Irk dolls?
16I know I'm new around here, but any chance of Irk dolls or puppets going on sale one day? I quite fancy having a catfish with a pompadour on the office shelf. There are so many uses:
- Have Irk break bad news to the employees
- Blame Irk for putting fish in the microwave
- Use Irk to level that tricky table in the planning room
- Or just to have someone to talk to after being here for 15 hours
again rather than starting a thread on a deal a day website to avoid
running one more razzafrazzing report and hoping for a meteor
- 9 comments, 41 replies
- Comment
I would totally be the first to click Buy It on an Irk plush, but my gut feeling is it won't happen, at least not anytime soon. Years ago Woot tried some site-specific merch (calendars and a Wootopoly game) and my understanding is they flopped pretty hard. The Woot monkeys were popular, but they were just custom capes on an already existing toy design. Making a decent quality Irk plush would be expensive and they'd have to sell a lot of them to even break even. I love the idea, but I don't think it could happen soon.
@Starblind Why do you have to bring reality in to our fantasy? (Just kidding! You made some good points.)
@Starblind Weren't the calendars and Wootopoly mostly forum in-jokes, though? I'd think that would be the biggest factor in hurting sales.
@randomadjective It sure didn't help. It took an already niche item for a limited audience and made it appeal to just a few ultra-diehards. And Wootopoly was bafflingly marketed as a collector's item, complete with "First Edition" box. I love the idea that some sucker out there probably has a closet of them they bought for $25 each thinking they could resell them for big bucks someday, and has a rage fit everytime they show up on the Wootoff for .99 cents and still don't sell out--which happened as recently as last month, BTW. They'll never get rid of the first edition!
@Starblind I was one of those Woot-off people. Haha. It's still in the shrinkwrap, mostly because I'm the only Wooter in my circle of friends, and I'm not much of an -opoly person. But hey, it was cheap!
@Starblind Please, that's apples and oranges. My MORTIMER WOOT MONKEY is proudly at my office. My IRK PLUSH would join him in an instant. Manzanas y Anaranjados my friend, manzanas y anaranjados....
@TheAlmighty1 More like apples and those Japanese square melons. You can get anything you want printed on one of those monkey capes for a few bucks, they're popular at trade shows. But a custom plush design costs big bucks and the minimum order is usually high. Still, there is one thing that might just work: Kickstarter! It's been used to get niche plushies made before:
@Starblind Dude. I own a Wootopoly board. It was an Amazon sell-off, I think. Cheap. Totally worth it for the tiny bag o crap.
@Starblind Kickstarter also worked in getting a new ecommerce site up too. As for plushies, IMHO, the audience may still be limited right now. Maybe I'll ask what the minimums were for making these:
@narfcake I think $20 is more than I'd be willing to pay for a plushie. Even a super cute one.
@Thumperchick Yeah I want one but I'm also cheap
@narfcake Are those RamyB plushies? they are super cute
@chellemonkey Yep. http://www.teeturtle.com/collections/plushies
@narfcake Like @Thumperchick said I don't think I would spend $20 on one. But I will send the link to my friend that I would have bought one for for Christmas if I wasn't so cheap
@katylava, you could make Irks with your new sewing skills, right?
@KDemo i think you have me confused with someone else... i have no sewing skills
@KDemo @katylava I think that was @hollboll who sewed a cute thing.
@KDemo @starblind @katylava it was me! It's a bear with cold dead eyes. Maybe I'll make one after I finish the bear and stick it in some poor sucker's fuku.
@hollboll Don't you have a couple of those googly eyes, leftover, that you can stick on your bear?
@Starblind - Thanks. @katylava, sorry if I woke you. @hollboll, YES! Do that! (Have you tried contacts?).
Or sunglasses?
@barnabee @kdemo I'm sure we've got some around here. Dunno about the contacts though. We'll see ;)
I'd love to have an Irk doll too, but I agree that it's unlikely to happen. Sure would be nifty if it did, though.
Hmmm...I don't know if I want Meh literally trolling me.
This would be great for Valentine's Day.
I would get a lot more use out of the fabled Irk coffee mug. Maybe that could be the next VMP side deal. :D
With a mug or doll for sale Mediocre.com, it seems they could avoid the overstock problem by doing pre-orders only. If there's a non-trivial minimum production run to make it economically feasible, perhaps a kickstarter-style sale could work.
@nadroj Not sure I would buy an Irk mug but I would totally buy a decent sized inexpensive coffee cup that just said "meh." I need a new one for my desk
@nadroj A mug would be really practical, since it's a common business promo item they can be printed cheaply in quantities of just a few hundred. And who couldn't use an extra mug or two?
@Starblind I would totally use an Irk mug and cherish it but I think I wouldn't buy one. But I agree mugs should be easily attainable. We already have shirts and aprons. Please give us mugs next! @JonT make sure whoever is in charge of custom merch gets right on this!!
@nadroj Hey! That took me like 2 whole minutes to edit that mug out of the original picture. Where's my due credit? ;)
mad props to @Cinoclav - I did go back to the coffee maker thread to borrow it
@nadroj Lol - I didn't really need the credit. Btw, I knew it was the one I originally edited as the link location goes to the pic on my Imgur account.
@chellemonkey @Cinoclav @nadroj @Starblind I decided just to make my own
Hopefully @dave won't mind too much
@Kleineleh That is truly a thing of beauty. The official ones can use the exact same design except it'll say [official] on the back.
@Kleineleh Awesome, the disclaimer too.
@Kleineleh So cool!! I'm glad you were struck enough by the idea to actually do it.
@Kleineleh That is SO awesome. :)
@JonT It was fun to work on. Whoever did the product photo had a great idea
Meteors aside, what's this I hear about your TPS reports?
@TehMaliron I didn't find out until 2008 that TPS reports are a real thing. I had always thought it was something Mike Judge had made up. It was a sad day in the Shamburglar household.
@Shamburglar I thought that made it even funnier.
Meh should invest in a silk screen printing setup. Then on select items they could offer an Irk edition for a few bucks more.
@TehMaliron I'd want Irk on every single thing I buy.
Where did the Irk puppet come from?
@phatmass @Matthew probably found it next to the baby arm
Irk was made by the talented Lori Lane of http://www.chatterboxpuppets.com/
@matthew What a nice site! I'm half asleep at the moment, but I look forward to clicking myself silly on that page tomorrow. Three-D printed puppet parts! Lions & tigers & bears, I'm sure.
@matthew I'm going to go out on a limb and guess she didn't make Glen.
WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY