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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Seems wrong to capitalize on the criminals that are breaking this country. That’s a republican thing to do. I don’t like it.
Kimberly on
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There's a big problem with this hero and villain thing, and that's the fact that one person's hero could be another person's villain and vice versa. Stunts like this one only emphasize the division in our country today, and it's clear from the results of this survey that it only reflects left-leaning perspectives. I've always been a leftie, but I've been having an ongoing conversation with a security guard who leans to the right, and it's astonishing how much we agree on. Neither of us likes Donald Trump, but we also agree that Joe Biden is a corrupt, lying, and senile warmonger. Have a discussion with me and I can point out specific incidences that support that description of our current president. This whole idea that Democrats are virtuous compared to Republicans is absurd. A corrupt Democrat is no better than a corrupt Republican. They say that they support democracy and respect the sovereignty of other nations, but they are clearly lying to you about that. Don't let your political biases convince you otherwise. Right now they're supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza. I've been protesting against my Democratic representative for over three months now because of odious statements and actions that make it clear he doesn't care about the lives of human beings. He'll preface some of his statements with things like "As a doctor and a father…," and his literature tries to assure us that "Listening to you is my most important responsibility," but it's all platitudes, gaslighting, and propaganda. Three out of the four people I've spoken to from his district office have blatantly lied to me, and I have photos and witnesses who can corroborate two of those. These are not good people let alone heroes.
Wayne on
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I don’t think think there’ is one iota of negative energy born from your creations. Be them hero or villain.
Imo I think it’s a bit rude to impose upon you the pressure of being a voice of their discontent and task you with being the moral compass and to hell with any profit you may attain. I wonder how many of your commenters would actually pass on a mountain of cash for the same reasons. I think everyone should be behind you guys with full support 100% And to be honest I think creating Donald Chump like this is a win-win for the good side. When people look at that doll they will always see him as the corrupt loser that he is.Dean on
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Due to the state of the world I’m a little tired of bad guys getting all the attention…. It’s time we appreciate the heros and the ones doing the good stuff for democracy.
Judith on
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I think making respectful figurines of our hero’s and funny or “evil” figurines of our villains. Like the Trump in prison one, this is embarrassing for Trump. He is a loser and that figurine is hilarious. I would love to see something similar with other villains. For example, how funny would it be to see a figurine of Kanye West with a “Black Lives Matter” shirt on. Remember when he sported the “White Lives Matter” shirt?? It’s a nice little dig at him, if you put a BLM shirt on him. Donny Jr would be funny with some white powder under his nostrils and crazy eyes. Lauren Boebert at the play in her low cut dress where she got felt up then walked out causing a scene. Use their embarrassing moments to create figurines that we can find funny.
If you made figurines of the villains and just made them normal, and in their everyday attire, the figurines could be bought by people that idolize them. Making them funny for liberals is key.
Brianna on
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Hi Bridgit,
Ready for a fascinating fact? We actually tried to produce a Dalai Lama Action Figure in 2018 but it turned into a complete fiasco. No factory would touch the figure once they realized who it was out of fear of getting on the wrong side of the Party. Come to think of it, we should really write a blog post about that whole crazy episode someday. It would give us an excuse to share the pics of the sculpt, which was amazing. He was quite probably the best sculpt Mike ever made for us to be honest. Sadly he got either lost or destroyed somewhere along the way and the pics we have are all that remains of him.
FCTRY on