Interview – Rik Alvarez of Play With This Too

The Play With This Too project on Kickstarter is down to its final days. Luckily, I managed to get a chance to talk with Rik Alvarez about the action figure project before it enters its final hours. Read on to learn more about this upcoming series of 6-inch scale action figures and robot drones.

Rik, thank you very much for your time. I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on your upcoming Lost Protectors action figures; these look like a great addition to my Masters of the Universe Classics shelves and everything I’ve seen looks amazing. What made you decide to launch an action figure project on Kickstarter instead of going the traditional route?

Thanks for those kind words. Basically, what it came down to was funding. While this is a collective (team effort) as far as designs, marketing and story goes, funding part was up to me. Despite having a strong team which has been in the toy and entertainment industry for many years, Upstart loan reviews confirmed that banks were not interested in providing loans for a start up company such as this. We didn’t want to take pre-orders for anything for various reasons. What if we didn’t receive enough pre-orders to pay an initial run of figures. Plus the logistics of keeping peoples information and having them update it should they move etc. The only way to get the money needed to produce the figures was through crowdfunding. With crowdfunding its also understood that the items can take up to a year to deliver.

Online retailers have been supportive of your line with sites like Big Bad Toy Store even getting in one helping with the promotion. Can we expect to see any retailer exclusive figures in the future?

We will certainly make the ability for any retailer or convention to have an exclusive figure. It all comes down to timing and if they are willing to order the figure (exclusive item – whatever it is) while we’re making a particular run using the molds (or tools) they are interested in. That would be the ideal situation… Of course we could offer them an exclusive based off any mold in our library, but for logistical purposes such as price reduction and lower shipping charges it would be made at the tail end of something we’re already making – like a repaint of something we’re producing at the time. This second way of doing exclusives is why they can be rather expensive for consumers to purchase such as conventions or store “re-issues”.

I see that you’ve backed a few other previous Kickstarter projects. Were there any tricks you learned from those projects that made the Lost Protectors project even better?

I think the thing we learned the most is to market yourself as much as possible. This is why we started marketing in October of 2014. We not only wanted to build up hype to a Kickstarter campaign, but also to take the consumer on a journey with us. From concept art to prototype to final production. Personally, being able to share how toys are really made step by step has been one of the highlights of this whole project.

Thank you very much for taking time to chat with me. Good luck with the project; I’m all set to rip open my toys and get them into my hands!