HasLab Team Discusses the Making of The Ghost, Its Multiple Tiers, and Looks Back at Past Projects
In an interview with io9, HasLab, Hasbro’s crowdfunding branch, went into detail about how they decide on what projects to kickstart, the multiple tiers in their funding, and how all that went into their latest project, The Ghost.
Just last week at San Diego Comic-Con, HasLab unveiled their gigantic version of the iconic Ghost ship as it will appear in the upcoming Ahsoka series. It is the latest product to come out of the HasLab crowdfunding division, in which the company seeks backers before the product is made; at $499.99, The Ghost is not for the faint of heart. However, just five days after the unveiling, HasLab reached its desired target of 8,000 backers. The Ghost will be shipped sometime in the fall of 2024, but if the project receives even more backers, it will include even more toys of the Rebels crew.
Chris Reiff, the manager of product design for Star Wars, and Patrick Schneider, Hasbro’s global marketing director for Star Wars and Indiana Jones, spoke to io9 about how they decide on what projects they’d like to kickstart. Both point toward how each HasLab project has to be a “dream project” and how each project’s goal should be to please the fans the most, aiming to give them the most “bang for their buck:”
Chris Reiff: “We all think of HasLab as ‘dream projects.’ So I think that’s the bottom line. Is this the dream? If it’s not the dream, we’re not doing it right. So I think we start there and then we feel out, what’s going to still fit with the dream? Like, what’s the kind of price point that we think is going to make fans happy but still allow us to deliver a substantial and impressive product? And then at that point, it’s what can we do for that? How do we fill that out and release it? But it’s all back to ‘dream.’ Like what answers that request is a baseline here.”
Patrick Schneider: “The reason I love [The Ghost] project is it just makes so much sense on so many levels. This is the number one request from the community. Again, we read online, we do a lot of research ourselves. It’s what they wanted.”
The two then went on to discuss the multiple tiers of the new project. At the baseline goal, backers will receive the ship and a 3.75-inch figure of Hera Syndulla. But it doesn’t stop there. At 11,000, backers will also receive a figure of Ezra Bridger; at 14,000, a figure of Kanan Jarrus; and at 17,000, a figure of Garazeb “Zeb” Orrelios.
Said Schneider about the potential additions:
Schneider: “There’s a whole crew that crews the Ghost. So we knew if we just had included Hera, if we just showed Hera, all the conversation would be about where’s the rest of the crew. And so that drove the decision to infuse those figures into the tiers and show them upfront…
We’ve got Hera, we’ve got Ezra, we’ve got Kanan and Zeb. Sabine’s in her Ahsoka look in [the] main line. So we’ve got five out of the six. Chopper we see his head. I think you see where we’re going with the crew so I think it’s a safe bet. Also, you know, in terms of those Rebels looks, I know Sabine’s in a slightly different look [but] if we get all the way to 17,000 [backers], there will be a pretty good case to be made for completing the rest of that crew in their season four looks with those mural card backs. So we’re pushing to get there. And once we do, let’s see where we are at that point.”
The Ghost is not the first project to come out of HasLab, and there have been two crowdfunding campaigns in the past that failed to gather enough backers — namely, the Black Series Rancor didn’t reach its targeted 9,000 backers, and Reva’s lightsaber from Obi-Wan Kenobi only recruited 1,400 backers out of the targeted 5,000. Schneider and Reiff said the following about potentially doing the numbers that the Razor Crest, one of HasLab’s past projects, did back in 2020:
Schneider: “We desperately want them to come. I’ve backed two already. I want all of those figures. And again we’re on a great path to get there. The Razor Crest did 4,000 units in the first day and got to 29,000. We’re beating that pace. I’m not saying we’ll get to 29, but let’s see where we end up.”
Reiff: “If we get to 29, the conversation is about all the other stuff. The more successful this is, the more successful it all is.”
And speaking of past projects that never saw the light of day, Reiff also discussed the campaigns for the Rancor and Reva’s lightsaber:
“Well, I mean, it’s an evolving process, the Haslab thing. It’s another way for fans to give us feedback. Those two were different than this. I mean they didn’t fund but they don’t feel like failures to me, in that we’ve learned a lot from those. The Rancor was a great one. We almost got there. I think it breaks all of our hearts that we didn’t, but we didn’t get there. We learned some stuff about tiers through [that] one. And with the lightsaber, we learned stuff about content.
This, like Patrick said, is a perfect storm of, we’ve got four years of relationship and history with this ship and this crew. We know it’s coming in Ahsoka. So we’re here at the time the content is launching with this ship. All that stuff informs how we go forward.”
Fans have till September 6th to back and support The Ghost from HasLab, which is described as the largest ship they have built since Jabba’s Sail Barge (their first project), measuring 28 inches by 34 inches, and being 13 inches tall with capacity for at least 15 figures. It will be shipping sometime in Fall 2024. Feel free to also check out our article on some of the other Hasbro Star Wars toys revealed at San Diego Comic-Con.
Born and raised in Hawaii, Jay Goodearl runs the YouTube Gaming channel “Good Games, Dude” His channel aims to open up video games to beginners and immediate players and help them understand what makes games the art form that it is.
