Richard and Ted

You clearly haven't listened to it and practiced the actions enough.

Why not go into the Booth together and help each other get the actions right?

Lets start....

Baby Shark .. do do do....do do do.... Baby Shark (remember small fist mouth...) do do do.

Mummuy Shark .....

Two or three lifetimes should be long enough to get it just right.

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Tuesday, October 04, 2022 - 09:51 am: Edit

Great, I'd forgotten the unicorn song until just now. Thanks, Soeren! (angry emoji here)

By Kenneth Humpherys (Pmthecat) on Tuesday, October 04, 2022 - 01:42 pm: Edit

A far as a small world parody is concerned, this one tops my list:

It's a real world

By Jeff Guthridge (Jeff_Guthridge) on Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - 02:11 pm: Edit

Having seen a quasi off-topic post elsewhere, I was struck with a humorous retort and thought I'd share it here.

Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) originally posted:

---

Quote:

I'm posting this here because student loans make me think of school, and school makes me think of lunch, and that makes me wonder if a Star Fleet Universe lunch pail is a possibility. Along with the usual accessories: SFU zippo lighter, decoder ring, and underoos.

---

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - 04:05 pm: Edit

Does the ADB license with Paramount allow the selling of common branded items like lunchboxes, lighters, mugs, or t-shirts?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - 05:13 pm: Edit

It allows the sale of "game accoutrements" and "items that advertise the products" so we could and did (for a while) sell coffee mugs that said www.starfleetgames.com on them.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 - 08:41 am: Edit

I would THINK that once you have "digitized" the design, getting a Zippo engraved would be a trivial task.

Heck, you could just sell the CAD/ CAM and let the end user find an engraving place & decide what to getr engraved. There are plenty of them. Around gun stores for example.

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 - 10:14 am: Edit

I'd swim thru crocodile infested waters for an SFG branded Zippo. They'd have to be the plastic inflatable crocs. But I'd still do it.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 - 11:03 am: Edit

Personally, I'd happily buy mugs and shirts with graphics like B10, D6M and D6D on them. A lot of the pre-existing graphics, product covers, and memes would also be wonderful.

Aren't there fulfillment shops where a business can upload graphics and then have these kinds of products products manufactured on demand and sold via a hosted web storefront? Sorta like the Shapeways model?

--Mike

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 - 12:26 pm: Edit

For T-shirts and stickers, I would say ADB should contact another Texas small business called BUNKER BRANDING.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 - 12:59 pm: Edit

I've been SWAMPED with ads for a computer sticker maker called "Cricut."

(Personally? I find it VERY annoying!!)

It's used to make stickers that can personalize drinking glasses (in one commercial), the front of a notebook (in another), and tee-shirts (in a third).

The way it works is that the person working it can design their own patterns (CAD?), but I think it'd be pretty easy to do a compatible file for more detailed images.

Anyhootch, my AS makes it impossible for me to work all but the very simplest of computer things, but if someone else feels strongly about it, I would not be surprised to find it easy for y'all.

By Jeff Guthridge (Jeff_Guthridge) on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 - 03:34 pm: Edit

Jeff, Cricut is a proprietary ecosystem that allows for hobbyists to enjoy some of the tools available to professional sign makers for the last 30 years or so. In effect, its the marriage of a inkjet printer (with a cutter module instead of ink carts) and a CNC machine. Layer the materials, select the cutter module, load up the plan on your computer, and fire away like a 3D printer.

The Short, short, short version is that its a minefield of IP rights issues, and I have heard bad things about what rules they impose and what rights they demand of anything put into their software.

The ads are probably a marketing blitz trying to recover their market share after a disaster of their own making. They recently got caught trying to lock everyone into a recurring monthly subscription service to use the previously purchased hardware, but I digress.

I don't think its as nasty as the quagmire HeroForge set off in 2020, but its probably something that will get in the way.

TL,DR: Its a tool for a hobbyist, making hobby things, flea market/Etsy grade at best until they get noticed and the C&D letters start coming.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 - 04:03 pm: Edit

Sounds even more disgusting than the saccharine commercials I've been swamped with.

PLEASE forget I said anything!!

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, October 13, 2022 - 02:21 am: Edit

We did a coffee mug store for a year and sold like four of them. All in, we lost money. LOTS of people said "ooo, do a coffee mug with XYZ" but nobody bought one.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Thursday, October 13, 2022 - 12:17 pm: Edit

Completely understandable Steve. It's a weird business phenomenon when customers indicate an interest in something (in the abstract) and then don't necessarily buy it when it materializes. And small businesses have to be very careful about investing in product lines that don't necessarily produce much of revenue.

Still, it's disappointing not to see pervasive SFU merch, since even low volume YouTube "influencers" have merch catalogs.

--Mike

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Thursday, October 13, 2022 - 02:05 pm: Edit

This is a thing Kickstarter helps on, it lets you gauge interest with money behind it prior to committing to a production run.

But you still need to dedicate staff time to running the kickstarter campaign.

By Jeff Guthridge (Jeff_Guthridge) on Thursday, October 13, 2022 - 02:20 pm: Edit

Mike, have you looked into the ways most of the non-affiliated influencers sell merch? They upload their IP to a third party producer who drop ships to the customer and sends the influencer ten cents (or less) on the dollar.

It’s not viable for a traditional business with bills to pay.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Friday, October 14, 2022 - 10:57 am: Edit

Drop ship merch is very viable for the purpose -- to get into merch quickly, easily, and cheaply with low or no capital costs.

If the merch volume increases and becomes steady, you can get better pricing from that drop ship vendor, or move to another vendor who will give you a better deal. There is lot of competition.

If merch explodes in popularity, you can move into buying merch in bulk and then just farm out fulfillment. Or bring fulfillment in-house and capture all the profits -- and bear all the costs, risks, and invested capital.

If the merch sales are really low, you can cancel the drop-ship deal and get out with not much money lost. And you don't have 100,000 shirts or whatever in boxes that you can't sell.

But unfortunately, Steve indicates that prior attempts tell us that SFUers are not a merch hungry crew! :-(

--Mike

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Monday, October 24, 2022 - 03:00 pm: Edit

Been watching the Indiana Jones films.

What sort of rules might be in place for a Legendary Archaeologist in SFB?

Same rules for a Legendary Marine Major for single action (singlehandedly taking a shuttle/gunboat)?

In "Temple of Doom," he jumped out of a crashing airplane in an emergency raft. Can a Legendary Archaeologist survive/make planetfall from a destroyed shuttle in low orbit?

Impossible to kill, even my Legendary Assassins?

(Perhaps even serve as a lab box, from time to time? )

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Monday, October 24, 2022 - 04:59 pm: Edit

Serves the same functions as a LSO, but killing one requires both a successful H&R attack to put him in danger, *and* then rolling another "1" on a D6 to actually succeed in killing him. Otherwise, always finds a way to survive.

Same thing if he's on a ship that dies. On a 2-5 he survives in a shuttle that somehow got out on time (including a "stored" or "destroyed" shuttle from a destroyed bay) - but if no such shuttles at all, then assumed in a space suit floating around.

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Monday, October 24, 2022 - 05:46 pm: Edit

Legendary Archeologists are nightmares to the Jindarians thanks to their insane skills at riding mine carts.

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Monday, November 14, 2022 - 11:55 pm: Edit

Why do Chicken Coops have two doors?
Because if they had 4 doors they'd be a Chicken Sedan.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Monday, December 19, 2022 - 12:13 am: Edit

What did the Zen Master say to the hot dog vendor?

"Make me One with Everything"

By Richard Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Monday, December 19, 2022 - 02:30 pm: Edit

Statler: "There's nothing like good comedy."
Waldorf: "And that was nothing like good comedy!"

Both: HA HA HA HO HO HO HAH HA HA!

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Wednesday, December 28, 2022 - 02:45 pm: Edit

I bought a Russian Advent calendar the other day.

Every time you open a window, a Russian oligarch falls out.