phinnias and ferb...something like that, and they won't even look at the toy line, my one boy loves CARS (lightning McQueen ) and he will not watch the movie... If a kid see's an awesome toy they want it..You guys are looking at this as a collector...I look at this as a Father of 3.....All 3 of my kids watch Yo gabba gabba...but wouldnt look twice at their toy line, however a lot of kids will, but what is the ratio ? Take some of your Jumbos, out to your local mall, and see what the KIDS reaction is..and don't tell their parents what you paid, just say you can get them for 60.00 online....a lie, but that not the point.

[1oldrobot]

looks like you passed the jumbo bug on to the kids. i think i see some future collectors in the making.

[lexcars2007]

Big time, They play with the every day, I have to threaten them, with selling their (soldiers) to get them to stop playing with them, and go outside ..Soldiers, is what my 5 yr old calls them, he always has me on ebay looking for new ones to buy..and of course all the good ones, are way way way out of my price range...they even take them out in the yard to play..then all the neighborhood kids see this, and are asking to take all the other ones out also !!! It's awesome seeing 7 kids in the yard, playing with them, brings back childhood memories. This all started, because my Mum didn't throw out my Shoguns , I had Raydeen and Dragun. and when the kids would go to visit, they would get out to play with...now mine took a beating, I even stabbed Dragun with a knife ? So I told the kids, I would sell them, and get better ones.....well I'm still getting them, I have all but Diamos, and Rodan, in the Shoguns..2 mazingas 2 Godzilla, a tetsujin 17 and a Italian Space Hero, mint in box( No touch) and a Grendizer on the way,and lots of 3 and 5" ones. My 5 yr old, always has a little one in his pocket, any time we leave...funny to watch raider and posiden battle in church !!! I'm always trying to get new ones, but 300, 400.00 is my limit...when a kid is going to be playing with it !! They take really great care of them, they put them back on the shelf when they are done, and dont play rough!!!That's why I want a cheap reissue, or some Bad guys...The kids need bad guys for all the good guys to kick their ass !!!!

[Derik]

Always wondered who's got those old molds
That's a huge expense to get tooling for each part
Then the blow molder
I always think about how awesome it would be,
But without the monatary backing from someone
It would be really hard to achieve
And what's the payback time?
You would need to do it all DIY in your garage
And no likely get sued over patent infringement
But I am a pessimist by nature

[lexcars2007]

I need a large picture with all the great ones, as a selling tool, I mean hey kid wouldn't want one right ?