It’s official – Marvel Made provides exclusives offers for a steep price
Marvel had teased it for a while but today it’s official – Marvel Made, powered by ReedPop, will offer fans the opportunity to purchase exclusive Marvel merchandise that was previously only available at conventions. And I’m not sure how I feel about this.
Marvel Made excludes comic books shops (like Geek Slop) which already have a tough time competing with brick and mortar stores due to high shipping and licensing costs. But this type of limited-run merchandise was always offered at comic book conventions and fans loved it. Still, at $200/pop for a product that’s marketed solely for its scarcity – that seems to toe the line of corporate greed.
The first Marvel Made offering is a Skottie Young Premier Collectibles package featuring Skottie’s artwork. Marvel has a small ordering window (the sale ends August 7, 2020) and only 2,500 units are being offered. The package includes fifteen new pins that Skottie drew for the inaugral package (basic set of 10 pins plus 5 bundle-exclusive pins featuring Absolute Carnage, Hulk, Thor, House of X Jean Grey, and Advanced Suit Spider-Man). The package also contains an oversize notebook featuring cover art by Skottie as well as a limited edition variant comic book of Excalibur #1 featuring an exclusive cover by Skottie Young. All this for low, low price of $199. Ouch.
But wait. They built in more exclusivity to this offer. The Marvel Made deal is sweetened (and buyers incentivized to act early) by offering the first one thousand buyers a limited-edition sketch variant of the comic book. And if you are a Marvel MasterCard cardholder there is an even more exclusive special offer made just for you. There’s even a countdown timer on the offer page that lets you see how many units are still available and how quickly you have to act or be left out forever.
If you are not willing or able to drop $199 (for $10 worth of merchandise manufactured as “limited edition” to increase its value), blind boxes that include 2 random pins will cost you only $30.
As for me, personally. Ha. I’ll probably buy both. Yep, I’m that sucker.
So what do you think? Is Marvel Made an appropriate reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic – an outlet for comic book fans who are experiencing withdrawals after the cancellation of comic book conventions or is this a greedy reaction from a company whose revenue stream has been cut off while waiting for its movies productions to restart?
