On Friday, Hasbro held a livestream to promote their floundering HasLab campaign for the Black Series Rancor. Since announcing the second stretch goal on Monday (some plastic bones and a cardboard backdrop), the campaign appears to have lost backers.
Today’s livestream was seen by many as a chance for Hasbro to right the ship. Even if they didn’t readjust the stretch goal order, figures of Oola and Malakili would be enough to generate some much-needed excitement. We’d also finally get to see a painted prototype of the rancor, which would surely be enough to move the needle a little bit on its own.
Well, it turns out that what we got instead was a catastrophic failure across the board.
The Rancor
I mean…it looks good, but not $350 good. I might not have a good enough eye for this sort of thing, but I’m struggling to see how this figure has anywhere close to the “over 900” points of deco they discussed during the livestream.
But hey, at least the Rancor itself is well done. Now, how about those new stretch goals???
Tier 3: 16,000 Backers/Units
If you weren’t lucky enough to get this guy with the 2014 SDCC exclusive Jabba the Hutt, you can pick one up that looks exactly like Salacious Crumb with the recently announced Galaxy’s Edge Creature pack. That’s probably going to be your best bet since there’s no way this campaign is getting anywhere near 16,000 backers/units.
Tier 4: 19,000 Backers/Units
Yes, it’s an all-new version (with a soft goods robe) of a very good figure. But it’s also a terrible final stretch goal for this particular campaign.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Yakface.com pointed out that Hasbro pretty much revealed the figure will get a regular release next year. That means the only “exclusive” part about this one is the packaging.
So no Oola, no Ranco Keeper, and maybe no Rancor, either.
Before Friday’s live stream, the campaign was hovering over 5,130 units sold/backed. At the time of this writing, it has dropped all the way to 5,033.
Unless there’s a massive push in the campaign’s final 48 hours, this one will be the biggest HasLab failure ever. Sure, the 2019 Cookie Monster campaign was a pretty big flop, but this is Star Wars we’re talking about–and one of the most popular creatures from the franchise!
I suppose they could just fudge the numbers, but that won’t change the financial reality of this project delivering far below Hasbro’s expectations. Whatever happens, it definitely won’t include any money from my wallet.
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