Interview with PopBox Collectibles' John Wong

Ryan Yzquierdo from Seibertron.com interviews John Wong from PopBox Collectibles about what they're doing with the Transformers license.

Ryan Yzquierdo from Seibertron.com interviews John Wong from PopBox Collectibles about what they're doing with the Transformers license.

Seibertron: John, can you tell us what products you guys are developing for the TF movie license?

John Wong: We have developed a range of unique & collectible products for the TF movie license such as embroidered patches, metal coins, 3D magnet heads and accessory danglers. We are also currently working on exciting 9" high-end 'Head bust' displays on the more popular characters from the movie. These might be as close as you can get to movie props, or perhaps even better. To compliment the Transformers video game on popular consoles such as NDS & PSP, and in keeping with the 'Transformers' theme, we are offering our reversible, 'transformable' carrying cases. Also in the pipeline are carrying cases of a similar nature for the iPod Video & Nano mp3 players.

Seibertron: That sounds like a lot of stuff. How did you decide to pick these product lines?

John Wong: Our decision to come up with these product lines are driven by two primary factors: First and foremost, it has already been decided for us that we could not do figures, period! Secondly, we are innovating from the styling of the movie version and assessing what type of cool products we could put out on the market .

We chose our product lines with key considerations such as collectability, how we can improve on existing products and tapping our creative juices to make a certain type of product better. For the 3D character magnet heads, we were inspired by the Star Wars ones that have been very popular amongst collectors. As for the 17 cm style patches, danglers and the carrying cases, we wanted to reach out to our customers/ collectors beyond our cool collectibles in the form of more practical, every-day products. I mean, I'm sure most collectors might want to wear something that symbolizes Transformers at some point or another, own a PSP or NDS, and listen to their favourite songs on an iPod.

Seibertron: Can you give us some examples of the collectability, improvements and expertise that you talked about?

John Wong: Sure, for the 7 cm style embroidered patches, we went well beyond run-of-the-mill, standard materials to create them. For the Ratchet and Barricade patches, we have printed vinyl in the more detailed graphic areas. This makes the graphics look sharper, with a glossy sheen and eye catching. We think the final effect looks awesome! For the Optimus background, we used a reflective PU material which gives it a slight sparkly, metallic feel. And for all the mechanical parts of the character heads, we used metallic thread. You can compare them with your regular patches to see the difference of the various materials we use.

For the 3 cm metal coins, you have to see them yourself to realise how intricate the graphics are etched onto each coin. At Disneyland and Universal Studios, they have these machines which squish your dime giving you a metal ornament with a theme. We based our metal coins on this concept by providing the characters from the movie etched on both sides of the coin. And so they are mistaken for an arcade token, these metal coins are each hand finished and polished for an antique metal feel. We have gold, silver and copper finishes. This was something new for us outside of what we normally would do and they turned out great! We will also have a tri-fold portfolio to house these coins later on in the year.

In regards to our expertise, which we prefer to call our innovative nature, we have in the pipeline 9" 'head busts', which are created along the lines of our high-end i, Robot ones. We will use a combination of materials and parts such as cold cast resin, ABS plastic, die-cast metal, electronic components, and removable parts... the latter adds that innovative angle of being able to transform from normal to battle mode. If you look at our magnet heads of Optimus Prime & Bumblebee and think that they are pretty decent, then with our 'head bust', you will be treated to a whole new level of detail and accuracy. Hence the cat is out of the bag -- we will start with Optimus Prime and Bumble Bee and these will be out in the 4th quarter.

Seibertron: That all sounds fantastic! I am sure that TF fans appreciate the time and effort that you guys are putting into creating them. In regards to what you guys are producing now, I imagine that you might have run into some interesting production situations. If so, can you share some of the more outstanding ones?

John Wong: Mainly I w ould say the magnet heads and the high end carrying cases. For the magnet heads, there were no mechanical turns of the characters. All we had to work with was computer rendered art from the style guides. We patched these together plus various others out on the Internet in those early months, which I would like to note are all slightly different, to come up with our 3D versions. Megatron was the hardest as the different views of the sides, back and what we imagine to be the top view did not match up. Anyway, these took a very long time but we are very happy with them based on the resources we had at that time.

For our high-end carrying cases, this was a totally new challenge in itself. We really pushed the envelope on this one as we had underestimated the production complexity when we designed them. They look great on paper but achieving them as an actual product is another story. First off, being reversible, it had to be same on both sides. If you see most reversible items both sides are slightly different. However for our product, we wanted to keep both sides the same which was somewhat of a challenge but .we were able to come up with a solution which worked U sing 4 different types of material, sewing them in a straight line, keeping the base material hexagonal web design horizontal and embroidering the TF elements is not an easy task. One wrong move and the piece is wasted. Our prototype samples from design to product look fantastic and we are very proud of them. These include both the gaming console and the iPod designs, which I would like to point out are different. For $20 or less, these are definitely worth every penny and are less expensive than some of the other more conventional cases out there.

Seibertron: That sounds great, John. You mentioned when we last spoke that you will have other products available. Can you tell us know about those?

John Wong: We have mobile phone danglers with 2cm size character heads and metal 3cm size character head danglers to accessorize your clothing, backpack, key chain, etc. These should be really nice as the 3cm size one will be nickel-plated and sand-blasted to give them a rich texture. Actually, you can probably even use them as necklace pendants. That is the plan although we haven’t got our pre-production samples yet.

Another item that we are looking to do is the All Spark cube. We are looking at 4-5" cube made of either metal plates or cold cast resin with a chrome-plating type of process. It will be a scaled down replica from the movie.

And perhaps a few more neat things of value to TF fans.

Seibertron: Exciting stuff. I think our readers will be in for a real treat when all these come out. I guess a very important last question, as you guys are based in Hong Kong, where can we (Americans) get your products?

John Wong: Our items are licensed for most of Asia and there are 2 licensed distributors in Europe who are also selling them. So you should be able to find them in various specialty, toy and game/electronic stores in those 2 continents. For people in the US, I suggest trying online shops in Asia and Europe.

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