Exciting Bandai figure reviews possibility! :)

Hi gang,

I've recently been chatting to my good friend Danny Eardley, better known as Pixel Dan. Pixel Dan is one of the gang over at Pop Culture Network, one of the Internet's leading toy-based multimedia websites, and is probably best-known as the guy who does the MOTU Classics figure reviews as a joint venture between Pop Culture Network and www.he-man.org! :)

Anyway, I got in touch with Dan to ask him a couple of questions - firstly whether he had any plans to review the Bandai figures himself, and additionally whether he had any contacts within Bandai who might have been able to supply us (i.e., one of the toy experts from here at ThunderCats Lair) with sample figures to review and publicise on the site. :)

Even though I realise it's bad "netiquette" to post up e-mail conversations, for speed I'm going to post up Dan's reply here for you guys to see:

Pixel Dan said:

Hey Chris! Thanks for writing! I was actually planning to get ahold of you guys about this same subject!

Yes, I do indeed plan on reviewing these new toys! In fact, I just asked my animations guy to start working on a fancy new Thundercats animation bumper I can use on my Thundercats reviews, similar to the ones I use on my MOTU Classics reviews.

I was wondering if you guys would be looking for some review videos, and if you'd be interested in posting mine on ThunderCats Lair. Of course, you're welcome to do so if you wish.

As for review samples from Bandai, I'm really not sure at the moment. I chatted Bandai up at Toy Fair, and at the time they seemed very interested, excited, and willing to provide samples for review. However, I've had a hard time getting in contact with anyone about samples ever since. Generally the only responses I get back from Bandai are when they are sending me news or images of the new toys.

So I don't really have any good leads for you right now. Let me check my contacts, and if I can get a good name for you I'll definitely pass it your way.

Feel free to contact me at my e-mail address as well. I tend to check that much more often than my Facebook: [email]pixeldan@popculturenetwork.com[/email]

I'll keep you posted!

Thanks again for contacting me!
-Dan

For myself personally what I'd like to try and set up is a way of cross-promoting Dan's figure reviews of the new ThunderCats line. If you look at his MOTU Classics reviews, those are done in association with He-Man.Org, with the He-Man.Org branding on them even though they're also released on Pop Culture Network, and I'd like to try and set up something similar between Dan and our site. :)

My reason for saying this twofold:

1) It gets the ThunderCats Lair link and "brand" attached to another website's content (and if they're going to be outputting TCats reviews anyway, we might as well jump on it).

2) Getting reviews up-and-running is a lot of work, with taking photos, doing voice overdubs, etc., etc., and to be honest I for one would struggle to find the time. I think it would be much more advantageous and productive for our site to get someone like Dan to do it for us.

I'd really like to get back to Dan about this ASAP, so if you guys could LMK quickly if this sounds good to you, I'll set the ball rolling. Thanks so much! :)

Take care... :)

Chris and I have been discussing this and we are working on a deal to sort review videos out for the site.

The main point we both agree on is that we'd need the ThunderCatsLair.org brand on the videos....I'll let Chris explain things further as he is the one dealing with this.

Chris here...

Yep, just to elaborate further - I was trying to hammer a deal with Dan Eardley from Pop Culture Network whereby their video reviews of Bandai ThunderCats figures were released in conjunction with this site, in the same way that their videos of MOTU Classics are done in association with He-Man.Org... :)

Unfortunately, the spanner in the works is MannyF and ThunderCatsNOW, who has approached Dan saying how much he'd love to feature PCN's Bandai TCats videos on TCatsNOW. Although Dan didn't tell me this, I suspect Manny is trying for the same thing as we're trying for, to get TCatsNOW branded all over PCN's videos. :(

Dan, who's a great guy and clearly a diplomat, has suggested just releasing the videos without any other branding than Pop Culture Network's, as he would like them to feature on both sites... :)

I'm not against the idea of featuring them (although I won't if they have the TCatsNOW logo attached), but would much prefer to set up some kind of video reviews that actually have the ThunderCats Lair logo and branding attached to them somehow. :)

So, Neil & I are investigating other possibilities - to be honest, as much as I'd love to see us jump into bed with Pop Culture Network on this, if it's going to be promoting TCatsNOW and / or not have any other branding on it at all, then to be honest it's not worth doing. :)

So that's where we're at right now - blame MannyF for ****ing up this idea, but we have other irons in the fire and are not beaten just yet! ;)

Take care... :)