As the saying goes, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Last week Longbox Heroes Collection launched a Kickstarter campaign a week ago to produce a second wave brand new selection of action figures based on characters from some of the most acclaimed creator-owned comic books. Despite a promising start that looked likely to meet its crowdfunding goal, the campaign has been canceled.
Unless you haven’t been paying attention to current events, the reason unsurprisingly is related to the new tariffs. As ToyOtter Toys explained in an Instagram post:
We want to start by thanking you for your incredible support over the last week of the Kickstarter Campaign. We’ve been closely monitoring recent developments regarding tariff increases, and after much deliberation, we have come to the difficult decision to suspend the campaign.
As many of you may be aware, recent policy changes have significantly increased tariffs on goods imported from China. These new policies impose an additional 35% tariff on top of the existing 20%, meaning we now face over 50% in tariffs on our manufacturing costs. Unfortunately, this cost is not absorbed by China—it directly impacts us as manufacturers and, ultimately, you as backers.
To put this into perspective:
If our production cost for a figure is $10, the new tariff increases that cost to $15. That’s in addition to licensing fees, internal production costs, tooling and distribution. This means a single figure would now cost roughly $40 for backers once all tariff and shipping & handling fees are factored in. (And we still wouldn’t know what the true final cost will be until a year from now!) We don’t believe this is a fair price for the type of figure we are producing, and we know many of you would share our concerns. Given these circumstances, we have made the incredibly tough decision to cancel the Kickstarter campaign.
No one is more disappointed by this outcome than we are, but we remain committed to finding a way to bring these figures to life at some point in the future. We deeply appreciate your enthusiasm, support, and understanding throughout this process.
Thank you for believing in this project as much as we do.
I’m sure fans and collectors are deeply disappointed by the news. Expect things to get worse before they get better. As tempted as I am, I’ll refrain from making any political commentary and let the comment section have free rein.
English (US) · 