Fangamer

Hey folks! This is just a quick update to let you know we’ll be rolling out with some new products (and a few revamped classics) next week!

• Pandora’s Happy Box Shirts: Designed by Omnitarian, available in asphalt and purple.
• PSI Rockin’ Shirts (reprint): Designed by PD_DX0, available in asphalt, royal blue, and raspberry/yellow.
• Escargo Express Bags (reprint): Designed by Jon Kay, new and improved rapid dominance brand, available in white and red.
• Mother 3 Handbook booster pack: A great companion for any handbook owner, or purchased alongside one! More details on this later.

Feel free to leave us some comments or discuss your merch on the Merchazawa forum. Thanks!!

Thanks to our fast-acting friends at Sunrise Silkscreen, we’ve restocked Hatness! Unfortunately these last few hundred hats are the last we’ll be able to stock until we find a new manufacturer, so once these are gone, they’re gone!

Also, shipping has been a little slow and will continue to be slow through the end of the week—Steve, our dedicated mailroom employee, is on vacation until next week, so I’m covering mailroom duty alone until then. Sorry in advance for the delay!

Note: We stop accepting MGS Preorders on JUNE 8! We might try to extend that a few days to make up for the late notice (just got a message out to the mailing list today), but if you want to guarantee yourself a customized dog tag, play it safe and get your orders in ASAP ;)

Whew, huge update time!

• Chronometer Shirt
• Millenial Fair Pins
• Borange Figurine
• Punk Skateboard
• EB Saga DVD + Poster

As usual we’ve got plenty of EarthBound merchandise stuff this time around, including our first-ever Meeellla figurines for direct sale! These little Boranges are already going fast—more than 1/3 have sold and they haven’t even been posted for a day yet—so if you want one, order soon!

The EB Saga DVD Poster is easily one of the coolest products in the store right now—not only were we able to produce a DVD poster combo priced at $20, but we managed to get the production costs low enough that more than half of each purchase goes to support the Ubsey Movies guys as they work on EB Saga 5 ( http://ebsaga.com ). Awesome.

Our first piece of functional art comes in the form of a Punk Skateboard designed by the irascible Alex LiCausi. Skaters can bolt on some trucks and ride, art lovers can hang it on their wall, old people can shake their canes and mutter angry platitudes—everybody wins.

We’ve not only restocked the black+gold Chronometer shirts, but they now also come in dark gray (Asphalt) screenprinted with metallic silver ink. They’re lovely and good, and they go well with our newest piece of Chrono Trigger inspired merch, the Millenial Fair Pins, designed by Jon!

One final note: THANK YOU. Our customers are so awesome. You guys never complain, and when you have questions/concerns you’re totally cool about everything. Not only that, but you guys snap up this merchandise at an insane pace, which keeps us happy and busy. If you would, take a minute to pat yourself on the back… and once you’re done with that, maybe tell a friend about the MGS merch, because it represents the future of Fangamer’s business! We can’t only do EarthBound merchandise forever, after all ;D

Thanks again everyone! Keep an eye on the Merchazawa forum—we’ll be making a topic regarding our next franchise later this month :D

Comment on this post »

Finally, the reveal: we’ve teamed up with MGS:TUS to create an amazing new line of merchandise inspired by Metal Gear Solid. Thanks to Jon’s design geekery and Ryan’s code monkeying, if you preorder a shirt or bag you’ll not only get a high-quality piece of merchandise, but you’ll get a custom-engraved dogtag too :O

This is our first (of many) sets of merchandise whose profits will be going to support fansites. We think there’s no better way to truly support a franchise than by helping the fans help themselves (of course we’re a little biased). With that in mind, a portion of the shirt profits will go to the MGS:TUS folks and a portion of the profits from the bags will be going to support our friends at The Speed Gamers (who are doing a Metal Gear Marathon soon)!

• EB Saga DVD plus free poster (!)
• Shark Skateboard (limited edition of 50!)
• New, non-auctiony Meeellla figurines (!!)
• Chronometer reprint (plus a new color combo)
• A little something to go with the CT shirts :)

At 7PM CST on Monday night (May 18) the Speed Gamers will be auctioning off three Meeellla figurines for charity! Be there :D

Update: They blew past the donation goal of $6,000 after less than 48 hours! MOTHER fans are amazing :D

The Speed Gamers are doing a marathon run through the MOTHER series this weekend: 72 straight hours of MOTHER 1-3 from 6PM CST May 15 to 6PM CST May 18.

Speed Gamer marathons are always run for a cause. This time they’re raising money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure to help find a cure for breast cancer.

To support this effort, Fangamer is offering offered rewards to people who donated to the marathon. If you want to support this great cause and score some free MOTHER series swag, go and visit The Speed Gamers and donate!

We will get in touch with the donors once the marathon is over for details.

As noted yesterday, we’re now totally stocked up with four brand new products, including:

• The new Hatness for those who don’t want to waste 9 months looking for one on their own ;D
• Our first Patch Pack (which includes the first and last version of the M3 Fan Translation patch you’ll ever be able to buy)
• Fobbies are Borange Pins, including a new 1/128 pin (Mondoooom~)
• Totally handmade Plushie Gummies by Eyes5

In addition to these, we’ve fully restocked the EB Yourself Shirts and added two new colors: kelly green and slate!

Also, if you’re a customer living outside the US, don’t forget to check out our revised International Shipping Policy, since we’ve had to change the way we handle lost first class shipments.

Since yesterday, just prior to the very kind Kotaku mention which is going to have us filling orders all weekend (thanks Luke [seriously!]) we’ve been steadily adding new products to the store. You can see all the new stuff in the rightbar, but I’ll save the ‘official’ new-merch update for tomorrow evening.

If you’re subscribed to the mailing list, you might want to hold off on your purchase for another day or so—we’re hoping to send out a small coupon tomorrow night :) In the meantime, some miscellaneous news/announcements:

• Orders will be shipping a little slow until this weekend, so please bear with us as Steve, Camille, and I work through the backlog (a good problem to have, for sure).
• We’ve got at least one big announcement coming a little later this month as we prepare to make strong moves into some new franchises. We’re also going to be giving new definition to our business model (hint: Starmen.Net isn’t the only fansite which deserves great merch). It’s gonna be awesome.
• I’ve been doing some miscellaneous maintenance on the store, but most importantly, I finally implemented product variants! No more massive lists of shirt styles/colors—everything is now pared down into nice pulldown boxes.
• Our friends at Mana Potions not only wore one of our shirts in their awesome chain gun video, but they also sent us a really cool package filled with neat things designed to increase our heart meters (and our heart rates)! I love those guys/girls.
• Brandon Boyer from Offworld, Bob Mackey from 61 FPS, Michael Abbott of Brainygamer, Rant Howard, and lots of other bloggers have bought their own copies of the Handbook (and other merchandise as well!) and then given us some very kind reviews. No payola or anything, just dudes who love good gaming merch! Heart = warmed, thanks guys :)
• You’ll notice that our merch updates are getting more ‘diverse’, and we’re starting to feature merchandise which supports independent artists. This is a goal I’ve personally been working towards for years now (oldbies may remember Artistorm), so it’s really exciting to finally see it happening. If you know a great artist who loves the classics and is interested in selling some handmade art, let us know!

PS: You can finally leave comments on these front-page updates! Hoorj!

Yesterday we finished off the initial lottery where we sold the first five (of ten total) figurines, and we’re now auctioning off the remaining five figurines!

If you’re interested in placing a bid on a figurine, all you need is an account on the forum. Once you’re logged in, head to http://auction.fangamer.com, confirm that you want to enter the auction, and then place your bid before Monday night (May 11). Good luck!

As noted on the Fangamer Blog, we got about 250 lottery entries for Camille’s Shark Punks over the course of the last week! Pretty amazing :O

We were going to simply choose some random names and post them, but we decided to give it a little zazz. So Steve and I (and maybe Camille, if we can get her to show her face) will be broadcasting the drawing live this Sunday at 7PM EST on the Fangamer USTREAM! And yes, there will be snacks.

Also: new merchandise coming very soon. If you want a peek at one of the latest items, check out our Flickr page!

If you’ve been keeping an eye on Starmen.Net or the Merchazawa forum you’ll be glad to know that we’re finally selling our very first handmade fan creation: Shark Punk Figurines!

If you’re willing to spend $50 to snag one of these super-rare figurines, send us an email between now and May 1st and we’ll put your name in the lottery! Once we’ve done the lottery drawing, we’ll have a blind auction for the remaining five figurines, so consider this your chance to get one cheap ;D

Fri, Mar 27 2009 In addition to the Handbooks, we’ve been keeping busy this month preparing three excellent new products for launch: Starguy / PK Love track jackets and Pork Army shirts!

The Pork Army shirts, like all of our shirts, come with some sweet 1” pins you’ll recognize from the first pin set. The Track Jackets are both embroidered and come with painfully cool patches.

And, of course, we’re almost done shipping the Handbooks, so we’ll soon be catching up on orders from the past week! If you’ve placed an order recently (or are planning to place an order soon) we’ll be shipping your order sometime early next week.

With these new updates out of the way, Jon, Ryan, and Reid are going to get back to work on the MOTHER 3 Handbook website, which we hope to launch in a week or two. In the meantime, please, spread the word about the Handbook and our other merchandise! We live and die by word of mouth from you guys, the fans.

A quick look at some of our upcoming merchandise:

• FaB Pins
• Patch Set #1
• Shirt reprints
• Gummie Plushies?
• Shark Punk Figurines?

Thurs, Mar 26: On Tuesday we began sending out the first shipments of the MOTHER 3 Handbook. On Wednesday we shipped out more than 1,000 books, and tonight we finished all of the orders through March 19. In a few hours we’ll be sending off another batch of 1,000+ Handbooks, and on Friday we’ll get all the rest shipped!

If you live in the US, you should have your Handbook before the end of the month (possibly by the end of the week). If you’re international, give it a few weeks before you panic ;) If you didn’t get an email about your Handbook’s shipping status, feel free to email us at orders@fangamer.com and we’ll look into it.

New merchandise is in, but we’re all too exhausted from packing handbooks to get it prepped. Expect the new track jackets and Pork Army shirts on Friday after we’ve gotten a little sleep!

Tues, Mar 17, 2009: The final proof has been approved and the Handbooks (and Poster Jackets) are now being printed/bound as we speak! They should be done either on Friday or Monday. We had a few printing-related issues which put us a few days behind schedule, but we’re still hoping to get the Handbooks in the mail on or before the 24th, meaning all domestic (USA) orders should arrive well before the end of the month.

The keychains and packing slips are ready to roll thanks to this weekend’s Packy Party. It went great and we got a lot of the packing work out of the way thanks to the people we flew in to help:

• Charlie (The Losar)
• Ben (Katon)
• Martin (matilda_caboose)
• Jon (Jonk)
• Kevin (SimonBob)
• Brian (ShadowX)
• Ryan (ROFISH)

And of course Camille (Meeellla) and Steve (Plo) were there for everything as well. You can see some pictures and random updates at the Fangamer Twitter page if you’re curious about what we’ve been up to. Steve will be posting a short video soon, too :)

Mar 11, 2009: Long time no update, but we’ve been keeping uber-busy with the MOTHER 3 Handbook which is currently being printed! A few quick facts/updates concerning the guide:

• The team has put thousands of hours of work into the book. Jon finished the design/layout work last week, and it’s a masterpiece.
• The Handbook source files are more than 10 gigs!
• The final page count is 240, with hundreds of illustrations and nearly 50 clay models.
• In a few days we’re flying out a handful of Fangamer/Starmen.Net folks from all over the US (and we’re even importing a Canuck) to get the books packed and shipped. We’ll be posting some pictures from the Packy Party this weekend!
• Barring any unexpected problems with the printing, the preorders should be shipped by the end of next week.
• We’re going to be posting the free online version sometime in April, after everyone has gotten their books in the mail. More on that later.

In other news, we’ve got another big batch of merchandise coming in a week or two, including:

• Pork Army t-shirts (these are going to be awesome)
• Embroidered “PK Love” and “Starguy” track jackets!
• New pins and magnets, maybe our first patch set?

More updates later this week!

Feb 2, 2009: Huge update time!

• Escargo Express Messenger Bag w/ embroidered patch
• Flinter Shirt w/ pin
• Punk Beanie w/ embroidered patch
• P-KORP Pins w/ magnet option + 1/128 pins!

A few quick notes because it’s too late to do much elaborating:

• The Winter Pins are also available as magnets now
• The EE Bags will be shipping later this week, we’re still finalizing the embroidery
• We have a new part-time employee! Welcome Steve (Plo on the forum) who is currently learning the mailroom ropes :D
• Instead of an office, we bought some more shelving and a storage locker in an exceptionally Half-Life-2-ish facility full of concrete corridors and orange doors. Currently searching Craigslist for deals on HEV Suits…

Sat, Jan 10 2009: And so we emerge on the other side of an insane holiday season! You guys were very good to us this Christmas, and thanks to Meeellla’s mailroom efforts, the store ran smoothly throughout. (If you’ve had any problems getting your order, though, please email us!) Updates and new inventory have been slow lately because we’ve been busy with three important things:

1. Catching up on orders (this is pretty much done, woo)
2. Shopping around for an office (a real-life Starmen.Net HQ? :O )
3. Working on the Handbook

Unfortunately we’ve had to delay the shipment of the Handbook. It’s coming along great, but the tiny details are taking up a lot of time so we’re pushing the shipment date back to the first half of March. I’ve sent out an email to all of our preorder customers and updated the MOTHER 3 Handbook page with lots of new information. If you’re thinking about preordering, do it soon because the keychain offer expires in a matter of days!

In other nerdchandise news, we’re working on a few new products as well as some reprints:

• Flinter shirts coming in a week or two!
• Shark Punk beanies (sock caps) coming in a week or two!
• Chronometer reprint in a different color
• CT pins
• Escargo Express messenger bags

We’ll send out an email when the Flinter shirts and Shark Punk beanies arrive. Once the Handbook is finished up we’re gonna start working hard on new merchandise and hopefully add a game or two to our repertoire. More updates coming in a week or two!

Wed, Dec 17: The long-awaited Bound Around shirt arrives in the store today after a production delay. Due to the way this shirt was printed, we’re selling it at a discount from our normal shirt price—you can get it in most sizes for $15! And as our way of saying ‘sorry for the wait’, we’ve extended the coupon campaign until Saturday, so get your orders in soon~

Chronometer, our first t-shirt inspired by Chrono Trigger is selling quick, so we’ll be looking at a reprint sometime in January, alongside a CT-inspired pin set! If you have ideas, feel free to share them with us on the forum :)

As far as upcoming products go, we’ve got two on the way—the long-awaited Flinter shirt (by thickfreakness) and a surprise beanie (winter hat) design! We’ll be posting more about these in a few weeks, so be sure to check back.

In other news, we’re catching up on shipping thanks to the efforts of the lovely Meeellla, who is working valiantly to fill your orders between now and the New Year. If you place your order for priority shipping inside the continental US by Thursday night we should be able to get it to you before Christmas, so you’ve still got a little time!

Saturday, Dec 6: We’re proud to announce three new products in the store!

• The Year the Earth Stood Bound, an amazing 18”x24” poster designed by Kaigetsudo
• EB Yourself reprints have arrived, along with new Royal Blue shirts
• Winter Pins (Set #5 for those keeping track) have arrived

We were hoping to have Bound Around in stock, but there has been a minor hiccup in the process. But fear not! The coupon campaign, which was originally slated to end on Dec 8, will be delayed until 3 days after the super-green Bound Around shirt arrives in the store—could be tomorrow, could be in three weeks. Time will tell, but your coupons will stay green and crispy until then!

As a side note, the Chronometer shirts have been selling really well, and I can’t tell you how much joy that fills me with, especially considering that it appears to be spreading purely by word of mouth. So please, continue to tell your friends about us. We are a ragtag team of design warriors with mysterious powers, but we’re nothing without the help of our friends—pretty much like any RPG you’ve ever played. So help us get to the next level. And also please don’t make us eat anything out of the trash. I mean, we will, but that’s really a desperation move that we’d rather not resort to.

• Introducing Chronometer, a shirt inspired by Chrono Trigger (which just got re-released on the DS) which represents our first foray into a non-EarthBound game!
• New I (..) NP Shirts (inspired by MOTHER 3) arrived!
• SWBS Hoodies are back in stock!

If you’ve placed an order with us before (and checked the box for product/marketing updates), our first major coupon campaign should be in your inbox! If you don’t see it, check your spam filter, and if its not there, send me an email along with your previous order # (you have to place an order to get on the list) and I’ll get you hooked up :)

Happy Thanksgiving Day to all our fellow US nerds, and Happy Turducken Day to everyone—because no matter what country you’re from, Turducken is second only to Whabysharkle.