What A "Heartbreaking" Crowdfunding Failure Revealed To Mattel's WWE Team

When it comes to crowdfunding campaigns for toy releases, it's a bit of a gamble. Star Wars and Marvel fans have gotten some truly incredible items, like the massive Marvel Legends Galactus figure. However, these campaigns don't always work. It's a lesson Mattel is learning after facing the first crowdfunding failure on the company's line of WWE toys.

Earlier this year, Mattel offered fans the chance to crowdfund a recreation of the WCW Monday Nitro stage, scaled to fit perfectly with the Elite and Ultimate lines of action figures. What's more, a series of stretch goals were revealed, which would have given buyers a number of exclusive action figures, should the stage get fully funded by enough people. Unfortunately, that never happened.

Instead, the WCW stage campaign never met its initial crowdfunding goal, meaning it won't be released. Fans have blamed several factors, from the downturn in the economy to the $400 price tag to even the unlockable tiers and figure selection.

With that particular stumbling block in the rearview, GameSpot spoke with Mattel about what it learned from the campaign and how it could apply to the future, as well as what misconceptions consumers may have about the process. While the company was riding high on the San Diego Comic-Con release of their exclusive Mohammed Ali two-pack of WWE Ultimate figures, Senior Designer Bill Miekina was very honest about the fate of the WCW stage.

"I mean, we were disappointed," he admitted. "I think we did a lot of pre-planning to make sure it would be successful. So when it wasn't successful, it was kind of heartbreaking if I'm being honest."

Steve Ozer, Mattel's manager of Global Brand Marketing echoed the sentiment. "I think it was heartbreaking, but also failures are part of eventual successes, right? And crowdfunding in general, it's a way to test if things are going to work," he explained.

In fact, what fans might not realize is that, per Ozer, a big chunk of Mattel's business is through a different type of crowdfunding.

"I think what some consumers may not realize is basically everything is crowdfunded," he said. "Every item is crowdfunded. Every item that's in retail, the people who are crowdfunding are the retailers. So they have to hit that minimum number and [say] like, 'We're interested and we're gonna take X amount of units.' And we're like, 'Okay, let's go forward with it.' But here, it's like we're just changing the roles around a little and the consumer is that retailer."

So, in Mattel's eyes, what caused consumers to not show up to support the WCW stage like they did the WWE New Generation arena playset that was first announced in 2021 and became fully funded by over 8,000 fans?

"It's just the amount of work that was not seen--that was kind of just dismissed because people maybe weren't 100% satisfied with the figures, which were basically bonus items on the actual stage," Miekina said. "[It] was a little like, I think people got lost in the trees and couldn't see the forest."

That unseen work mentioned by Miekena includes everything from the design of the stage and figures to sourcing things like the electronics needed to light the stage up, should it go into production.

Of course, the WCW stage not getting funded doesn't mean Mattel won't attempt to crowdfund any other WWE items through its Mattel Creations site. It's just reevaluating how the campaigns will work.

"We have more ideas," Ozer said. "We do have to restrategize maybe how to execute them to take some learnings from this one and just give it the best chance for success as possible."

In the meantime, if you didn't manage to get your hands on the Ali two-pack, you can preorder it from Mattel right now.