The
McFarlane Toys DC Super Powers Sea Saucer & Bat Multicraft Collector's Crowdfund is now moving into production as it's minimum funding goal has been reduced from the original
$600,000.00 goal to
$145,000.00. As I report this the campaign has achieved
$151,313.00 in funding.
The campaign began back on
July 17th with an original end date of August 8th. Then when the campaign was no where near it's minimum funding goal of $600k it was amazingly extended until
August 22. I say amazingly because anyone could see the extension wasn't going to be enough to get it to it's goal. Now the campaign not only has had it's original funding goal significantly reduced, it also has had the ending date extended for a second time to August 30th.
Some have said Todd McFarlane told people at SDCC that if this campaign didn't meet it's $600k funding goal they would still move forward with production on these items for those who backed it, and that seems to be what has happened. The original date extension was possibly so they could get their
Medieval Spawn Kickstarter launched and funded before just totally changing the conditions of this crowdfunding campaign. The
Spawn Kickstarter had a much lower funding goal of $100,000 which it quickly surpassed in the first hour of going live yesterday. Todd has also said his Spawn figure has already gone into production before the campaign even started.
I am very happy that those who wanted these items will be able to get them, however it's very apparent both this and the Spawn figure didn't really need to be crowdfunded and they could have simple just gone with a pre-order or made-to-pre-order model to get these items made and out to the public. To me it's pretty clear the use of the Crowdfund model for these items was more a marketing gimmick than anything. People who backed these campaigns likely won't care very much as long as they get the items they want which is totally understandable, however it definitely to me comes off a bit misleading. Hopefully in the future Todd will just forgo the whole Crowdfund marketing gimmick and offer these items directly to the public as a pre-order or made to pre-order.