What about 1/18 playsets?

Rowsdower · Post by **Rowsdower** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:51 pm

I agree with the others, I think smaller themed packs with various signs, hedgehogs, sandbags, mortar pits and that sort of stuff would be great. I don't have space for huge buildings and all that but smaller scenery pieces would be perfect.

mrkisskissbangbang · Post by **mrkisskissbangbang** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 8:03 pm

Has anyone seen the Fisher Price Sweet Street collection? Although they are just facades. Does anyone know if the buildings can be converted? Are they close enough to 1:18 scale? If they are, I see some potential on a few of them. Fisher Price does have a few building playsets that would be easy to convert. I managed to pick up some used ones at the local thrift store.

I did pick up a few of the Build-a-rama building ruins a few years back. They were quite nice but as mentioned....expensive.

Cheers

bird · Post by **bird** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 9:55 pm

i missed the playsets the first time around and when i could've got them cheap off ebay i passed it up, spewin! coz now when i look at them they're pretty awesome and i rkn they would make fine additions to dio's and displays in general.

I'd love to see 21C bring these out in 1:18 in much the same way they have in the 1:32 series. Plus you could do heaps of different battlefield pieces/accessories like.... belgian gates, sandbags, hedgerows, barbed wire, ammo crates, fuel drums, even molded bomb craters.

Oh yes, i'd also love to see bunkers made.

Rowsdower · Post by **Rowsdower** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 10:28 pm

bird wrote:Oh yes, i'd also love to see bunkers made.

Bunkers would be sweet. I missed out on all the playsets as well since I just started collecting back in August. Oh and I nearly spit my Coke out when I saw your avatar! I wonder what he's listening to?

bird · Post by **bird** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 11:25 pm

Rowsdower wrote:
bird wrote:Oh yes, i'd also love to see bunkers made.
Bunkers would be sweet. I missed out on all the playsets as well since I just started collecting back in August. Oh and I nearly spit my Coke out when I saw your avatar! I wonder what he's listening to?

"will to power" by Karl Morser & the plastics

proudly sponsored by Fanta

VMF115 · Post by **VMF115** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 11:33 pm

bird wrote:
Rowsdower wrote:Bunkers would be sweet. I missed out on all the playsets as well since I just started collecting back in August. Oh and I nearly spit my Coke out when I saw your avatar! I wonder what he's listening to?
"will to power" by Karl Morser & the plastics
proudly sponsored by Fanta

Hey Bird you have a funny Avatar,lol:

Rowsdower · Post by **Rowsdower** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:10 am

bird wrote:"will to power" by Karl Morser & the plastics
proudly sponsored by Fanta

Jesse James · Post by **Jesse James** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 1:51 am

Part of the problem is it's tough to realize what goes into tooling/producing that stuff... Like I said, it's got limited appeal, limited resale possibilities... And to produce something and have it be financially logical for the business to make (and profit), you have minimums you have to meet... You can't just whip up 100 to sell on BigBadToyStore real quick to see if it'll work... Not worth it. Or even 1000... Minimums needed in the toy industry are pretty staggering when you see the numbers. Not much gets made that's ever truly "rare".

That's a word people who scalp toys throw around a LOT, and it's really pretty silly when you see production numbers on some toys.

But back to the point... You have to factor in a lot of variables with an item. That's why I mentioned a simplistic small "U" shape of sandbags you could pack-in with a figure for example, should the packaging of 21st Figures be redesigned (couldn't fit anything like that irght now). If you made a deeper bubble (and I'd think with any added weight they'd need to redesign how the bubble seals to the card as well, for sturdiness), you could pack in a simple single-piece "accessory" like a sandbag pile, or a bomb crater, or a small chunk of broken wall...

Large accessories aren't anything new to the scale of course... I'd fear a price increase on the figures though if it became a thing you saw packed with every figure. If it's with a sparsely accessorized figure though, like say the BotB Jeep Driver or Tanker, it seems to have a shot...

I'd love stuff like that... It'd even entice me to buy extras in some figure's cases I'd think. If parts had an ability to interconnect, more the better. It definitely entices buying of multiple figures a little more. It's also something 21st or BBI could consider by setting a different (higher) pricepoint for figures.

Much like BBI's parachute figures, you could set a higher pricepoint to run alongside the "basic" line, and instead of the chutes and whatnot (pricey, as "softgoods" accessories like those aren't cheap to produce), throw in a small piece of wall... Or a little piece of headstones for a church cemetary perhaps. Basically though, these ammount to ornate stands to display your figure, not a playset, but it's got a lot more possibility to it than the large buildings and things we got. Those just proved pretty miserable at retail and I think TRU took a bath. All of them clearanced at many areas (didn't seem regional to me at the time). And really things like that don't do well for many toy lines at all.

Assuming they have the tooling for the bridge set done, I'd love to see it put out... The photos of it were incredible. It was big, detailed... But even with the tooling costs out of the way, the costs to produce it may be prohibitive... Still, a big hurdle is tooling costs... IF 21st has that thing ready for production, and they just pulled it because of retailer disinterest, then there's a slight chance THAT could see a release... "New" stuff though, on the level of the original playset line, I think has no real feasible shot at happening.

Loved those second series playsets though, especially the bridge... The Vietnam stuff was rockin' too.