Animal Warriors of the Kingdom / Spero Toys

It's kind of par for the course on these KS campaigns. And mentioned, they had quite a number of figures using multiple new bodies for it. It's going to take a while. They have a schedule and structure to multiple waves in development and delays in the first part, the Brawlers, pushed everything back. The wait can be frustrating but delays always happen with KS campaigns.
 
Ashtalon said:
It's kind of par for the course on these KS campaigns. And mentioned, they had quite a number of figures using multiple new bodies for it. It's going to take a while. They have a schedule and structure to multiple waves in development and delays in the first part, the Brawlers, pushed everything back. The wait can be frustrating but delays always happen with KS campaigns.
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My only critique of that point (and to be fair, I largely agree) is that I don't like treating it the same way we would a KS campaign from a totally new company. AWOK, as I said, has had tons of product come out already. Spero isn't new at this and "well, it was a KS campaign" shouldn't necessarily be enough of an excuse for long, unexplained delays.

It also doesn't explain where they're at with those samurai figures they showed off and seemingly never talked about again. Sometimes I think we give too much tolerance to the idea that the person leading the show (Jason, in this case) is basically doing everything themselves and therefore can't do too much at once. But it's not like he's MAKING the figures. He can do other things beyond just wait for the KS stuff to ship from China.
 
Funding or organization or biting off more than can chew or not having the money to hire additional staff for logistics.

There's a damned if you do/damned if you don't think with updates. I agree that constant updates are better for business, but we've all seen the ration of shit creators get for every delay with other projects. Not defending the radio silence, cos radios silence is bad. I actually second-hand know a few creators in the TTRPG space who got so despondent with the reaction to every post that they gave up and I'm like, well, you just put yourself out of business, but by the same token I don't actually blame you. Though that was just for a book/game system and not a line of action figures, which is a FAR bigger investment for folks and warrants better communication.
 
docsilence said:
Funding or organization or biting off more than can chew or not having the money to hire additional staff for logistics.

There's a damned if you do/damned if you don't think with updates. I agree that constant updates are better for business, but we've all seen the ration of shit creators get for every delay with other projects. Not defending the radio silence, cos radios silence is bad. I actually second-hand know a few creators in the TTRPG space who got so despondent with the reaction to every post that they gave up and I'm like, well, you just put yourself out of business, but by the same token I don't actually blame you. Though that was just for a book/game system and not a line of action figures, which is a FAR bigger investment for folks and warrants better communication.
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Spero is established enough at this point to be doing this better, I guess is my point. I definitely don't think he needs to be making a monthly blog post detailing everything going on at Spero - but the fact that NO ONE actually seems to have any idea what the current progress is seems to imply he's not doing -any- communication. And that is bad.

Also, I can't think of too many good reasons for the delays, at this point in Spero's tenure as a toy company, beyond 'we can out of money.' And that is also very bad.
 
The Samurai figures were a collab as I recall. That might be holding those up in the queue. If there's rough road for the main Spero lines I can easily see that one getting totally back-burnered until stuff resolves. I remember thinking when they were first shown that I wouldn't really but the on my "to buy" list yet because as a collab I didn't expect them to come for at least a couple of years.
 
Yep. And it's also kinda fundamentally bad that we're still at the "massive international conglomerate manufacturer" or "needs crowdfunding to survive" stage of capitalism. Not Spero specifically but it feels like either you're big enough to be under the thumb of investors, or you're crowdfunding, and that middle level of success is extinct (not just in toys but in books, games, etc) and that, well, we don't need to rehash why that's not a great ecosystem.
 
docsilence said:
Yep. And it's also kinda fundamentally bad that we're still at the "massive international conglomerate manufacturer" or "needs crowdfunding to survive" stage of capitalism.
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I wonder how often a business like Spero went out and tried to get a traditional small business loan. The downside of the the lure of crowdfunding at first is that you don't have as much paperwork, and probably less "how's it going?" or "when we will get our money back?" sort of oversight - which can be both good and bad - but may also mean that if you miscalculate your expenses and cash you don't have (in theory) a financial backer who might be willing to provide more support if they believe in the potential outcome.

As @Damien alludes to, the main concern with radio silence, items behind schedule, and things like no longer doing preorders, etc., is that there is a cash flow problem and things are at a standstill for that reason. Like the Premium DNA Earthworm Jim discussion.
 
I don't know if I'd lump Spero in with the PDNA crooks.

I don't know his factory situation, but if they aren't in China, but if the factory works with some of the bigger companies, it's possible they bumped his stuff for the bigger order/payday, knowing they had him by the short hairs and he'd stick around.
 
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That's a good point - don't know how often it happens with action figures, but every game/book printer felt a crunch as their factories bumped smaller companies down on the priority list to give more capacity to bigger clients because they know the little guys can't bark back.
 
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SalemCrow said:
I don't know if I'd lump Spero in with the PDNA crooks.
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Fair, that wasn't my intention to suggest anything crooked is happening, just an example of how lack of funds can derail things. There have been a few too many examples between manufacturers and retailers not fulfilling things that had been paid for that it make me a bit more cynical about delays than I had been.
 
fac said:
I wonder how often a business like Spero went out and tried to get a traditional small business loan. The downside of the the lure of crowdfunding at first is that you don't have as much paperwork, and probably less "how's it going?" or "when we will get our money back?" sort of oversight - which can be both good and bad - but may also mean that if you miscalculate your expenses and cash you don't have (in theory) a financial backer who might be willing to provide more support if they believe in the potential outcome.
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Business loans are a pain to get for most people, and have high interest (usually, for the kind of people that actually need them). Kickstarter just takes a percentage and then you're off to the races. To your miscalculation point; given what I went through with Spero, I'm guessing there isn't anyone there that's actually like... good at this. You've got a creative dude in Jason, and a flunky dipshit in ..whatever that guy's name is that's basically Spero's secretary. Adam? Who is watching their finances and doing their expense reports? I hope it's neither of them, to be honest.

And if it's not someone really good at it ... well... that speaks to the worry about a company like Spero going radio silent for so long.
 
Radio silent? There have been 11 updates this year on the KS campaign. Not every one of them has specific info about delays but they were at least trying to post more this year. And one of their employees is a volunteer who is a school teacher by day. So obviously this is a really small business. Project was in March 2024. 72 updates on KS. Compared to someone like Roboskull (a really cool item) which had its Kickstarter in October 2021 and has 95 updates. And also still has items to deliver by the way.

Haven't we been going through Tariff Wars for most of the year? That could be another factor in delays. Companies didn't want to have items manufactured and then be forced to ship those items (since the factory can't hold everything made) if they're gonna get killed on tariffs. So those projects got pushed around. There could be all kinds of other issues. Say they're having a hard time negotiating with their factory, for any myriad number of reasons. Should they air any issues publicly and risk having more severe issues with said warehouse? Projects have to go back and forth numerous times to tweak sculpts/molds for tolerances and whatnot. Every thing tweak pushes things back. And maybe since these are smaller runs of items, the factor squeezes them in between larger projects. There are so many small things that none of us are aware of which affects toylines.

Yes, Spero has had previous KS campaigns and experience with toylines. It doesn't mean they can control all facets of the process and eliminate every possible delays. The 4Horsemen, a much larger operation, still takes ~18 months for their waves to deliver. Very few companies air out the reasons for delays with any detailed reasoning. And certainly there are stretches of time where there's no progress to update. I'm sure Spero is just as frustrated as its customers. I've contributed to dozens of KS and have just been conditioned to delays. And I really like wave 1 of AWOK, so I trust the wave 2 items will be great as well. Just have to ride it out for a bit longer.
 
I'm not sure what was in the KS or not as I wasn't part of that. I bought directly from their store - in October of 2024 I preordered this:

Wave FIVE: Feralist - Ranger Estimated ETA December 2024

which I paid for up front (fair if to be delivered in Dec 24), and have received no updates, Wave 5 is no longer on their website, and the deadline was missed well before the tariff issues. The ETA that was set by them was a year ago.
 
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fac said:
I'm not sure what was in the KS or not as I wasn't part of that. I bought directly from their store - in October of 2024 I preordered this:

Wave FIVE: Feralist - Ranger Estimated ETA December 2024

which I paid for up front (fair if to be delivered in Dec 24), and have received no updates, Wave 5 is no longer on their website, and the deadline was missed well before the tariff issues. The ETA that was set by them was a year ago.
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I hadn't even heard of the feralist ranger so I just did a quick google search to get a look at him and it looks like folks were able to buy him at LegionCon.
 
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