|
"It's amazing what people will let you do when you're willing to take all the responsibility and give
them most of the credit," says Luke Thompson, better known as the 'Whiz Kid' in the title of Whiz
Kid Productions. Rising from obscurity to one of the forerunners of the recent slew of small toy
companies, Luke has taken a tactic that some would call inspired, and many would call insane.
"I bought a factory," he says, slugging back a two-liter of Mountain Dew like a man dying of thirst.
"Check most of your toys. I'm willing to bet a massive portion of them have 'MADE IN CHINA'
stamped on them. That's because there's a bunch of toy factories down there in China churning
them out pretty much nonstop." He pauses to inspect a prototype that we weren't allowed to print
the name of. (Really, he threatened us!)
"Anyway, so you've got these factories, and each toy has a set of molds, right? When these molds
are done being used, what happens to them?" He pauses for effect, and to chuck his empty bottle at
the nearest trash can. "They go into storage. Unless the company finds another use for them, they
basically rot- especially these days, when so many toylines are changing over to new styles and only
using these old molds on a token level. Eventually you have to make some room somewhere, and
sometimes molds get damaged, lost, or destroyed as they get moved around. Perfectly good molds
that can make perfectly good toys, that we will never see again. That's the sort of thing I aim to
change."
He waves his hand over a table full of Marvel figures. Some of them are easily recognizable as
molds we haven't seen in years, and many of them are characters that the collectors have been
clamoring for. "I did what no one else has tried. I bought one of those factories in China. Some of
those factories are exclusively owned by a toy company, but many of them change hands all the
time, so I took advantage of that, and bought one. It has an entire warehouse of molds. I mean,
wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, packed!"
"Of course, this leaves another issue, in that the molds belong to these companies, but they're now
in my warehouse, so I did what any entrepreneur would do: I called up the companies that owned
these molds and told them that they had three options. They could pay me to keep or destroy them,
they could pay someone else to cart them away to somewhere else, or I could pay them so that I
could use them. A lot of companies really liked that third option."
"Then I made another proposition. Since I'm already paying to use their molds, why don't I pay
more to make characters they own? What's not to like? They get to keep the character, the mold,
and pretty much all the credit, while I pay for everything, and thousands of fans across the world get
figures they've been wanting for years."
So how's the business going? "Like gangbusters, man. Total gangbusters. Hey, wait... Gangbuster,
we could make him... anyway, we've got some massive orders. Between the internet and comic and
toy distributors, we're doing great. Better than I ever could have hoped."
What does the future hold? With a wicked smile, he picks up a US Agent figure. "I may have to buy
another factory just to keep up."
THE LOWDOWN:
Iron Man- "Yep, we're bringing it back. There are way too many characters that center around
Iron Man to ignore it. This time, there will be a bit less of the big man himself, though."
Wave 1 will have Recorder, Scarlet Witch, Wonder Man, Dark Aegis, Hypnotia, and Living Laser.
|
