PCS 1:4 Scale HUGO SFV

[goatchumby]

Originally Posted by vinnnie

(bringing this out of the lawsuit thread and back to the Hugo thread)

A couple things are keeping me on the fence about H&P:

• The set's lingering "TBD" ES.
• Fear of Poison getting a solo release after the set drops.
• Price (duh).

Given the clamor for Poison 2.0, perhaps things might have fared better if Hugo was the bonus for the set (rather than getting a solo as well). I'm sure the intention was to give existing Poison owners an option to complete their set, but IMO all it did was make us want that fancy Poison 2.0 upgrade.

So I'll keep watchin'...

[VS1976]

Originally Posted by goatchumby

(bringing this out of the lawsuit thread and back to the Hugo thread)

A couple things are keeping me on the fence about H&P:

• The set's lingering "TBD" ES.
• Fear of Poison getting a solo release after the set drops.
• Price (duh).

Given the clamor for Poison 2.0, perhaps things might have fared better if Hugo was the bonus for the set (rather than getting a solo as well). I'm sure the intention was to give existing Poison owners an option to complete their set, but IMO all it did was make us want that fancy Poison 2.0 upgrade.

So I'll keep watchin'...

Very surprised Ant even made a comment that Hugo is a flop. Well it’s $1k for such as obscure character. Did they actually think people would pay that much for Hugo? I’m still waiting for them to announce the ES for the set to see if I want to apply my reward points for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ES for both is 50 or less.

[Vince-Vell]

Im sure they will make a ton money back if they do Poison solo sale or make a variant of Roxy. Cause thats what im waiting and a Rose statue!

[VILE GUILE]

They don't have the ES on the Hugo statue yet. Of course it's not selling well. I don't know about you guys, but I've adapted my preordering habits. Why rush into ordering something when you know there's plenty of time & the threat of missing out is gone? Plus, you can see if the paint jobs a flop 1st before you buy. If they got the balls to put a set ES on it early, the sales would be higher. It's a gamble I know...

[AlexLothos]

Originally Posted by goatchumby

(bringing this out of the lawsuit thread and back to the Hugo thread)

Thanks for this... gotta get the separate conversations back on track.

Putting my comment from that thread here...

Originally Posted by AlexLothos

Damn, that sucks and I feel for them.

But Hugo seemed like a long shot from the start (to me anyway). There are a lot more B and C list characters that they could have tried. I've heard a lot of requests for characters like Rose, Juri, Dee Jay, T. Hawk, Elena... any of those would have been a better gamble to sell better than Hugo. They're also much smaller in size, so they wouldn't have been as expensive to produce and retail either.

I think this was discussed earlier in the Hugo specific thread, but I don't remember what we settled on. But the choice to go with Hugo was ballsy, but a bad bet IMHO. And it seems like the chance for other non A-list characters will suffer unnecessarily because of it.

With that out of the way...

Originally Posted by goatchumby

A couple things are keeping me on the fence about H&P:

• The set's lingering "TBD" ES.
• Fear of Poison getting a solo release after the set drops.
• Price (duh).

Given the clamor for Poison 2.0, perhaps things might have fared better if Hugo was the bonus for the set (rather than getting a solo as well). I'm sure the intention was to give existing Poison owners an option to complete their set, but IMO all it did was make us want that fancy Poison 2.0 upgrade.

So I'll keep watchin'...

Originally Posted by ZenLogikos

Yes, some people soured on the Street Fighter lines due to the end of the Macaluso era (reason for this very thread's existence), and Street Fighter itself may be in a current lull, and Street Fighter was over-produced in recent years in this hobby...

But, if the commitment is still there to continue to produce more in Street Fighter lines, you're setting yourself up for failure by taking sales cues from Hugo and Ultra Blanka...

It's their prerogative to make nothing more than the top tier, A-list characters that they think will sell the absolute most units, but they're jumping around to different lines, scales, teases, and ultimatums, that it's hard to build (or rebuild) a group of collectors from. It's just a series of one-offs, or short-lived 'lines'. This isn't Batman, Spider-man, or Iron Man, where you can just keep cranking out that one character every year.

Again, it's their prerogative, but if they want to continue to keep a line going - if they're actually fans of Street Fighter - maybe do more polling or other deposit or kickstarter-type funding to find out which characters are worth doing or would sell, rather than picking a C lister and finding out after the fact that it's a bust. How about MTO, so there's an incentive to PO? Why can XM do it, but not PCS? They'd have to be more transparent about what minimum would actually be worth doing for them.

They picked Hugo because he's the size of a typical 1:3, with higher profit margin. How would his sales dictate what to do next though? The other characters aren't his size, so you'd be dropping back down to lower profitability. Lower retail (due to size), but other characters popularity may be higher, to offset. The only answer I think you can draw is that they wanted an unpopular, large, expensive character to sell, and he didn't. See? Street Fighter sucks.

This comes down to a lot of circular reasoning to me. It's simply not the most profitable venture right now, so one random character pick and ambiguous direction on Street Fighter lines inevitably leads to 'more of the same'.

I think you can get to profitability and higher interest with a few releases a year, focused on one (or two) lines. You'd probably need 2 of 3 revisits, with the remaining 1 new. Could easily do Ultimates of Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and simple revisits of Vega, Bison, Zangief, etc. Poll for the new characters.

Is mixed-media still viable? Tell us. Why the lack of communication on this? Is there some trade secret the Chinese will kill for? Make a decision and let's proceed.

All I know is, I've got money to spend on characters I want. I keep asking and getting no good answer, so my money is still in my hands.

Originally Posted by Joppula

This makes me very sad. But I was amazed it was happening at all.

I mean from a business perspective, I knew there was absolutely no way he?d do well. Never in my wildest dreams did I think they?d make Hugo.

But the second it was real, my money was theirs!

Can?t wait for my Poison/Hugo combo!

Thank you PCS for giving me a dream statue!

Despite my my personal perception of the character and the viability of this move, I am happy to see another collector getting a character they've always wanted. I really wish the circumstances were better for everyone involved... for this piece and future possibilities.

Originally Posted by qz33

Hugo had that passion chatter... and the sculpt was mostly done.

Hugo's pose is an easy cast despite his size, production on him was very reasonable. Intricate poses and details require multiple pieces and fittament which is hard and time consuming to do in Polystone.

It isn't about enough sales but about most sales.
Plus Ant is grasping for a counter to revisit whiners.

Good points!

[dao2]

I'll have a nice laugh if this is cancelled.

[nearmint]

How many people said from day 1 that Poison should be available individually? PCS should've listened.

[goatchumby]

Well PCS listened when everyone shouted "Hugo" and look where it got them.

I picked up Poison a while back in the hope that Hugo would be coming to complete the duo, so he's always been on the table for me. I just didn't anticipate the Poison 2.0 unveil that activated the maximizer in me.

[Augen]

Originally Posted by Joppula

Well guys, it isn’t going to happen unless you all join the FB group and vote to get it made.

Ant told me it’d take 150 of us to make it a reality.

So far we have like 35 yes.

And like 88 No.

So we Hugo enthusiasts are screwed.

I'm just reading back on this thread, anyone know the final tally on yes or no on this character?

[MPCanes]

Originally Posted by VILE GUILE

They don't have the ES on the Hugo statue yet. Of course it's not selling well. I don't know about you guys, but I've adapted my preordering habits. Why rush into ordering something when you know there's plenty of time & the threat of missing out is gone? Plus, you can see if the paint jobs a flop 1st before you buy. If they got the balls to put a set ES on it early, the sales would be higher. It's a gamble I know...

This, 100%, on all of my "high end" purchases moving forward. If these things are 1k+ now a days including shipping and tax, I need proto, or near proto, levels to justify that.