Meh. I agree Sanjeev. They were gettin a bit tired. The black painted SR-01 is nice tho'....

Yeah, the black painted robutt is pretty sweet (GID head, too!). That was the last one I bought and I think I'm good...though I'm having new-found fun swapping heads and otherwise mashing up the parts!

More companies should kill off figures. I think this was a smart move, I might start looking for a few I wanted and missed now.

I was thinking about the numbers on the troopers.
This is pure speculation:

30 releases, and say 40 per release? = 1200 figures total?
$35 retail in Japan? $10 to produce and $25 profit per figure?

So $30,000 profit??

Where are my numbers off?

Well, it seems completely conceivable that the labor cost of pouring/pulling/painting a figure would be $10...but what about the cost of molds? Materials? Is there additional cost involved with all the collaborations that were done?

It just seems unlikely to me that the ENTIRE toy line cost just $12k USD over the past year.

Hell, if that's all it takes, I'll see you chumps later! I got some vinyl to pour!

Is there a secret about the numbers on the first edition of Space Robot, mine is 75 (yellow head) ?

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Nikemsi

Super interesting to see this post. For as long as I've been here, nobody's tried to break down the numbers like this on a 'hot' toy. (At least as far as I'm aware, but the shit I don't know about kaiju could fill a book, blah blah.)

A couple things come to mind:

1. Seems like an awful lot of work for an awful lot of time to net $30k, no?

2. The above formula seems sound, but it would only account for direct retail sales, NOT wholesale, which would/should theoretically be quite a bit less than retail. Unless $35 in Japan => $70 in US (which is what it felt like the going price was for these for a while). To reiterate: I know that these are fully-fully guesstimated figures. I guess my question is whether or not a toy like this would be wholesaled to shops and/or how much of retail the manufacturer would actually see.

3. Sanjeev is right: from the outside, it seems like $12k is pretty lowball for a line with so many unique sculpts and small pieces involved. Has anybody collated the actual number of unique parts involved with this line? Gotta be 2-dozen or so when you take into account all the different arms/chests/heads...right? (Not to mention the saucer)

4. The cans. Don't forget the cans.

--

To be clear: I don't have any of these. I'm not criticizing them as too expensive, or too cheap, or too trendy, or too tired...I'm just really interested to hear/see this sort of analysis on the boards. I'm always crushingly pessimistic whenever I game out this sort of (imaginary) scenario for myself, and I'm wondering what anybody with more estimation experience might think about this little game.

"Unless $35 in Japan => $70 in US"

Pretty much (not exchange rate wise, of course). The $35 is probably close to what shops here in the US bought them for, then with shipping EMS from Japan and I'm sure adding some on, you get the $60-70 we get charged here.

My thoughts exactly. That's why I thought my numbers were off.

$30k seems like a fair chunk of change for doing something you love. i mean this company was still putting out other toys as well no? so your really looking at pocketing that money on one line and what in about a year? these guys havent even been around THAT long.

7 years seems like a fair amount of time, to me.

EDIT: I just realized you may have been talking about the Space Troopers and not the company.

For me this season 3 will be the best ! I collect robots so it's the best series for me !

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Nikemsi

The painted Robot is over at Roto........

SOLD OUT

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Nikemsi

Sometimes...wishes do come true especially on skullbrain
http://blog.toygraph.shop-pro.jp/ thanks skinnydigital aka henrik, whatever your name is here.

Wonderful.

akakaka had to make a skinnydigital account now too here hehe.. Looking forward to see this!!!!

Congrats.

That's cool

Excellent !

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Nikemsi

Can't wait to see it, Joel! Congrats!

This looks like...

This.

The pic is by vintagevinyl and the original post is here...

http://www.skullbrain.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=28740&hilit=vintage+space+troopers

weird. definitely the same toy. or he's doing a very similar tribute/homage. either way, I'd go for a vinyl version of that guy.

thought this trooper was pretty cool... anybody know who created this...?

I *think* that was the concept art for the robot who assists the main character on the Force Unleashed videogame.

IIRC, in the original concept he wanted to be human so he "assimilated" human body parts (hence the skull in a jar). I'll try and confirm that later.

Guess that was too grim for the SW universe.