The strange case of ImpossibleToys.com

[xiombarg]

A couple of months ago I noticed the pre-order for these odd little 3rd party transforming ships called something like Tetra fighters on BBTS, and the reason I noticed them was not because they were what I see as cool, these were sort of ugly, or at least unintentionally retro. So it looks like the idea behind them was to make a transforming robot out of a tetrahedron. Hmm, ok. Well, now the company is going out of business and the ships aren't to be released for another month. The explanation is simple enough, they sunk a lot of money into this project (and two other not very exciting designs they have) and nobody pre-ordered them because they are sort of lame.

We see a lot of toy makers bite the dust for a lot of reasons. Just in the last couple of years we've seen CM's, SHE, and various other smaller companies bite the dust. So this all got me thinking about who makes successful toys and what was the problem here. These guys at Impossible Toys seem dedicated to quality and durability, which is good, but they either don't know their toys, or they fell prey to a common problem that was often talked about in graphic design classes, which is "you can't fall in love with your idea"... if it isn't going to work. This is what I think is the number one problem of toy companies. They either fall in love with their business idea, or with poor designs, or with good ideas that are too expensive or unpredictable for such a finicky market. I feel bad for the guys. Judging by their products I'm almost sure that their venture was a complete failure, and it sucks to see a dream go down in flames.

To the guys at Impossible Toys, whoever you were, RIP. If nothing else you gave it a shot.

[supergetterv]

This 3rd party transformers has been around for quite some time. They make the human characters like Spike and Sparkplug and the TF Animated human characters Sari&Issac Sumdac. They also make the energon cubes and the Quintessons. You see the trend here? Their choice and selection of what they choose to produce flat out suck. The tetrawhatever if you remember the first episode of Transformers are the alternate mode for the seekers, this is what Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp turn into when they were on Cybertron, before they crash landed on earth. Had these been successful, they would have probably made a Soundwave figure that transformed into a light post. Cause that is what Soundwave turns into before being reformatted on earth as a Walkman.

The way I see it, this company failed because of their poor choice in what they choose to produce. I truly believe that had they choose to make a light post Soundwave, they would still be in business. Because a Soundwave that transforms into a light post is way better than ugly triangle jets with god awful looking robot modes.

It really isn't complicated at all. Make products people want to buy and you will survive. Take for instance Mastermind Creations Feral Rex (not Predaking). Those are high quality Transformers figure that people actually want to buy. Is there a big following, fan base for Predaking and the Predacons? Maybe but here is my point. Now I was not really a Predaking fan but after seeing Promo pictures of Feral Rex, I became a Predaking fan. The mechanical beast mode for all five of Mastermind Creations Feral Cons are amazing. I love the sculpt. All of the robot modes are also extremely nice, well proportionate and powerful looking. And the combine Gesalt Predaking, IMO it is the best Transformers combiner money can buy.

There are a lot of 3rd party Transformers company out there and that is part of the reason why this one fail. Just too much competition. And this company choose to make the most obscure things that no other company want to make. The other companies don't want to make these obscure stuff because they understand these figures aren't what the fan base wants. 3rd party company Dr.Wu is staying alive because they make small accessories and upgrades. FansProject is still around because their moto is "by Fans for Fans". FP has good market research and understand what fans want to buy.

Impossibletoy failure is really simple, they made a bunch of unwanted transformer toys.

[dudleydrulert]

I liked Impossible Toys' G1-style Arcee toy. Most people seem to prefer the iGear version. If I owned both versions, maybe I'd prefer the iGear version, too, but I like the Impossible Toys version. It was my first -- and thus far only -- third-party Transformer. At the time I was amazed and impressed that anyone had made any transforming and decent-looking toy of a female Autobot.

RIP, Impossible Toys. For a while anyway, you did the impossible, and that made you mighty.

[xiombarg]

May 2, 2014 23:13:12 GMT -5 supergetterv said:

This 3rd party transformers has been around for quite some time. They make the human characters like Spike and Sparkplug and the TF Animated human characters Sari&Issac Sumdac. They also make the energon cubes and the Quintessons. You see the trend here? Their choice and selection of what they choose to produce flat out suck. The tetrawhatever if you remember the first episode of Transformers are the alternate mode for the seekers, this is what Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp turn into when they were on Cybertron, before they crash landed on earth. Had these been successful, they would have probably made a Soundwave figure that transformed into a light post. Cause that is what Soundwave turns into before being reformatted on earth as a Walkman.

The way I see it, this company failed because of their poor choice in what they choose to produce. I truly believe that had they choose to make a light post Soundwave, they would still be in business. Because a Soundwave that transforms into a light post is way better than ugly triangle jets with god awful looking robot modes.

It really isn't complicated at all. Make products people want to buy and you will survive. Take for instance Mastermind Creations Feral Rex (not Predaking). Those are high quality Transformers figure that people actually want to buy. Is there a big following, fan base for Predaking and the Predacons? Maybe but here is my point. Now I was not really a Predaking fan but after seeing Promo pictures of Feral Rex, I became a Predaking fan. The mechanical beast mode for all five of Mastermind Creations Feral Cons are amazing. I love the sculpt. All of the robot modes are also extremely nice, well proportionate and powerful looking. And the combine Gesalt Predaking, IMO it is the best Transformers combiner money can buy.

There are a lot of 3rd party Transformers company out there and that is part of the reason why this one fail. Just too much competition. And this company choose to make the most obscure things that no other company want to make. The other companies don't want to make these obscure stuff because they understand these figures aren't what the fan base wants. 3rd party company Dr.Wu is staying alive because they make small accessories and upgrades. FansProject is still around because their moto is "by Fans for Fans". FP has good market research and understand what fans want to buy.

Impossibletoy failure is really simple, they made a bunch of unwanted transformer toys.

Yeah. you are right on all counts. Nothing fails quicker than a business who does not have a genuine understanding of their own product genre, and who is buying what and why. It's a similar problem you saw over and over again when designer vinyl was really hot, and with movies as well. Impossible Toys would seem to me to be a "business motivated idea" by guys who had some skills to engineer and knew where to manufacture, but a poor sense of design evaluation. Making Transformers probably seemed like the most obvious and easy meal ticket. The other products I've seen by these guys was a variety set of larger scale G1 style Bumble Bee and Bumble Jumper cars, and a super ordinary looking transforming t-rex. In both cases these products did nothing for the imagination in comparison with their competition.