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
Hi Guys: it’s all about the money. If your company can sell enough of any one particular doll, who are we to complain. I Love every single one of your creations. If people don’t like Trump in a jailhouse jumpsuit hey this is America don’t buy him. I have just about all your dolls keep up the GREAT WORK. A Rachel Maddow doll would be perfect.
I think you should stop with just one villain. Trump is enough. Michelle would be good since we already have hubby! Married good guys. Rachel would be a good representation of smart, female, gay, honest in Journalism. Jamie Raskin because he is such a good man.
I would buy orange jumpsuit Rudy and definitely Jack Smith.
Good guys rule. Only the worst of the worst deserve preservation and then they need to be marked as crooks.
I have about a dozen others right now. I love these.
I have every figure you’ve made but I strongly suggest sticking to the good guys. Why give any legitimacy to the MAGA on the bad list?
I'm with the majority in the comment section, stick with the good guys. I wouldn't want to see the bad guys on my shelves, especially after looking at the villains on the list. As inviting as it is to see Trump in a jumpsuit behind bars, I couldn't stand to have him in my house. I say, keep it positive. Let's hear it for the HEROES!!