Snow C.A.T. Live!

Snow C.A.T.

7,396 / 8,000 (+23) 92.45% of funding goal with 17d 18h left.

The slow crawl continues, but at least it is gaining backers after that blip on the weekend.
 
If I was Hasbro I would put up a promo showing the new Lady Jaye and Flont heads on the retro figure bodies to highlight that possibility and I would also take the arctic gear bodies and show them with the retro Scarlet and Duke head sculpts on them. Maybe a promo pick with a couple of the bivouacs and Joes in arctic gear around them. This is all assuming that the heads and pegs on the arctic gear bodies were designed for swapping with the existing Joes. Another possibility to try to generate interest would be to tease some Cobra arctic stuff, maybe an arctic deco ATV? That would be just a simple repaint mockup.
 
superdoug55 said:
If I was Hasbro I would put up a promo showing the new Lady Jaye and Flont heads on the retro figure bodies to highlight that possibility and I would also take the arctic gear bodies and show them with the retro Scarlet and Duke head sculpts on them. Maybe a promo pick with a couple of the bivouacs and Joes in arctic gear around them. This is all assuming that the heads and pegs on the arctic gear bodies were designed for swapping with the existing Joes. Another possibility to try to generate interest would be to tease some Cobra arctic stuff, maybe an arctic deco ATV? That would be just a simple repaint mockup.
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Oh, you mean all the stuff they should have done at FUCKING SDCC?
 
Yeah I don't understand Hasbro's lack of support for their Haslabs across all of their lines. A Haslab is the centerpiece of a lot of people's collection, but IT NEEDS STUFF TO GO WITH IT. Show it off right away! Even if the Haslab doesn't make it stuff that complements it (Iceberg! Arctic Cobra Commander!) can still be released.

Baffling...
 
SDCC fell right in the middle of the funding period. SDCC's dates have been known for a year. Hasbro works on product long before we ever get a whiff of it ourselves. That all is to say that Hasbro can't exactly argue that any of this caught them be surprise. They had TONS of time to plan out exactly how they wanted to handle this.

And here's the thing; even if they expected this to be funded already... do they like.. not want to sell more of them? Even if it hit every tier - that's great for US, but it's certainly better for them if it hits every tier and gets another 4000 backers on top of that, right? So, the plan always should have been to sell the shit out of this project at the biggest convention of the year for the general public (obviously, I might feel differently if this item were being solicited to Walmart and Target, because then something like a ToyFair is way more important).

So why was this not the centerpiece of the entire booth? If it were me, I would have shown up with 10 Snow Serpents, a Snow Serpent Commander in his wolf pelt, Snow Job, the HasLab figures, etc. End of July in San Diego and that convention hall would have felt chilly with how much snow-themed shit I would have packed in. And yeah, they absolutely should have planned to have at least a few new snow-related reveals to show they're going to support this thing going forward.
It's not the same as any other vehicle that kind of goes with most of your figures. If you're going to drop 400 bucks on something the size of a small child that is very biome/terrain specific, you want to feel like you're going to have things that will look good with it. Fucking obviously.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have shown the figures they had. Just that they should have put more effort into showing off how well the SnowCat is going to display. I'm just infuriated that this is the first HasLab I really didn't think I could resist and they have no interest in making sure it's actually a good value by getting to all the tiers. Fucking enraging.
 
Damien said:
SDCC fell right in the middle of the funding period. SDCC's dates have been known for a year. Hasbro works on product long before we ever get a whiff of it ourselves. That all is to say that Hasbro can't exactly argue that any of this caught them be surprise. They had TONS of time to plan out exactly how they wanted to handle this.

And here's the thing; even if they expected this to be funded already... do they like.. not want to sell more of them? Even if it hit every tier - that's great for US, but it's certainly better for them if it hits every tier and gets another 4000 backers on top of that, right? So, the plan always should have been to sell the shit out of this project at the biggest convention of the year for the general public (obviously, I might feel differently if this item were being solicited to Walmart and Target, because then something like a ToyFair is way more important).

So why was this not the centerpiece of the entire booth? If it were me, I would have shown up with 10 Snow Serpents, a Snow Serpent Commander in his wolf pelt, Snow Job, the HasLab figures, etc. End of July in San Diego and that convention hall would have felt chilly with how much snow-themed shit I would have packed in. And yeah, they absolutely should have planned to have at least a few new snow-related reveals to show they're going to support this thing going forward.
It's not the same as any other vehicle that kind of goes with most of your figures. If you're going to drop 400 bucks on something the size of a small child that is very biome/terrain specific, you want to feel like you're going to have things that will look good with it. Fucking obviously.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have shown the figures they had. Just that they should have put more effort into showing off how well the SnowCat is going to display. I'm just infuriated that this is the first HasLab I really didn't think I could resist and they have no interest in making sure it's actually a good value by getting to all the tiers. Fucking enraging.
Click to expand...
I'll go back to the whole multiple Haslabs at once being a terrible idea. What's worse is that the Snow C.A.T. should have been the centerpiece of the Hasbro Booth all weekend. Instaed it was relegated to the Joe display cabinet farther into the booth while a giant display case with HASLAB all over it was empty for the first day. That had people wondering what was coming and probably not even giving a second thought to that "Joe" winter vehicle in the back.

"What's that thing?"

"Oh that's a Haslab?"

"Isn't the Star Wars ship the Haslab?"

I mean the number of people who just walk by the booth and only see the SW Haslab had to be pretty huge. That should have been the Snow C.A.T.

Just more sloppiness on the logistics side of things again. I really thought they had learned from previous mistakes about that kind of thing. I guess the layoffs took another chunk out of institutional memory.
 
I have a feeling the stacked HasLabs is them trying to get ahead of a recession. Get everyone's money right now while they think they have it. But yes, it's still wildly fucking stupid. I genuinely hope the Star Wars one fails - not because I think it necessarily helps the Cat, but because it was just such a monumentally idiotic thing to do that it deserves to fail.
 
My old marketing and PR brain is absolutely baffled by their lack of coordination on this. Do they think Vintage Collection folks have no overlap with Classified because of scale? Also - I know you never want to put all your eggs in one basket and doing a ton of arctic stuff all at once is a bad risk, but JFC, Drop a snow-Cobra and the Polar Bear with Avalanche or Iceberg in as a preview / pipeline image to get peopled hyped about a snow vehicle. I think you're right about the lack of institutional knowledge - I know from experience companies hack from marketing very early on, usually the first budget slashed, and someone on that team should've been able to point out both the risks of pulling from the same buyers with simultaneous campaigns and not doing anything to tempt folks on the fence about a big purchase. So, so, so strange.
 
Yeah, I would have thought they figured out during the great Haslab apocalypse where they had the Skystriker, Rancor, and Proton Pack ending within days of each other to never do overlapping Haslabs again. Doesn’t take a marketing degree to learn that lesson and not repeat it. They must have felt the spotlight at SDCC was too great to ignore. They need to space these out regardless. One at SDCC and one at NYCC if they’re wanting them at shows to show people in person.

Doesn’t seem SDCC helped the Snowcat any. We lost backers the day the Gunship launched, so that was some initial cannibalism of the Haslabs there. Small but measurable. Who knows what that did to the fence sitters that may have backed it it was the only Haslab this quarter. One per quarter is my recommendation, but no more. Less is always an option. Rotate who gets that SDCC slot. Yo Joe June and May the 4th aren’t the only other times GI Joe and Star Wars can launch Haslabs.
 
It's so awkwardly planned I wonder if there's some Disney interference. I mean - two Haslabs right when all of their SDCC exclusives, new preorder drops, AND any competition they might otherwise have from other toy lines from SDCC feels wildly irresponsible. Like I kinda wonder what would've happened if they timed the 'cat for March instead of August.
 
Even ignoring the idea of cannibalizing sales; your WEBSITE is part of your marketing and they're choosing to bury the HasLab there too. If you go to Pulse right now the top banner is, of fucking course, the Star Wars HasLab. If you click to the right to move through the other suggestions (as most people do) you go through:
Mephisto
X-Men '97 new wave
Hot Wheels x Transformers
Vintage Collection pre-orders
Pulse at SDCC
SnowCat

You'd have to click 'next' on that banner SIX FUCKING TIMES to even get to the SnowCat. Someone at Hasbro is absolutely fucking terrible at their job or hates someone on the Joe team and wants them to fail. There is no other explanation.
 
I'm sure a bunch of us have managed websites in our careers, and I'm thinking either it was deliberate (they have given up and aren't putting more juice into the campaign) or they've got that standard newest-gets-pushed-into-the-banner type site and nobody on the web team was told to reorgnize it so the fuckin $400 Haslab project is in the top three slots or something. I've screwed this up as recently as last week letting a new item bump a more important item, but I mean, I also noticed it an hour later and fixed it, cos that's what you do when you manage a site.
 
Snow C.A.T.

7,414 / 8,000 (+18) 92.68% of funding goal with 16d 19h left.

Still painfully slow in gaining backers, but at least it is still positive growth. I think the Joe team needs to do something to try and get some more momentum behind the Snow C.A.T. What that is I'm not sure because something extra would seem desperate at this point, but without something extra I don't know that peopple would be moved to back.
 
I don't think I've mentioned an interesting reaction at the Joe Classified panel at SDCC. The first thing they did was show the SnowCAT promo video, and there were large portions of the crowd laughing at the jokes, oohing and awwing, and just generally reacting like they'd never seen it before. I had trouble reconciling that there are a bunch of people who will go to a Joe panel but will not watch a YouTube video.

As for what they can do to promote it, they should try to crank out an Iceberg render for sure.

They could do a photoshoot featuring all the snow themed characters. Ice BATS, snow serpents, polar bears, Snowjob, and as many Joes as they can head swap onto Snowjob's body. Just make a big play day out of it. Showcase how many snow characters there are in the line and maybe get some cool winter vibes in the middle of this sweltering summer.
 
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