From the Comments Section:
The "Dark Sword Miniatures" medieval/fantasy warriors look great. How about hiring that sculptor and producing some plastic 1/32 medieval/fantasy figures Beau?
Excellent question, and the short answer is I would LOVE to!! Fantasy figures would be awesome, and something that you could continually branch out with and add to, plus they would double as historical figures a lot of the time. Two problems though....
1. The sculptors for darksword are obviously VERY talented, but some cursory research revealed to me that they would charge more than what the toy soldier market would bear. Plus, they already have jobs working for a very successful company.
2. I've done some market research into fantasy figures in the 1/32 scale.... Fantasy figures are very popular with gamers. Think of the Dungeons and Dragons crowd. The 1/32 scale, meanwhile, is very popular with older adults, who also happen to prefer historical topics rather than mythical or fantasy. Result being that there would be an extremely small market for 1/32 fantasy figures, smaller than the already extremely small market for 1/32 historical figures. Plus, fantasy setups rely on "character" poses. The duel wielding ranger, the sneaky rogue, the wizard throwing a fireball.... historics focus on non-character figures, allowing you to make large battles.
Now, I'm not saying it's not a possibility. We're in for the long haul, so we're keeping all of our options open. If another company did it, I would buy them. It's just not a risk our company is willing to take right now.
Rock on, and go buy some Dark Sword miniatures!! I've still got to get mine out and paint it (translate to: I need to sit quietly at the table and watch my wife paint it and not complain when she paints something on it purple).
2 comments:
Your points are good. I do think though that the right fantasy figures might work. And the one to do would be dwarfs - given we have (probably) The Hobbit to come out in a few years. I'd always thought that the people who read fantasy books are an untapped market. I think a useful number of them could be tempted over into the plastic miniatures world. I'm pleased to see it's on your radar at least!
John
Australia
All the people who bought the "Play Along Toys - Armies of middle Earth 1/32 ish figures need add ons. Most noteably Dwarves.
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