McFarlane Toys has built the hunt into its product for 30 years. When that hunt moved online, bots and duplicate accounts nearly broke it. Here is what the team changed across their chase figures, their Comic-Con exclusives, their Collectors Club, and the five-move playbook any collectibles brand can lift from it.
The chase is the product
Open a case of McFarlane figures and one might not match the others. A different color scheme, a swapped head, a decal that exists on a fraction of the run.
That is a Platinum Edition. For McFarlane collectors, it is the entire point.
"Platinum Edition chase is a character that's had a different color scheme added to it. It's very limited in quantity. So fans get on the hunt."
Brian Walters, brand creative director
McFarlane keeps its scarcity legible on purpose:
- Platinum Edition. The chase version of a figure that also has a regular edition. Roughly one per case.
- Red Platinum. A unique character rather than a repaint, with no standard version at all.
- Gold Label. Exclusive to a single retailer, whether that is Target or McFarlanetoystore.com.
- Signature Series. Autographed and numbered, usually by Todd at 500 to 1,000 pieces.
Scarcity fans can read is scarcity they trust.
Then the hunt moved online
Brian Tromans runs sales for McFarlanetoystore.com and oversees customer service, which means he reads both sides of every launch.
"Prior to EQL, our Platinum Editions would go within minutes. And we had a lot of angry customers. These are long-standing McFarlane Toys fans. They've been fans for 30 years. And what we heard was, we can't get these collectibles and it's no longer fun for us."
Brian Tromans, sales manager
The obvious fix was a quantity limit. It did not hold. Capped at one per customer, Platinum Editions still sold out in seconds.
"What we found was bad actors still circumvent. They find ways to get around those limits."
Brian Tromans
The real cost was not the figures. It was the fans who never had a realistic shot.
"I would see emails where people were traveling, they were going to work, they were dealing with their kids, and missed that drop, and they were devastated. It might sound silly that it's a collectible, but these are passionate fans."
Brian Tromans
An even playing field
Three years ago, McFarlane started running those releases as fair launches on EQL. An entry window instead of a start gun, verification on the back end, and one link a collector can enter from anywhere.
"It doesn't matter if you're the first person to enter or the last person to enter during that window. Everyone has that opportunity, and everybody is on an even playing field."
Brian Tromans
What it opened up
The part that matters most is not the complaints that stopped. It is the product that started.
McFarlane had been holding chases back, because there was no way to release them online without the scramble. Once there was, that changed.
"Because of EQL, we actually started introducing more of our chases. We were able to bring more of them online because we had a way to distribute them."
Travis Pyan, head of direct-to-consumer
Collectors took it from there, posting their selections in forums and explaining the process to each other.
"The best thing to see is the social doing its own promo."
Travis Pyan
Comic-Con, without the three-hour line
San Diego and New York Comic-Con come with a hard ceiling. Lines run three hours deep on preview night, and the morning's exclusives are gone before the back of the line reaches the counter.
"We physically cannot transport the product and store the product on site, so we wanted a way to make sure that fans and attendees of Comic-Con could still get those exclusives."
Brian Tromans
Listing them on the regular site would have solved the logistics and broken the promise. A Comic-Con exclusive anyone can buy from their couch is not a Comic-Con exclusive.
So McFarlane built around geo-location instead. Entries open to everyone, and collectors verified as being at the convention get priority. The people who made the trip keep their advantage, and the exclusive stays exclusive.
Rewarding the people who show up most
The same targeting runs the McFarlane Collectors Club. Members earn points toward discounts and one-of-one prototypes, and Platinum members get boosted odds on a large share of launches. Some releases never touch the public site at all.
"We simply just upload a list of those members, it emails them, and now they have access to something that nobody else has in the world."
Brian Tromans
The playbook, in five moves
Most of what McFarlane built is decisions, not technology.
"If other collectibles brands out there are looking to streamline their process and help make it more fair for their fans, EQL is a great platform to help do that."
Brian Tromans
The hunt is still the point. It just works for the people doing the hunting.
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