Capo Toys sole owner and sculptor
Rocco Tartamella once again is attempting to obtain funding through
KICKSTARTER to produce a new
Capcom officially licensed line of 6" scale detailed and articulated
Street Fighter action figures. We first told you about these figures back in
January and then again at the
New York Toy Fair. Since then Rocco has had a bit of a bumpy ride trying to make these figures a reality. After Toy Fair, Rocco apparently ran into a legal dispute with his former Capo Toys business partners, claiming they tried to remove him from the company. He states that he prevailed in court and is now the sole owner of the small start-up toy company. He even points to the public record of the legal proceedings about it
here.
After winning control of the company, Rocco then tried to launch a
Kickstarter Campaign last month to raise $85,000 so he could begin production on
Ryu, the first figure in his
Street Fighter line. The campaign ran for about a month but was not successful. Rocco managed to obtain only a little over $8,000 in pledged donations out of the $85,000 needed to see the campaign successfully funded.
Rocco, not willing to give up on his dream, is back again with a
NEW KICKSTARTER campaign. This time, he is looking to collect $550,000 in 60 days to fund the production of all five figures in the first series, which includes
Ryu, Guile, Chun-Li, Sagat, Blanka and
Ken which will see an exclusive alternate blue costume version only available through the Kickstarter.
In addition to offering all five figures in the campaign (opposed to just Ryu), Rocco made it so anyone worldwide can contribute and created donation packages containing multiples of the figures probably in hopes of enticing retailer contributions.
Despite the failure of Rocco's first Kickstarter campaign, I am sure he is motivated somewhat by the success of other recent action figure Kickstarters such as the one done by
Boss Fight Studios where they managed to collect over $400,000 for their 4" line of
Vitruvian H.A.C.K.S. figures or the campaign the
Four Horsemen ran for their
Gothitropolis Ravens figures which managed to bring in over $300,000.
Of course, both of those companies are a little more known within the ranks of the action figure collector community and were funding independent toy lines which meant they had more freedom on what they could offer as far as incentives go. Although
Street Fighter is a globally known name, it is a licensed brand held by
Capcom which has been known to impose strict guidelines on what a company can and cannot do with their brand. Another possible problem Rocco could face is that
Capo Toys is not the first company to do a line of detailed articulated Street Fighter figures in the 6-9" scale. While what little we have seen of Rocco's sculpts do look impressive, many collectors may already own action figure versions of these same characters from such companies as
NECA, Jazzwares and
Sota Toys who arguably had the most success with
Street Fighter right up to the point that they went out of business several years ago. Also Capo isn't the only game in town when it comes to Street Fighter figures. Sota Toy's original founder
Jerry Macaluso under his new company
Pop Culture Shock is about to launch a new line of
12" articulated Street Fighter figures which he debuted last month at San Diego Comic Con. Granted the figures are in a different scale, but they are still something that is likely to compete for that hard earned consumer dollar among
Street Fighter enthusiasts.
Shown below are prototypes for
Capo Toys' first series of figures which range from 6"-9" in scale. Some of the figures will include soft-goods clothing like
Sagat's trunks, something unique to this scale of Street Fighter figures. If you would like to donate to the new
KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN to see these figures made,
CLICK HERE! The campaign launched yesterday (8/26) and will run for 60 days. At the time of the writing of this article they had already received $4,921 in pledges. We wish Rocco and Capo Toys the best of luck with it.
And let us know what you think in the comments below. Do you think Rocco will succeed this time, why or why not?
