A Trip To the Dark Side?
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.
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65 comments
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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?
Sandy on
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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!!
Laura on
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The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of sticking w/good guys in general, esp. after
seeing the list of bad guys. I don’t think I, in good conscience , could pay for (or more
importantly) look at any version the likes of
DeSantis 🤢, MTG 🤮, Jim Jordan 🤢, Lauren
Boebert 🤮, or Matt Gaetz 🤢. On the other hand, every good one nominated (& many
honorable mentions) have me opening my wallet w/ease. Keep up the inspired work you
do~👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽.Fran on
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I think our world has enough villains and we hear about them more than most of us care to. I purchased Bad Trump on a whim to add to my collections as I have all of the previous figures, but once he arrived and I added him to the shelf – none of the other figures wanted to stand next to him and I got lots of reproachful looks! He ended up facing the wall at the far end of the shelf. I have no problem with that as I do not reside on the shelf ,but I worry that his presence may cast a pall over the deep conversations and snappy repartee of the good guys. Because of that concern ,I would vote for heroes only. This world needs all we can find!
Kathleen on
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I’m sure you will make the action figures that will help your bottom line whether they be villains or heroes. I, however will not be purchasing the villains for many of the reasons mentioned in the comments. I do plan to continue purchasing the heroes not only for me, but also for my grandchildren and I look forward to your new line of heroes.
Zena on
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While you've done some figures with current reference, I think action figure heroes that are * not* "of the moment" are best. In other words, even though I have great respect for the work of Jack Smith, Fani Willis, and Letitia James, in 10 years they won't be relevant and we'll be asking who they were. Just my 2 cents
Karen on