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WTF? A Hobbit Dragon? Really?

Yeah, it's fixed.

Well, that was unexpected. It is a nice model, and I guess the brand recognition for LotR counts for something.

Smaug is the FW Warlord Titan of Games Workshop proper.

Given how much it cost and how quickly it sold out... If the list is by revenue it wasn't so strange for it to be #1!

I did not see that one coming. Damn. But yeah, it's like FW's Warlord.

Hmmm, that does surprise me. Although it further convinces me that the numbers do include the last part of 2014 as that's when Smaug was first released.

They made 200 Smaugs in 2014, so that's about £60,000 revenue. They didn't sell out instantly, I think it took a week or two? I'd be surprised if they sold more than 400-600 total, so maybe £180,000 total?

Is Smaug even playable on Hobbit?

SR#1 - You can't kill Smaug
SR#2 - Smaug will kill you




Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Skink - the best point of reference is IK. Though of course it's hard to estimate the number of those kits, too.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Hmmm, that does surprise me. Although it further convinces me that the numbers do include the last part of 2014 as that's when Smaug was first released.

They made 200 Smaugs in 2014, so that's about £60,000 revenue. They didn't sell out instantly, I think it took a week or two? I'd be surprised if they sold more than 400-600 total, so maybe £180,000 total?

I thought Smaug was limited to 200 in total?


Edit: it looks like a standard production run, when did that happen?

It was a limited run when it was first released, just before the holidays last year IIRC.

 Talys wrote:
@Skink - the best point of reference is IK. Though of course it's hard to estimate the number of those kits, too.

Well Smaug is the only kit on the list we actually know how many they made in a certain period, as it was one of their advertising points when it first came out that they only made 200 before Christmas.

I could be off by miles, but I'd guess if they sold 200 in a few days (I think it was about a week?) then the next 200 is probably going to take you a few weeks to sell and the next 200 a few months to sell, that's why I guessed at around 600 total.

Imperial Knights, it's hard to say how many Wardens they sold, I didn't really follow that release. The first IK release my local store got I think 9 in stock and sold them all in the morning of the first day, goodness knows how many they sold in total, 5000, 10000, 15000? Hard to say. But that was early 2014. The Knight Paladin didn't make the list at all, so sales must have dropped off fast enough to not make the top 28.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Hmmm, that does surprise me. Although it further convinces me that the numbers do include the last part of 2014 as that's when Smaug was first released.

They made 200 Smaugs in 2014, so that's about £60,000 revenue. They didn't sell out instantly, I think it took a week or two? I'd be surprised if they sold more than 400-600 total, so maybe £180,000 total?

I thought Smaug was limited to 200 in total?


Edit: it looks like a standard production run, when did that happen?

BrookM wrote:It was a limited run when it was first released, just before the holidays last year IIRC.

The initial release was the start of Dec 2014, limited to 200 "before Christmas", I think it was a week or two in to 2015 when it went back up on the store without the "limited" status.

No 200 was the first run. Anyone can buy it now. It was only out of stock for a little while, IIRC.

By the way, the math on GBP 180k doesn't work out.

If revenue was 119m for 1 year, and 70% of that was models (let's just toss that in as a guess; it SHOULD be more... right?), that pegs revenue at 83.3m.

If the best selling model only made 180k, they would need 462 models that sold as well as the best selling model, in order to reach 83.3m. Which would be impossible, obviously. Even if you presume that Dark Vengeance and Calth and Sigmar Starter aren't in the mix anywhere, it still won't work.

Also, Imperial Knight Warden costs approximately 1/3 of the price of Smaug. I'm pretty sure worldwide, they would have sold more than 1,800 IK's. Even putting aside that it's a crazy popular model that some people buy 5 or 10 or more of, I think every independent and GW store HAD to buy at least 1 (I believe it's one of the models the store must stock), and I think most stores are happy with this model (ie it has sold).

But anyways.... holy crap. That's a lot of money GW made off of Smaug, lol. I'm surprised they don't make him in a different pose. Maybe next year they'll make him bigger the same price of the Warlord Titan!

 Talys wrote:
By the way, the math on GBP 180k doesn't work out.

That was kind of my point I find it hard to believe they sold much more than that many number of Smaugs. If Smaug had of sold out instantly when it was first released I could have believed that they sold a lot more than that, but it didn't, if my memory serves it took a few days to a week to sell only 200 of them.

Even if you say Smaug made up 1% of total revenue, that's around 3300-3400 Smaugs they would have had to sell and I just don't think that happened.

Unless GW have some wacky way of determining what a best seller is.


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 Talys wrote:
Even putting aside that it's a crazy popular model that some people buy 5 or 10 or more of, I think every independent and GW store HAD to buy at least 1 (I believe it's one of the models the store must stock), and I think most stores are happy with this model (ie it has sold).

I'm sure the Knight sold a lot.... but remember we're talking about the Warden which came out mid 2015, not the Paladin which came out mid 2014. I'm sure they sold a lot more Paladins than they sold Wardens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually I wonder if this list is just a "webstore" list. That would heavily bias it to Smaug because Smaug is both expensive AND webstore exclusive.

I think some folks are underestimating the madness behind a collectable piece like Smaug, although I'd not pay that for one, when you compare him to the official Weta collectable prices, Marvel figurines and the like, he's a pretty fair deal.

I would suspect a heck of a lot of them sold to folks who don't even know what GW is or does. Hell I saw one generic Fantasy Facebook group sharing a link to him back when he first came out, I doubt it was the only one.

 Bottle wrote:
Wow! I only even thought of Smaug yesterday - can't believe it is number 1!

Almost impossible.
I thought the tactical marines would lead by far.

 Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:
I think some folks are underestimating the madness behind a collectable piece like Smaug, although I'd not pay that for one, when you compare him to the official Weta collectable prices, Marvel figurines and the like, he's a pretty fair deal.

I would suspect a heck of a lot of them sold to folks who don't even know what GW is or does. Hell I saw one generic Fantasy Facebook group sharing a link to him back when he first came out, I doubt it was the only one.

Definitely he's a great piece, I was even tempted to buy him to paint up as a display piece, if he had a different base I probably would have got one

But I'm just going off the typical thing where sales typically diminish over time, if it took them a few days to a week to sell only 200, I struggle to believe they sold THAT many over the course of a year.

Though maybe if this is based off webstore only, then it's a bit more believable, because out of the Smaugs made ALL were sold through the webstore. Out of all the Knight Wardens sold, maybe 1 in 10 were sold through the webstore.

Makes a bit more sense then

Aye, actually that would make a heck of a lot of sense. Ignoring their Indie sales would also be very believable.

Why aren't starters allowed? It says most popular kit, and they've already included Necron Battleforce, and the Tyranid and Cadian boxes.

Calth isn't even really a starter box -- more like a board game with parts you can use for 30k/40k if you want.

Starters aren't 'just' mini kits. They contain rule books and other stuff. The battleforces on the other hand are just mini kits. Bundles of minis of course, but still just minis.

The webstore explanation is pretty decent, but equally, Smaug may have had a much broader appeal than the usual GW miniature, and it may have taken a while for knowledge of his existence to seep into the public consciousness.

Middle Earth is a way bigger IP than GW's other stuff, and it brings in a lot of "non-traditional" customers.

Which is why the massive mishandling of the Hobbit with those ludicrous prices is so sad.

The first 200 smaugs sold in 5 minutes, not days. No staff discount allowed. The second and third runs only lasted a day each, before being sold out. It was phenomenally successful. I hear also that the current batch will be the last produced as they have sold to most people who want/can afford it.

Wow, JamesY, neat to hear. That's amazing.

Next stop: eBay, price... $2000. =X

 Da Boss wrote:
The webstore explanation is pretty decent, but equally, Smaug may have had a much broader appeal than the usual GW miniature, and it may have taken a while for knowledge of his existence to seep into the public consciousness.

Middle Earth is a way bigger IP than GW's other stuff, and it brings in a lot of "non-traditional" customers.

Which is why the massive mishandling of the Hobbit with those ludicrous prices is so sad.

Yeah LotR, even with Hobbit underperforming is just an order of magnatude larger than anything GW makes. I'd rather sell something to 1% of LotR fans than 99% of GW fans... Which shows how poorly they handled the Hobbit mini line.

I'm still surprised mind you, even if this is by revenue (and let's face it, it must be) I'm still shocked. Even more that they would actually acknowledge that Smaug is #1 since they've not done a thing with the Hobbit in a year.

So OK, let's that that as evidence the list was not rigged, because any 1st year marketing student would tell you not to promote a dead line you just removed from your stores.


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 JamesY wrote:
The first 200 smaugs sold in 5 minutes, not days. No staff discount allowed. The second and third runs only lasted a day each, before being sold out. It was phenomenally successful. I hear also that the current batch will be the last produced as they have sold to most people who want/can afford it.

But just to be clear nothing else for the Hobbit sold anything close to this. I gather there's piles of Hobbit minis gathering dust around the world.

Smaug I guess was just a flash of lightning, it was big, it was unique, and it came at a point where a lot of the other tie-in lines had given up. Were there any Smaug toys?

 JamesY wrote:
The first 200 smaugs sold in 5 minutes, not days. No staff discount allowed. The second and third runs only lasted a day each, before being sold out. It was phenomenally successful. I hear also that the current batch will be the last produced as they have sold to most people who want/can afford it.

I'm sure it wasn't minutes, because I distinctly remember looking at it and thinking "hmmm, maybe I'll buy one", then coming back a day or two later and thinking the same thing and it wasn't until a couple of days later again that it was gone.

But even given that, how many batches have they actually done? They aren't set up to mass produce it anyway so I can't imagine each of the runs were terribly large.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

So OK, let's that that as evidence the list was not rigged, because any 1st year marketing student would tell you not to promote a dead line you just removed from your stores.

That is a pretty good point. Especially if they believe that most of the people who could buy them (and want them) have done so.

But a lot of the models on the top 28 list don't seem to be ones that I'd think they'd be promoting, if it were a rigged contest. Anyhow, you'd think in a rigged contest there's be at least ONE stormcast entry

So, could it be possible that GW will take this as a sign that The Hobbit might still be worth supporting? IMO if you've got access to a popular IP like LotR you'd be crazy not to cash in on it, yet they've done very little with lately, other than attempting to ride the coattails of the more recent film releases.

Yeah I doubt it's rigged based off the fact they've left off a bunch of stuff that they'd WANT in the list. But I tend to think the list was constructed like this...

1. It's revenue rather than units shifted (explains why some big kits that wouldn't shift many units are nearer the top).

2. The period of recording is from late 2014.

3. It's probably based on webstore sales rather than all sales channels.

4. It may or may not only include kits which are only miniatures (ie. not starter sets, AoS, DV, BaC, Space Hulk, etc). Since we didn't see any of those on the list we don't know whether they simply didn't sell as much or whether they weren't included.

Interestingly, the top 28 list we have here does match the one on the webstore except for the Space Wolf kits (could be explained by being over a different reporting period, Space Wolves came out just before End Times I think?), Necron Battalion (no idea why that would be the case) and BaC (explained if they didn't include kits that weren't purely miniatures in this list).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
The first 200 smaugs sold in 5 minutes, not days. No staff discount allowed. The second and third runs only lasted a day each, before being sold out. It was phenomenally successful. I hear also that the current batch will be the last produced as they have sold to most people who want/can afford it.

I'm sure it wasn't minutes, because I distinctly remember looking at it and thinking "hmmm, maybe I'll buy one", then coming back a day or two later and thinking the same thing and it wasn't until a couple of days later again that it was gone.

But even given that, how many batches have they actually done? They aren't set up to mass produce it anyway so I can't imagine each of the runs were terribly large.

From this thread:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/240/625049.page

Went up on the store halfway the page, few posts later he's gone...

 Tainted wrote:
So, could it be possible that GW will take this as a sign that The Hobbit might still be worth supporting? IMO if you've got access to a popular IP like LotR you'd be crazy not to cash in on it, yet they've done very little with lately, other than attempting to ride the coattails of the more recent film releases.

No, they'll use it as evidence big collectable minis sell better than gaming minis, funnily enough, directly supporting their claim of making collectables, not games.
Not rigged my arse.

 Shandara wrote:
From this thread:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/240/625049.page

Went up on the store halfway the page, few posts later he's gone...

Ah well, my mistake, guess I wasn't remembering correctly, maybe I'm thinking of one of the times he came back in stock.

I still don't think he sold THAT many kits to warrant being more than other kits on the top 28 unless the list is webstore only. He's not a mass produced kit, he's made the same way FW make their models so I don't think each batch was large enough to compete with the many thousands of kits I expect the Imperial Knight would have sold.

Given its success, I wonder if it was the key to give us the FW Warlord.

They must have sold quite a few batches this past year of Smaug.

"Big models sell, quickly make us more!"

 Talys wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

So OK, let's that that as evidence the list was not rigged, because any 1st year marketing student would tell you not to promote a dead line you just removed from your stores.

That is a pretty good point. Especially if they believe that most of the people who could buy them (and want them) have done so.

But a lot of the models on the top 28 list don't seem to be ones that I'd think they'd be promoting, if it were a rigged contest. Anyhow, you'd think in a rigged contest there's be at least ONE stormcast entry

Maybe they're not fibbing about the customers they sell to being modellers and collectors more than gamers? here's a company that's business is just that and their statues are made in small runs that sell out for 100's of dollars a piece and their Premium line prices hit the $500 mark


$269