looking forward to this already, finished the 2nd Bond set now

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:

quote:

Originally posted by Sci-FiPlanet:
How extraordinarily depressing.

I don't agree with you here. Dr Who has been done to death over the past years with Hobby sets. These cards are being collected by people of all ages, the kids are collecting them big time and if just some of these kids stray into the hobby side of things then that will be good for the future.

I understand your comments but I have to disagree with them, we are one of the few large scale swap shops for these cards,providing one for one swaps for all the kids cards. We get people coming from schools with stacks of cards and tons of lists. Having dealt with literally thousands of these cards now I can tell you that the company producing them couldn't give two ****'s about the hobby, kids, OR customer services. They are made from the poorest quality card stock and the collation is the worst I have come across. 1 box contained 32 of the same rare card... If any other company produced these cards I might well be happy I just cant stand the people who make these. They are cynical beyond belief, and as for these being gaming cards, thats a joke, they never bothered to come up with a real game for them, and as one of there customer service reps said to me on the phone, we never came up with a game because we didn't think it was going to be as popular as it has been....

Sci-Fi Planet's experiences with this set just confirm my own suspicions.

The collation is dreadful: no doubt to increase sales, nothing to do with bad packing at all IMHO.

The quality of the basic cards is poor.

Too many sets in a short space of time smack of profiteering.

There's no decent game for these, and with all the stats there really should be.

As a collector of Who cards I can tolerate these faults; as a parent of a child wanting these cards (which I am also) I think it's dreadful.

I did Battles in Time, I did Annialator, I did Invader and The James Bond spy cards.... I think the company are gonna milk this for what it's worth
When this Ultimate Monsters set comes out, about 2 months later there will be a James bond expansion set and then probably 2 months after that you will have another doctor who set to cash in on the new series......
I agree with people on here that coalations bad, same UR 8 times from JB Spy cards.....
This might actually kill the franchise

KADRAN00157

quote:

Originally posted by Sci-FiPlanet:


I understand your comments but I have to disagree with them,

.

You are obviously much more exposed to these than i am so i accept what you say, the company may not care about the hobby but the fact remains that loads of kids are collecting cards, something which the hobby manufacturers consistantly fail to achieve so for this they deserve some congrats. I allways thought the game to be played with them was the same as Top Trumps at least thats the impression i got from the magazine.

I have to agree with Wolfie here. If nothing else, kids are buying these cards and that has to be a good thing for our hobby.

You would think so wouldnt you, and I would love for you to be right, however I see the kids buying these packs and the parents cringe every time a new set comes out because they know the money is going to be crazy to put the set together. When you have loooooooong odds on a costume or an autograph card you can understand it, they are truly limited, and for the most part they are aimed at adults. They have the money to spend or not and they can put a set of basic cards together 9 times out of ten from a single box.

Now consider this:
A card company comes up with a set, and says ok this set is going to be BIG 200+ cards and the chase cards are actually numbered as part of the basic set, also they are normally of the most important characters. Then the company tells you that you will NOT get a basic set in a box, in fact you will not get a basic set in 6 boxes. If you are really unlucky you will get the same cards over and over again.

Now as an adult you are going to say hell no I am not buying this! OR you will have to have it anyway and go out and hunt them out (I have a set like this personally and I have not finished it even now ten years on). Some people will have a problem with this type of set saying it is a scam and a rip off... But it gets worse they are actively advertising to children, who will do there best to pester until the parents get fed up and simply say NO more cards, as the majority of schools have now said.

This means that cards are being banned! Kids are havening bad experiences because they find it almost imposable to get different cards and get fed up with putting the sets together and simply walk away. Is this good for our hobby? Should we encourage a bad and careless manufacturer to exploit our children and probably make there parents HATE this hobby?

I don't think so.

I fully understand your comments here and you are quite correct in your thoughts however i was bought up on this sort of collecting back in the 70's so i guess i take it as the norm.

I personally dislike the gaurantees of what is in a box as it takes all the fun and surprise out of opening the packs and the boxes.

The big problem of course with kids buying pack after pack and getting the same cards is the pack price which is too exspensive but with all their friends collecting and people like yourself doing trades putting the base set together should be achievable and fun without the dreadful buy a box get a base set rubbish prevelant in the hobby.

looking at it from the other side of the table its been the major selling item for the past 18 months, with both kids and adults collecting

quote:

Originally posted by Sci-FiPlanet:
You would think so wouldnt you, and I would love for you to be right, however I see the kids buying these packs and the parents cringe every time a new set comes out because they know the money is going to be crazy to put the set together. When you have loooooooong odds on a costume or an autograph card you can understand it, they are truly limited, and for the most part they are aimed at adults. They have the money to spend or not and they can put a set of basic cards together 9 times out of ten from a single box.

Now consider this:
A card company comes up with a set, and says ok this set is going to be BIG 200+ cards and the chase cards are actually numbered as part of the basic set, also they are normally of the most important characters. Then the company tells you that you will NOT get a basic set in a box, in fact you will not get a basic set in 6 boxes. If you are really unlucky you will get the same cards over and over again.

Now as an adult you are going to say hell no I am not buying this! OR you will have to have it anyway and go out and hunt them out (I have a set like this personally and I have not finished it even now ten years on). Some people will have a problem with this type of set saying it is a scam and a rip off... But it gets worse they are actively advertising to children, who will do there best to pester until the parents get fed up and simply say NO more cards, as the majority of schools have now said.

This means that cards are being banned! Kids are havening bad experiences because they find it almost imposable to get different cards and get fed up with putting the sets together and simply walk away. Is this good for our hobby? Should we encourage a bad and careless manufacturer to exploit our children and probably make there parents HATE this hobby?

I don't think so.

This may sound like crazy talk but does every kid really want to put together a complete set ?

As a kid I never completed a single set I collected but that didn't stop me from enjoying collecting cards.

To be honest as an adult I haven't completed a master set of any set I have started either.

and @ £1.50 per pack this is not cheap fun

my son collected these but was priced out of them - I even given him my spares - now he collects topps Match Attax (OK sports cards but cards are cards to kids) - £0.35 per pack

And the Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh (and the like) cards are somewhere in the region of £2.50 to £3.00 a pack.

quote:

Originally posted by Raj:
And the Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh (and the like) cards are somewhere in the region of £2.50 to £3.00 a pack.

Not only that Raj, Yu-gi-oh release many sets each year. So in-comparison BIT is a lot cheaper for kids to collect. I collect BIT and also Trek cards and I know which is the easier to put a set together and its not Trek.

If we all took the approach as mentioned by others hear no one would collect cards. Indeed, perhaps we should be "locked away in a Padded Room for wasting all that money". Seriously though we collect because we in the hobby and kids also enjoy collecting. Unless Card Companies start giving cards away it is always going to cost a lot of cash to put a full set together.

The reason BIT is proving so popular is that the programme has caught the imagination of the kids and all merchandise relating to the show sells really well in the U.K.

quote:

Originally posted by treksearcher:

quote:

Originally posted by Raj:
And the Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh (and the like) cards are somewhere in the region of £2.50 to £3.00 a pack.

Not only that Raj, Yu-gi-oh release many sets each year. So in-comparison BIT is a lot cheaper for kids to collect. I collect BIT and also Trek cards and I know which is the easier to put a set together and its not Trek.

If we all took the approach as mentioned by others hear no one would collect cards. Indeed, perhaps we should be "locked away in a Padded Room for wasting all that money". Seriously though we collect because we in the hobby and kids also enjoy collecting. Unless Card Companies start giving cards away it is always going to cost a lot of cash to put a full set together.

The reason BIT is proving so popular is that the programme has caught the imagination of the kids and all merchandise relating to the show sells really well in the U.K.

With the greatest of respect I would just point out one or two things. 1. you are an adult with your own income, as you stated you collect both trek cards and BIT, and the BIT are easier to obtain sets of. Obviously they are for you as you have the means to do so, not only that but the Trek sets are actually a LOT easier to put together. Buy a box and typically you have a full BASIC set, obviosly you also want the chase cards (autos and costumes ect.) and thats fine for you but some will be happy with a basic set.. Thats the difference I am getting at, with BIT the basic set includes the high end cards, if you want the set you have to chase the "rare" cards. No offense Trek but you know what I was talking about and I never said people should be locked up for the money they spend on the hobby, as you well know I spend a fair amount on this stuff myself, however If I was unclear in the way I made my point I will try again to address what I think are some of the other differences for you.

The Trek cards you mention are specifically NOT aimed at children (as RH has stated many times they aim at the high end collectors market). I am sure you can see a difference? As to the comparison to Pokemon and YuGiOh I will adress that now.

YuGhOh cards are for the euro market at least printed and packed by a company called Cartamundi in Belgium. They produce high quality cards on good card stock and thats one of the reasons for the price difference. (BIT are printed in china on the cheap low quality card stock. You will notice that the rare cards eventually start to curl with time if not kept in an album. Now with YuGiOh specifically there is a game attached and a relitivly complicated one at that, not every set that comes out is applicable to every type of player and many of the cards are not needed buy everyone.

This promotes swapping and very few people try and collect full runs or sets, because they (god forbid!) USE the cards for the game. You will also find that both YuGiOh and Pokemon often produce several versions of the same card, in differing rarity's, this means you can have the card in your set or deck and it will not always cost you an arm and a leg.

This is where BIT missed a trick, if they had come up with a half decent game the older cards would still be useful, kids would still want the older cards hell they would want several of the same card for there decks and they would use them. I find it sad the a company taking so much money cant be bothered to go to even this minimal effort. Both YuGiOh and Pokemon are supported by a league system with prizes and competitions BIT has a fortnightly mag that most shops don't stock because sales are low.

Before people start thinking I just don't like Dr Who let me say that that is FAR from the case I like it both new and old I just don't like seeing little kids put off by there parents and teachers because they are being ripped off.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sci-FiPlanet,

Good point made there by SciFiPlanet: if BIT had produced a game that truly needed multiples of cards, then children would've chased more than one of each...BIT clearly missed the boat with a great opportunity there.

quote:

Originally posted by Sci-FiPlanet:

Kids are havening bad experiences because they find it almost imposable to get different cards and get fed up with putting the sets together and simply walk away. Is this good for our hobby? Should we encourage a bad and careless manufacturer to exploit our children and probably make there parents HATE this hobby?

I don't think so.

If what you say is true and kids are walking away then surely the product would not still be selling so well.

On the contrary this company is not only putting out new Who sets but now has the Bond spy cards set as well. This says to me that their products are still selling very well.

If a full set is taking that many boxes to make a full set then god help the kids as they are buying loose packets so the likelihood is that it would take even more packets. Whilst I don't like the 2 basic sets in a box on cards there must be a reasonable limit - one basic set in 2 boxes of any sort of card set (In my Opinion)

Just going back to the game to be played with these cards. I said in an earlier post that the magazine shows who would win when one card is put up against another card.

You can do this by picking a catagory or adding up all the stats on the card. In this way you play the same as you would with Top Trumps until the winner has all the cards.

Doesn't the game also allow you to use special cards to add to your category scores to beat other cards.

quote:

Originally posted by cardster:

quote:

Originally posted by Sci-FiPlanet:

Kids are havening bad experiences because they find it almost imposable to get different cards and get fed up with putting the sets together and simply walk away. Is this good for our hobby? Should we encourage a bad and careless manufacturer to exploit our children and probably make there parents HATE this hobby?

I don't think so.

If what you say is true and kids are walking away then surely the product would not still be selling so well.

On the contrary this company is not only putting out new Who sets but now has the Bond spy cards set as well. This says to me that their products are still selling very well.

Sorry but no, the sales projections for this where MUCH much lower than you think, the fact is the first BIT set stunned F&F, they had no idea it was going to be so successful, this was why to start with there were so many distribution problems. They expected to sell less than half of what they did, and STILL MAKE MONEY. This means there forecast will allow them to lose customers now and still be achieving above there targeted earnings forecast.

Now don't get me wrong these are successful from a monetary point of view, and they continue to sell very well (we sell a lot of these cards ourselves) but not nearly in the same numbers they generated with the first set.

Yes there is a top trumps style game. I hesitate to call it a game as there are no tactics nor any skill to it you simply read off number and see whats higher. It could and should have been much better than that.

I'm sorry guys but Part Works manufacturers in the UK have ALWAYS been a rip off... build the titanic in 467? parts?... Thats what this was and thats why there was little thought put in. A lot of Schools HAVE banned these cards thats a simple fact, and a large number of kids have stopped buying them.