^THIS. I'm not on the inside but I heard just the POPs, which are a basically KR styled rip offs, made/make millions annually. Crazy that a company that just wanted a piece of the KR action ended up with the whole pie plus some, while the OG is going bankrupt. Maybe shamelessy whoring yourself is the only way to make big money. I know it is for me. Call Quentor for a good time: 651-357-8679 (not my real number I'm kidding fuckers)
Slightly off topic, but the way several people go out of their way to bash KR here is plain silly. They sound like teenagers who need to exclusively like PUNK and would never admit to also liking techno or indie rock or jazz, as if being open-minded is a demonstration of weakness or a betrayal of some sort of indier-than-thou credo. You genuinely don't like them? ANY of their stuff, from the cute plushes to the bro hiphop stuff to the artsy Parra and McBess toys with all the different D*nnys in between? Fine! But it doesn't make them the epitome of evil and sloppiness either. Hell, they're a lot more professional than most other toy companies and distributors around. Without them, I doubt many specialized stores like Roto or Lulu would still be around. I might of course very well be wrong with that, but I know at my old store, they outsold everything else by orders of magnitude. End of rant, carry on.
Next thing people are going to say that they don't have shoe boxes stacked full of Bearbricks in their cupboards! So at the moment it seems like KR are just closing a few stores and are focusing on online sales and supplying to retailers? Pretty much what 95% of other toy companies are doing? That ain't so bad..
I don't understand why a 'discussion' about KR has even reached 4 pages! They were relevant and now they're not. Unless yer gonna lose your job because of the closures . . . who cares!
This is the closest thing I have to a non-existent drama series on TV based around toys.. Like if How To Make It In America was based on KR and Super7 instead of aNYthing and Mishka.. Don't you ruin this for me
...I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or real, because I don't have or have ever wanted a single Bearbrick.
Me neither, but Be@rbricks were the original platform toy and infinitely cooler than any western-wannabe crap by default regardless!
100% real!! You're missing out! Some great bears have been released over the years.. If you do dive in, be prepared to get hooked on the toy equivalent of crack
There is an open letter on their forum. I read it. can't have those 2 minutes back. I think the topic died because everyone is happy they aren't KR collectors.
http://forums.kidrobot.com/viewtopic.ph ... 7&start=25 I found this thread on the kr forums in response to the open letter.
That KR thread answered a couple of questions and covered things like price increases for licensed products. Was that the news that you were referring to? It was definitely irritating to read that's for sure!
who woulda thought that people would get burned out on getting a ton of doubles every time they try to buy the toys they want.
It'd been a few years since I'd visited the KR Forum but having done so this week was interesting ... lots of unfamiliar names, but lots of the same old behavior. One thing that sort of cracks me up is the way that folks there seem to think they can bully or whine or shame the business into doing what they as individuals want. KR isn't alone in enduring that behavior, I saw it a lot in the hobbyist 3D world in the 2000s as well. "If you raise your prices again I am so out of here," and then the inevitable sycophantic responses like "it's their business and they can do what they want and I will continue to be their biggest fan." I think sometimes people forget that businesses are businesses, and that the customer is not always right.
Haha! ^^^Sounds exactly like the masters of the universe classics collector community. And those people are up against Mattel who could definitely not give two shits about their dinky little internet only toyline. The web has given a voice and sense of importance to so many people that shouldn't have one.