RyanDaly

Yeah, and in the case of that wave, the only character I didn't want was Spider-Verse Prowler, but I bought him rationalizing that I was actually spending that twenty bucks on Stiltman, my first fully completed BAF.

Yeah, I get that. I think, whether collectors are conscious of it or not, they don't see the BAF as a free/bonus figure; they ascribe a certain dollar value to it based on the calculus of how appealing the wave is. For example, when it comes to the Bring On the Bad Guys wave, I wanted Red Skull, Dormammu, Lady Deathstrike, Arcade, and Scientist Supreme. I would have bought each of those characters, regardless of BAF. I did not want The Hood. To me, he was not worth the $23 price tag. But... at that point Xemnu was worth the $23, because I only needed to purchase the one "dud" figure to get Xemnu. Therefore, I wasn't buying the Hood; I was buying Xemnu for the cost of the Hood. Compare that with the Iron Man wave. I got Stealth Iron Man, Ultron, and Guardsman. I didn't want Darkstar, Hologram Iron Man, or this version of Riri. So now the cost of completing the Ursa Major BAF was the price of three figures, or roughly $70. To me, Ursa Major was not worth that much. I simply don't need a bear in my collection that badly. That's how it was for you with the Kingpin BAF. As much as you may have liked it, it wasn't worth the, what, $100 of mediocre figures you didn't want. I've sometimes considered buying the Man-Thing BAF on eBay for approximately $70, thinking that would be less than buying five other figures from the wave that don't interest me, but ultimately, even though I love me some Man-Thing, I'm not dropping $70 on that one.

Agreed. However, the Marvel Legends model (or any other line with a build-a-figure or similar incentive based program) is designed to mitigate the point where fans "walk away". It highly incentivizes the completist mentality of collectors, regardless of the quality of the figures. Whether the Hood is the best figure in the wave or a poorly executed, poorly conceived, cynical redeco cash grab on the company's part doesn't matter. He'll sell well enough if enough people want to complete Xemnu. Traditionally, the only way for consumers to give feedback to companies is through purchasing or not. "Speak with your wallet..." But the BAF reward system skews that data. It promotes the mentality that consumers should just shut up and accept a crappy product every now and then as long as they complete the free bonus figure at the end. Then the actual feedback of what fans like and don't and what they're willing to take or not may not be clearly conveyed to the company. In other words, if every collector told Hasbro, "This Hood figure is $#@%, don't do this again!" Hasbro looks at their sales charts and thinks, "Well, Hood sold as well as Dormammu and Red Skull and Lady Deathstrike, so no problem with that guy. We can do more like that." The BAF incentive makes it harder for fans to turn their complaints into acton, like "walking away". And that can be doubly frustrating, which is why so many fans and collectors have no recourse but to scream into the void of the internet, or forums like this one. And I say all of this as someone who regularly thinks, "Man, the people on this forum need to chill the $@#% out!" But I do understand where [most of] the complaints are coming from, and why sometimes they're cathartic.

The sculpt, paint, and color apps on this guy are so damn impressive. I'm not a MCU figure collector, so I won't be adding him to my own collection, but this thing has gotta end up on most Best Of lists at the end of the year.

Can we get a reminder of what events/streams/reveals Hasbro has officially announced and scheduled for the near future? There's a thing next Wednesday, and then PulseCon in September (?); anything else?

That's the mentality about this project that I just don't understand from this group. The bonus/rewards shouldn't be the incentive to drop a lot of $ on the project; the project itself should justify the cost. The company offers the stretch goals as a gratuity once the project is fully funded (that's why Dan said they won't even reveal the first one officially until they get 14,000). They are rewards for the sales team making their quota given back to the customer. But it seems most of the people on this thread see the rewards as bartering chips, like Hasbro has to sweeten the pot before they'll commit to funding the project. To me that smacks of fan entitlement.

But this is the only time Hasbro will be able to release a special effect or artifact related to Galactus. The herald figures can be released single-carded or in box sets whenever the hell Hasbro wants. Those of you asking (more like demanding) more and more heralds sound like you want a hundred dollars worth of free toys to justify backing this project.

Dan Yun tweeted again implying there are at least two additional stretch goals that are not the teased Silver Surfer and Nova figures. I still think one of these other goals will be a massive cosmic energy effect. https://twitter.com/DanYunIsTrying/status/1418327519141433346?s=2

If Hasbro reduced the price by 70%, yeah, of course they would sell more! They also wouldn't make the expected profit, which is the ultimate goal. They've got entire teams of money crunchers working on exactly how much this item costs, how many they have to sell to be profitable, and how much they need to charge in order to make those numbers work. And then they pump those numbers up as much as they think they can before people walk away. No corporation factors altruism into their business model.

I can understand them holding off for a while, like a year or two out or respect for those who backed the project, but after that Hasbro's just leaving money on the table.

Also, has it ever been said, directly or implied, that the stretch goal figures that came with the HasLab Sentinel and Galactus will only ever be exclusive to the pack? Is there any reason to believe the 6" Sentinels won't show up as Pulse army builders a year after the HasLab Sentinels ship?

Think about the extra 6" figures who came with the Sentinel? They weren't beloved fan-favorite X-Men villains or even something clever like their creator Trask; it was just male and female Bastion sentinels on the most basic bucks with hardly any paint. Hasbro didn't do anything spectacular for those stretch goal figures, so expecting a complex original mold herald like Terrax or Air-Walker is not very realistic. Silver Surfer and Nova are the most uncomplicated, easy to mold, easy to paint, slap-together-at-the-last-moment figures, so these options should not surprise anyone. Hasbro isn't selling 32" Galactus on the strength of a 6" figure in the box. That's absurd. If you weren't willing to pay the $400 for Galactus and expect that might be all you get, this project was never going to be worth it to you.

There's also the teased S.H.I.E.L.D. army builder as well as the vaguely-defined space-based army builders, though I'm not expecting those this year.

I would.

Going back to his classic look as Legacy from Silver Surfer? Very interesting.