Crazy Dream-born BAF Marketing Scheme

Posted in Action Figure Chatter

I had a dream last night that I was working an auction, in the living/dining room of my house, for MOC classic ThunderCats toys. There was a professional auctioneer there, so it was my job to display the items to the bidders and to then hand them out to the winners. Things were proceedingly pretty normally until I pulled out a blister card that contained nothing but the huge lower body (legs and crotch) of a 16" Galamoth BAF. Galamoth, for those of you that don't know, is a character from Konami's Castlevania series. He's probably best known as a gigantic, and difficult, optional boss in Castlevania: Symphony of The Night, but he actually originates in the NES/Gameboy Castlevania spin-off series, Kid Dracula.




Now, having a Castlevania character as a BAF in a ThunderCats toy line is fruity enough, but what really struck me was the weird way that the BAF was being marketed/packaged: Two halves, without any accompanying smaller figures. So, my question to all of you is, would you actually buy a BAF if it was sold that way or would you cry foul? On the one hand, assuming the two halves cost the same as a regular figure and are evenly distributed in a case, the BAF would be 1/3 the price and easier to obtain than the common business model of splitting it up amongst six, or more, figures (let's also assume the current ML cost of about $15 a figure, so, $30 for the whole BAF) and you wouldn't have to buy any of the smaller figures that you don't want to complete it. On the other hand, with no smaller figure pack-in, it's hard to shake the idea that you're paying for two halves of a single toy instead of the whole thing at once. To look at it another way, traveling back in time to 2005, you would have been able to army build ML 10 Sentinels for around $16 a piece ($7.44 - $7.83 is what I paid for the individual ML figures at my local Walmart back in the day). Now, some of you are doubtlessly thinking "that would never cost out", and I'm inclined to agree, but consider that McFarlane Toys packaged their original BAF-sized Malebolgia figure, albeit one-per-case, in Spawn Series 2, at the same price as the smaller figures, so it's theoretically possible.

Oh yeah, if you're curious, the MOC Galamoth BAF's lower body went for $125 to the top bidder, the auctioneer tried to get $300, but nobody would bite. Oddly enough, in the dream, more than anything else, I was looking forward to blowing the minds of everybody on the two Castlevania forums I belong to with the knowledge that Konami had flat out stolen Galamoth from the ThunderCats...