Wild Hybrid

Mine arrived in the mail today.  Got it off ebay last week.

I didn’t realize these things were this huge.  It’s also got a section sewn into one side for carrying rolled up posters/poster tubes.  Came with the carrying strap, too.

I’m one happy fangirl right now.  *_*

agentken:

I. am. so. happy. (whispers) please don’t turn out like Ben 10. 

With the others on this one.  Source(s) or I’m not buying it.

Okay, so the reason I asked you all here what you’d be interested in for give-aways is because I plan on making prizes a part of Project ReGenRex (the campaign to get GR back on the air).  What better way to get folks to pay attention than to do contests or offer prizes, am I right?  LOL.  Really, though, I think it’ll help to keep things interesting and fun, and this is all stuff I have doubles/extras of and am willing to part with in the name of the cause.

The give-aways aren’t happening now and I’ll let y’all know when they do, but so far what I plan on offering is as follows:

Generator Rex Toys: (1) Battle Ram Cycle Rex, (2) Super Slam Cannon Rexes (the set with the big 7” tall Rex figure, which is pretty damn nice IMO)

Cartoon Network Action Pack Comics: Issue #s 51, 57, 59, 60 and 65 (all featuring either a full issue Rex story or a half issue short Rex short story)

My Artwork?  How this will go, I’m not sure yet.  Depends on what kind of time I can manage for the project, but right now I’m heavily considering 4”x6” sketches in sets of either 3 or 5.  Probably inked and colored with either copic and/prisma pencil colors.  Another option I came up with is to do 11”x17” print posters.  One image, maybe three prints to be given away to three different winners.

Hopefully I’ll have more information for you guys later this week on what I plan on doing to get this off the ground.  I can’t do this alone and I’ve got backing from a few of my role playing buddies to help with write ups, but ultimately this thing is going to have to be a fandom wide effort.  And with Cartoon Network Canada going on air Wednesday with Generator Rex as part of their line up, starting a movement this month is probably a good idea.  Will any of this work?  I don’t know.  But I do know that fans of the show Jericho got their show back on air by mailing the network bags of nuts in protest of its cancellation.  Fans of Kim Possible got a fourth season by uniting the fandom online and carrying out things like letter writing campaigns.  Bottom line, we won’t know until we try.  Even if we fail, I’m sure Man of Action and the rest of the GR production crew will appreciate the effort.

(Continuing on from my post this morning about why Generator Rex may have been taken off air/not green lit for another season/series.)

“From what I’ve heard, it was toy sales for GR.  It’s also a bigger budgeted show than Ben 10 which probably doesn’t help its case.”  - Fill Marc Sagadraca

For those who don’t know who this is, I’ve mentioned him before and plugged his Deviant Art gallery in past posts.  He worked as a story board artist on the third season of Generator Rex, including the GR/Ben 10 crossover.  He’s also just as much of a fan of GR as many of the rest of us who watched the show religiously.  So if that’s what he’s heard, it’s probably a good idea to take what’s been said about toy sales making or breaking an animated series to heart, particularly where GR is concerned.

I still firmly believe that CN could have done more in the way of advertising, however, because I’m honestly not sure I ever saw a TV ad for the GR toys?  Ads for the show itself seemed few and far between after the first couple of months it was on air.  And many of us in the GR fandom have experienced running into people online in forums and role playing communities who never even heard of GR, period.  Or if they did, they had no idea what it was about.  It was never something they really ran across that much, probably because…well…where was all the advertising?  In fact, I think the only major ads I ever saw after those first couple of months were when the GR/Ben 10 crossover was about a month away from airing.  Then, after that, the advertising for GR pretty much vanished again.

But where merch sales are concerned, I also put this post out to my fellow Green Lantern TAS fans…  Lack of sales got Generator Rex pulled from the air some five episodes shy of season 3 completion.  Talk about being left hanging if you don’t know what’s going on and that iTunes got the remaining episodes.  At this point, CN’s not even showing GR re-runs nor are they providing full eps on their website any longer.  So whatever is put out in terms of GLTAS merch, we need to take what Giancarlo Volpe has said to heart and get behind it.  I believe it was said in The Blog of Oa podcast that part of the reason we’re not seeing much in the way of actual toys yet is because the sales of the Green Lantern live action movie toys were less than satisfactory and stores like Walmart and Target are hesitant right now to stock anything specifically GL related (as opposed to just overall DC merch).  I know local stores here in OKC are still trying to clearance out GL movie toys and get the last of them off their shelves.  Hopefully this will change and there will soon be more merch for GLTAS out there aside from the downloads, maquettes, the score pre-order and that calender up on Amazon.

Basically what all of this amounts to is that the fates of these shows are ultimately in our hands.  It’s an unfortunate truth that sales are the deciding factor in cases like these, but it’s one we have to accept.  In our convo, Fill sited the Pixar Cars movies as a good example of this.  The first one was not as critically acclaimed as The Incredibles, but because the toys did so well a sequel got made, more toys were produced and Cars is still a big deal. 

I’ve been discussing this with other fans a lot as of late, plus a recent podcast hosted by the folks at The Blog of Oa, interviewing Green Lantern TAS Producer Giancarlo Volpe helped shed some light on what helps keep shows on the air.  

Fair warning…  Some of this may come off as kind of harsh, but I really think it needs to be said.  There’s a lot we can probably blame Cartoon Network for, but unfortunately I think some of the fault really does rest with the fans themselves.  (And do keep in mind that as you read this, this is just what I believe given the circumstances and what I’ve learned about how this industry tends to operate.)

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