As you may know, we just went live with our Prison Suit Trump Action Figure this week. He's turned out to be a pretty big hit but honestly we had no idea how he'd be received when we first announced him.
We're a bit out of our comfort zone here. Our stated mission has always been to turn our real life heroes into action figures and we weren't sure how people would feel about us dabbling in the dark side. But the numbers don't lie – clearly a bunch of you wanted to add a baddie to your collection.
It's not a huge surprise though. Everyone knows that it's the villains that sell movie tickets. And Darth Vader is far and away Star Wars' best selling character. (We're pretty sure kids don't even know who Luke is anymore!) So there's clearly a precedent here. Like it or not, bad guys are fun.
So we should make more of them, right? Well not so fast.
On the other side, we've also gotten plenty of feedback along the lines of "I already see enough of him" and "I'm so disappointed you did this". It was clear that some of our biggest fans felt pretty strongly that this was not the way to go.
Our house is divided. What's a brand to do?
We did what we often do in these moments - we asked you for advice. First we sent out a survey just asking whether or not we should make more bad guys. Then we followed up by asking the people from each camp to suggest which heroes or villains they'd most like to see immortalized in plastic.*
The results were truly fascinating! We could tell you about them but we thought it would be more fun to show you instead. So we laid out this handy infographic. Have a look!
What do you make of it? And if you were us, what would you do? Let us know in the comments.
* Psssst... you can still add suggestions to that surveys if you want. Here's the Good Guys Survey. And here's the one for Bad Guys Survey.
65 comments
I would buy Jon Stewart, Jimmy Carter and Walter Cronkite.
My Mueller doll is not displayed. We thought he was going to be a hero. Turns out, he was a villain.
Looks like they care more about the customer than profits. Also, they do one at a time with a long time lag between new dolls. I agree with you about Rachel Maddow.
I have all their dolls. I regret getting the Mueller doll.
Friends of FCTRY, I believe you have a very important decision to make. Make more money, OR potentially make a difference. I got hooked on your action figures when times were dark, when RGB passed away; and when the global pandemic made some of us wonder if the end was truly nigh. A time when science was getting kicked in the face, and Fauci was abused and threatened (THREATENED) by folks who didn’t even know how to spell “Messenger RNA”, let alone what it was.
Your action figures, at those times, reminded me that some figures weren’t just MY heroes. Others also respected and BELIEVED in them, at a time when the leaders of our country appeared to respect no one but themselves. That gave me hope.
The first thing I thought, when I saw your inquiry re: producing the good guys versus the bad guys, was that our country, OUR WORLD, needs hope NOW more than EVER. In fact, I’m pretty sure there are a good many people looking for hope anywhere they can find it.
But hey, I like the “bad guys” on occasion too, but not the real ones. NEVER the real ones. Moreover, at this point in time, raising up/recognizing the bad guys now…the REAL bad guys..might only encourage more folks to follow and emulate them. And personally, that doesn’t bring me any kind of hope whatsoever. (Putin?! Really? Why not make an action figure of the leader of Hamas while you are at it? Perhaps you could also make Hitler and a couple of his Nazi henchmen….you get what I’m saying, right?)
Anyway, if you simply must capitulate to peer pressure and do the “bad guys” thing – which, by the way, feels to me like something completely against your ethos – maybe do the fake bad guys? Because quite honestly, while I listed several “bad guys” for my survey results…..I do NOT want them sitting on my book shelf. That said, I wouldn’t mind seeing Michael and Shaun from the Good Place. Because, if you aren’t really trying to make the world better, at the very least, you could make action figures that make us laugh at it all, and make us forget the world in which we live, at least for a little while.
Just my two cents.
I personally voted that you stick with the good guys. Like as mentioned above, we see enough of trump and his cronies on a regular basis, I don’t need to see them on my book shelf alongside so many people that I love and respect so much. That being said, I would love to see a Michelle or Maddow action figure! And I would say for every villain you put out, you put out a hero with them. Not sure how feasible that would actually be for you all, but I wouldn’t feel so left out when you come out with a villain and I don’t want to buy them (not that any of this is about my personal feelings of course… I just feel sad that I haven’t bought a new action figure from you in quite some time!)