Review – Panzer-Ace “Cobalt Knight”

Manufacturer: Atomic Mushroom * Year: 2010 * Ages: 16+

Atomic Mushroom is a small, one-man company, so I have nothing but respect for the operation since it appears to be completely dedicated to bringing me awesome robot toys. We’ve already looked at the first robot from the company, Combat-R Zero (first review here and second review here), so you know I loved the company’s first robot effort. Today we look at Panzer-Ace (see it here at the Atomic Mushroom site) . . . and I’m happy to report that it’s even better than the Combat-R Zero robot toy.

A Bulky Bot!

Even though he’s just a tad shorter than Combat-R Zero (9-inches tall), Panzer-Ace looks much larger than his older brother because he’s just so damned bulky. I mean, this guy comes in at 8.5-inches wide and 7.5-inches deep he’s almost a cube! Seriously, this is a massive robot toy and it feels heavy and great in-hand. He may be $69, but trust me that he’s worth it just in plastic alone. A heavy, heavy toy.

Metallic Shine!

But as heavy as he is, it’s clear from the paint that no expenses were spared in raising the bar a notch. A metallic blue with spray highlights and shadows, every inch of the toy is amazing. Damn, I sound like a goobering fan boy but I’m seriously impressed with the quality of the paint. The photos here don’t do it justice; look closely and enlarge each one and you can almost get an idea for the quality of the paint and the metallic effect.

Limited Articulation

The arms swing up and down and the waist rotates; exactly the same points of articulation as Combat-R Zero. And that’s plenty, since this toy is really about the design and paint more than anything else. And since vinyl toys are rarely heavy on articulation I’m completely happy with just three points.

A Clean Sculpt

As smooth and sharp as the Combat-R Zero design, you can see that Panzer-Ace is a great vinyl toy that’s crisp and . . . damn, I need to stop and think because I’m obviously too excited about the toy and not thinking clearly. But can you blame me? I mean really, just look at this guy. But no matter how much you look at the photos it’s the act of actually holding and playing with the toy that makes you start to understand just how much care and skill was sunk into creating it. And that means tons of cash was spent to bring Panzer-Ace to life.

Why is it $69?

I think we’ve looked at enough designer toys here at battlegrip.com that the price tag won’t shock anyone, but I want to take a few minutes to explain why a simple vinyl toy that’s about 9-inches tall costs as much as seven to nine Hasbro 3.75-inch scale action figures. It’s all about scale. And I’m not talking scale of the toy, but scale of production.

When Hasbro (or any major action figure manufacturer) creates a new toy there are fixed costs in tooling, sculpting, and design that cost the same regardless of the number of toys that are manufactured. Let’s pretend it costs $10,000 for the upfront costs to get the toy from an idea to the point that we’re ready to inject plastic into a mold. That’s a pretty simple number for our discussion.

(Warning, all numbers are rough and for demonstration only. I have experience in manufacturing games, a bobblehead, and plush, but I’ve never worked on action figure manufacturing.)

Okay. So we’ve spent $10,000 and we’re now ready to start making toys. Let’s say we’re going to make 10,000 copies of the toy. We’ve now got a base unit cost of $1/toy. That’s not bad, especially when plastic/manufacturing costs should only be $2 or so per figure. Assume another $1/figure for painting and we’re up to $4/figure for manufacturing 10,000 toys. Now we need to package them. Then ship them. And then we’ll ship them to a store where the store pays us roughly 50% of the MSRP.

So cool. Running 10,000 action figures means we might just make money if we price the toy at $10 or $12. That’s assuming, of course, that we can sell through the entire run. And that’s before we pay many bills.

But what happens when we run just 250 units? Well, that $10,000 cost breaks down to $40/toy. And trust me, we’re not gonna get 250 toys manufactured for $2 to $4/each. No, we’re looking at more like $10/toy. And we still need to ship them (which will cost less than shipping 10,000 units, but it will cost more per unit than if we had 10,000 to ship). So a run of 250 toys — there were 250 Panzer-Ace made — costs us something like $50 to $55 each. That $69 price tag suddenly doesn’t look all that out of line.

And, in the case of Panzer-Ace, we’re talking about someone who saved his own money while working and sunk thousands of dollars into a dream.

Now to be fair the real number was probably closer to half that, say between $5,000 and $6,000 for 250 units, but that still comes in at $20 to $24/unit for our basic costs so let’s call it $35 to $40/toy to make Panzer-Ace and get him delivered to the house. At the high end that’s $10,000 invested in a project. And that money is lost until we sell 145 toys at $69/each. Yeah, breaking even takes almost 60% of the total run.

Yeah, I think you understand now why I’m so impressed with the work Atomic Mushroom has done with these robot toys. It’s a huge risk and has to be stressful; how would you like to be sitting on $10,000 of your life wrapped up in boxes of toys that you’re trying to sell? And 250 units is not selling fast; the toy has been available for sale over three months now and it’s still available at the site.

Sorry to Get so Wordy

Wow, I really didn’t mean to dive into such a lengthy discussion about the costs of toy manufacturing, but I think it’s important for people to understand why so many designer toys cost so much. And when it’s an artist doing everything itself I think it’s absolutely amazing that such a great work of art comes out of the process. I hate to think how I would handle the stress if I was sinking my time and money into making a vinyl toy. I like to think I could handle it, but just thinking about spending a year or more to save money to create a toy . . . and then bring it to market . . . makes me wonder what would happen.

I mean, how would you handle it?

Closing Thoughts

A fantastic robot toy from a one-man operation, I think that at the end of the year I may call Panzer-Ace the “best vinyl toy of 2010.” I highly recommend hitting the Atomic Mushroom website and ordering one of these, both because it’s a fun toy and because I want to see the company succeed. Because if this toy sells out then maybe we’ll get a third robot toy design.

As it is I think I’m gonna go back and get another Combat-R Zero colorway just to support the company.

Philip Reed wishes Atomic Mushroom all of the luck in the world. A company that produces robot toys this cool deserves to succeed.