|
I just picked up one of these (the Scavenger dragon from set 6 if anyone cares) and I just sat and marveled at the level of detail on this figure. It's friggin' gorgeous! Not only is the sculpt freakin' amazingly beautiful, but the paint on it is astounding! Even down to the terrain piece below it, the quality present in this product is amazing.
How the hell can I buy something this fantastic for only $15 dollars US?
I am searching around trying to figure out how many of these are made and how they sell but I can't seem to find any sales figures.
I want to see a comparison between a McFarlane dragon and a WotC dragon in terms of how many manufactured and see if McF is selling THAT many more dragons than Wotc to justify the ridiculously low price compared to WotC's product.
As an aside, anyone out there who has some experience as a sculpter, how do you get into sculpting and what types of materials are used to sculpt the masters? I want to try my hand at this stuff, but on a smaller scale.
For miniatures, I believe they use a kind of modeling epoxy. A blue kind and a yellow kind that they combine to make a green material. Thus, preproduction sculpts are known as greens.
For other things, I would think sculpey or those big loafs of clay that they sell would be the thing to use. Take a look at dickblick.com or utrecht.com; they should have some sculpting materials that you can take a look at. I've never been good at sculpture, myself, but it looks like a ton of fun.
Part of the answer is that its not just the dragons generating revenue, or that is being produced. McFarlane sells his sports figures, video game tie in figures, Spawn figures (well, I suppose someone still gets these), movie licenses, and the like.
The artists that design the figures are on staff, the machines that make the paint processes, the injection molders, the plastic, are all essentially the same for all of the action figures that McFarlane produces. Thus, given that they can buy these things en masse, they can afford a lower profit margin on each individual figure.
While WOTC is owned by Hasbro, the minis, as far as I can tell, aren't produced within the same unit as any of Hasbro's other toys, and they don't have the same paint applications, plastic, molds, etc. as the minis. If there is any crossover its between the Star Wars minis and the D&D minis.
On top of this, the more of any one item you make, the cheaper you can make it. Even if D&D minis in general have a similar sales base as McFarlane toys (I'm not really sure they do), McFarlane will produce tons of each individual figure, while the fact that D&D minis is a randomized product and the fact that there are several sets put out a year, means that no one mold gets produced for an extremely long time. Still, this is less of an option when it comes to the "normal" figures, but it does come into play with huge figures and the Icons line.
While there may be tons of D&D minis put out, and even if the sales are comparable, there are nowhere near as many Gargantuan Black Dragons, Gargantuan Blue Dragons, Colossal Red Dragons, or Icingdeath icons being made as there are McFarlane pieces.
If you look at the limited run larger figures from McFarlane, the price gap narrows a bit, as a lot of these guys run around 30 dollars, because they don't put out a lot of these. The extra plastic to make the guys larger is one of the smaller expenses, the expensive part is the detailed molds and paint applications.
Of course, none of this is from a toy industry profession, this is just based on my own layman's knowledge about the toy industry from what I've read here and there in various magazines and online. But think of this. The average D&D player has a pretty good chance of knowing about the McFarlane line of toys, but how many people that are fans of the various McFarlane lines are likely to even know there are D&D minis?