Points of Articulation

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"Q: Which popular film franchise failed to meet its crowdfunding goal in the past year?

A: If you said Tron, you are wrong! Tron was never popular!"

Timeless Simpsons jokes aside, Hasbro's classic Tron HasLab campaign has ended in pretty pathetic fashion, finishing its run with a scant 1,386 backers, which may count as an ironic computer joke, but definitely makes it the least successful HasLab to date*.

The speculation is that something in Hasbro's contract with Disney meant that the Tron figures had to be offered this way, in this format, regardless of whether or not Hasbro thought that was the best option. If that's true, Hasbro needs better contract lawyers, because this was an obvious flop from the moment it was announced.

With a backer price of $259.99, the Tron: Heroes of the Grid set featured five 1:18 scale figures (Flynn, Yori, Sark, Program, and Tron), two light cycles with removable light trails behind them, and a light-up display base to showcase them all. And there wasn't a chance in hell it was ever going to reach its goal.

First of all, the campaign needed 10,000 backers to succeed. The Venn diagram of "people who care about 1982's Tron" and "people who have $260 to spend on Tron merchandise" does not overlap by 10,000 people. In fact, we have a very specific number for how much overlap it does have: 1,386.

The movie Tron was niche to begin with, and it's never really grown past that. Tron: Legacy did okay for itself in 2010, but nobody is excited about Tron: Ares today, and as a Disney franchise, Tron ranks somewhere slightly above The Black Cauldron and slightly below Herbie the Love Bug. Like, it got a themed level in Kingdom Hearts, but that's more based on the visuals than any actual appeal of the story or world.

But the toys being offered were bad, as well. Again, remember: that's two-hudred sixty dollars for five 4" figures, two bikes that are just hollow plastic shells, and an electronic base. Like, those were some really nice-looking $10 figures, but Hasbro seemed to think they were worth two or three times that amount. (And yes, before you chime in with "there's no way they would only charge $10 for toys like that," that just means they're ripping you off, it doesn't mean that's what it's actually worth. There are companies that only charge $10 for similar toys.)

Someone suggested the campaign would have been more successful (ie, "felt more worth it") if it were 50% less - $130. Would that really be feasible? Well let's say $60 for the five figures, maybe $20 for the bikes if we're being crazy generous, that would leave $50 for the light-up base... yeah, 50% sounds about right. But hey, Capitalists gon' Capitalize, and the brain rot they suffer from tells them it's somehow better to make zero moneys than it is to make less moneys than they feel entitled to.

While it would have been really nice to get some Tron figures, it seems Hasbro just doesn't have faith in the brand; but if that's the case, why would they bother licensing it in the first place?

*The roleplay Third Sister lightsaber ended with fewer backers, but only because of a lot of people cancelling in the last day; before that, while the lightsaber and the Tron set had similar growth arcs, Reva's saber was ahead of Tron's numbers for two weeks before that.