DenXMedia

Rancor had a net positive of 2709 backers in its final 12 hours. It was only 427 short of funding.

Your kind words are much appreciated!

This actually isn't completely true. As of 9AM Pacific on 9/28 the campaign had 5,421 Backers. One hour later the alternate human head announcement went out from the Hasbro team. By the following day (9/29 at 9AM PST) it had gained 67 Backers to reach a total of 5,488. This was the first (and biggest) gain observed since the campaign failed to reach Early Bird funding at the end of 9/23. Yesterday (at 9AM PST) the count was down to 5,480 Backers. Later that afternoon the "Goblin Queen" unlock was teased. As of 9AM PST today, the campaign has gained 13 Backers in the last 24 hours to reach a total of 5493 Backers. I'm only correcting your reporting because I think it's important to note that the biggest gains observed in these campaigns typically happen when the Hasbro team is up front and honest regarding what fans can expect. Definitively informing backers that Robbie Reyes was not lost in the ether was a far more successful play than showing a "pumpkin pie" jewel representing a potential Goblin Queen. In case it wasn't obvious, I track this campaign (as well as all other HasLabs) daily at 9AM Pacific Time to create fun reports including updated high, low, and average estimates for where they could end. If anyone is interested in seeing more of my HasLab Dashboards, you can find them (for free) on https://www.patreon.com/denxmedia, or at several of my social channels: https://www.facebook.com/denxmedia & https://www.instagram.com/denxmedia/ Here's is yesterday's Engine of Vengeance dashboard for reference:

While this logic is endearing, it doesn't hold water. Just because you are passionate about something doesn't mean you deserve it. I could be passionate about my neighbor's house... that doesn't mean he should make it available for me (or anyone else) to purchase. However you may feel about Marvel Legends doesn't mean Hasbro owes you anything. They're a business, taking our money for their gain. These HasLabs exist because they could never offer products at this scale to a wider audience while still making a profit. Making them to order is still a costly endeavor for them, so I'm happy with every project they try, even if they stumble along the way. It's one more thing for me to choose to add to my collection, or skip. Also, as someone who worked for a corporation making games with huge followings, there ARE in fact different categories of consumers (or collectors) whether or not you choose to ignore it. It's why we get so many similar figures of Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man, etc..., and why the super niche figures are made into BAFs or "premium" figures. HasLab is just another branch of their products catering to a specific subset of collectors. Just like in games, there are some people that will only play the main campaign, while others focus on multiplayer, and then there are those that will sink countless hours to obtain the elusive platinum trophy. Every type of production team benefits from categorizing its consumers to learn how to better extract value from them. Side note: For anyone complaining that the HISS Tank offered more for less money... two things: 1. We don't know the full scope of offerings for Ghost Rider yet, and 2. Hasbro wholly owns the GI Joe license, which means their stuff should be cheaper. Instead of pointing at Marvel Legends (which they have to pay a hefty fee for), you should be asking yourself why your regular Classified Series figures aren't cheaper.

Anyone got a link to that Target exclusive Spider-Man Noir?

Dennis Miller Day 42: SILVER SUREFR UNLOCKED! And 12+ hours later Hasbro finally announced what appears to be the final stretch goal: Morg. This announcement came after the Haslab Galactus campaign had already exceeded the previous goal by 1k, meaning Morg needs less than 2K backers with 3+ days remaining. While my linear and exponential 45.5-day estimates are both way off from reality, the true end point most definitely sits somewhen between them. Splitting the difference, I get 22,319. What do you think? Still feels a bit high to me...

Day 40: NOVA UNLOCKED! As expected, the linear fit formula is still adjusting to the insane numbers over the last couple days. So it and its 8/30 Pace Estimate for today are clearly not to be trusted at the moment, which is why I kept the exponential fit for another day. I doubt that one is close to predicting where this will end either, but the space between the two has narrowed from yesterday. BTW, the Daily Avg to Surfer has been recalculated with the new 17K goal stated in today's livestream (Tier-3 is assuming 18K for now). As for that livestream... I'm torn. As a fan of Marvel Legends, I not only wanted to see ALL the stretch goals revealed by the Hasbro team today... I fully expected it. However, as someone who's worked in entertainment for over a decade, I was able to take a step back, and realize why they would only show the Surfer for now: data. In online videogames introducing a timed event is great because it gives players something new to do, AND it gives developers a chance to test new ideas for levels/mechanics/etc... Not everything succeeds, but the data collected helps inform the developers on how they can potentially improve future events by better understanding their customer. A crowd fund campaign is very similar in that way. So even though I may consider the Silver Surfer a lackluster stretch goal reveal, simultaneously revealing the goal after him would make it impossible to determine his effectiveness at driving engagement. Tier-3 will get revealed, but for now, just sit back and let Hasbro collect their data.

Day 40: GALACTUS FUNDED! The snowball turned into an avalanche! As I write this, there have already been another 199 new backers since I collected the data just over 1.5 hours ago. Needless to say, things got nuts yesterday. +331% day-over-day increase in backers. To put this another way, this campaign just received over 10% of its minimum backers needed. So yeah... please forgive the linear prediction for today. The formula behind it still isn't sure if the day 40 value should be treated as an outlier. It'll adjust in the next couple days. For fun though, I added an exponential curve (turquoise) fitted only to the last 10 days of data. As you can see, that thing projects backers will go through the roof before August 30th. Of course it assumes a steady rate of increase for the next 5 days. Certainly now that it's funded we should expect to see a lot of cautious fence sitters, and resellers jump in. Just how many orders that amounts to remains to be seen. The safe answer is "somewhere between the prediction curve and the line." One last note: the Daily Avg to Surfer assumes it unlocks at 18K.

Well this post aged rather quickly. It's not necessarily only about how many people are left waiting to back, but also how many individuals and retailers were waiting to decide HOW MANY to buy.

Another 184 backers have shown up since 9AM. That's an average of over 20/hour. Nova is happening. The real question right now should be "Will we unlock the Surfer, and the third unlock by 9PM on Monday?" That's all gonna depend on what gets revealed Thursday.

Made some changes to my dashboard on yesterday's Galactus update, so now you get two: Day 38: I did say things were gonna get interesting. Galactus passed 13K total backers last night! It took ~6 days to get 1K new backers. For context, it took ~8 days to get from 11K to 12K, and it took ~10 days to get from 10K to 11K. So yeah... clearly the growth rate is increasing as the campaign nears the end. For this reason, I had to abandon the power fitted prediction curve. The program I was using to crank out the formula each day basically said "No!" to me this morning. So I switched over to a linear fit, since we all know sh!t's about to get crazy anyway. The upside is the line has it on pace to hit 14K backers by Thursday, just in time for Hasbro's next livestream. BTW Google sheets is still providing its own power trendline (in yellow) on the Daily Total Backers chart. Also I added milestone call-outs so you can see how the spikes line up throughout the campaign. Day 39: That snowball keeps rolling along! Galactus is definitely on pace to meet its minimum backer goal well before Hasbro's Thursday livestream. What happens after that is pretty up in the air at the moment. I should note that it's quickly approaching the daily average needed to unlock Nova in time (349 new backers today. It now needs an average of 385.5/day). In any case, I'm really excited to dive into all the data after this ends on Monday.

I really dig the 1:1 comparison summary of the base offerings for each project. It forces the reader to remember what people were willing to commit to without knowing the details of the stretch-goals. However, I think if you're gonna include external factors in the Key Differences section such as the change in shipping costs, then you're doing the Sentinel campaign a huge disservice by not also stating that it had far greater army building potential which contributed to the accelerated rate in which unlocks were revealed. I hardly think it's speculation that there was more clear incentive out of the gate to buy MULTIPLE Sentinels. I'm sure there's also relatively easy data to include about the success Hasbro has enjoyed selling products related to the X-Men franchise versus the Fantastic Four...

Last-minute spikes are typically common in most crowd funding campaigns. I'm not trying to account for that. Just showing the pace/trajectory to date if no further interference (aka: spikes due to external factors) were to occur. Once interference does occur, it gets factored in, and the additional plotted points are incorporated to refit the curve. Again, the point of the prediction curve is to show where things would go if no more variables are introduced.

So I've been tracking this campaign's daily progress and reporting findings to my Instagram & an MLC FB group pretty much since it started, but @JayC suggested I share here to raise awareness. Basically, I measure new backer count every 24 hours, and plug my data into a program that outputs new fitted prediction curves based on the existing data. It's really useful for measuring the impact that Hasbro's communication (or lack thereof) has on the success of its project. Unsurprisingly, every spike observed has immediately followed the release of new information (even if only speculative). The newest spike was observed today (a +227% day-over-day increase in new backers) conveniently following Boog_Nice's interview with the team; the details of which are now making the rounds on media outlets like this site. Like I said, I make these reports daily. So if it's something you'd like to see here more regularly, let me know. And feel free to ask questions. Hopefully I can answer them with the data available.

Technically it is not already summer. June 20th is officially the first day of summer. I would have let it slide, but you had to say "technically". 😛