greatlakes6
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Completely summed up in this one statement.
Molecule8 John Lennon UPDATE 5/10/18 - SCAM COMPANY!
- Thread starter Johnny Utah
- Start date
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Completely summed up in this one statement.
You’ve pretty much summed up John Lennon himself right there too.
Vijay never had any intention of revolutionizing anything. He saw a way to make fast money in a ridiculously over-priced luxury-item market. The lies started on Day 1. And Vijay has a long history to pull from... with nothing to show for it but a trail of fraud and out-right theft.
Vijay gets away with it too, while customers argue about Hope vs Haters. The perfect crime.
Vijay gets away with it too, while customers argue about Hope vs Haters. The perfect crime.
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Vijay never had any intention of revolutionizing anything. He saw a way to make fast money in a ridiculously over-priced luxury-item market. The lies started on Day 1. And Vijay has a long history to pull from... with nothing to show for it but a trail of fraud and out-right theft.
Vijay gets away with it too, while customers argue about Hope vs Haters. The perfect crime.
--
True.
At least I didn't buy into it and lose any $ . . . asides from bandwidth and time spent.
Darklord Dave
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Vijay never had any intention of revolutionizing anything. He saw a way to make fast money in a ridiculously over-priced luxury-item market. The lies started on Day 1. And Vijay has a long history to pull from... with nothing to show for it but a trail of fraud and out-right theft.
Vijay gets away with it too, while customers argue about Hope vs Haters. The perfect crime.
I'm sure it's much more complicated than that. The licenses are real - so real advances had to be paid to studios for Willy Wonka, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Tick, etc. So I doubt the plan was to scam to make a few bucks on a John Lennon figure that had to go through the exhausting approval process.
Judging from his history and what people have been saying, I think it is as simple as that. I see no other outcome.
But you know a lot more about this business than I ever could, so are you saying you think he set out with admirable intentions and it all went sideways on him? Does he truly have rights to produce Harry Potter products -- let alone any of the other licenses? I would really love to know what a true veteran believes happened here.
Perhaps his plan was broader -- to scam people on all the licenses he acquired and maybe things just got more complicated and Lennon was the only one that panned out in a relatively easy way. Or perhaps he just had to spend money on licenses -- others people's money -- to make himself look legit so he could get artists with good reps to work for very little upfront. That's the smart move. The mileage he got and trust gained by getting KA Kim onboard was worthy every penny he paid upfront. We all know what happened to her on the backside.
I just don't believe Vijay has a sincere bone in his body. Never did.
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It's always about the $.
I doubt it
I have no doubt the intention was to make a successful business. However, it appears he/they were more into making a business look expensive and legit than actually making it a good one.
Why the hell they had a license for the tick and a cult nintendo game I’ll never know but the whole 3 country business stuff, loads of licenses and pretty marketing was him wapping his “sclong” around for people to see rather than simply producing a lennon figure and when that became a success doing another and building steam.
No doubt a lot of it was for show to the investors but at the cost of building real, strong foundations within the figure making world (artists/factories etc)
Like Budget Stark said, he met him and saw he was all talk and if he did then so did the rest of them.
Just remember there is a finite amount of talent in 1/6 scale making and Hot Toys have a huge monopoly on it. Their reputation is such that most factories and artists want to work with them first as they are fully established and secure. Someone like M8 would struggle to get in there at the best of times but to try and do so while touting 3 month turnarounds, insane accessory promises and claiming to be better than the already established king/queen of the 1:6 hobby was just plain arrogant and naive!
That is what I think most of us saw from the beginning, the arrogance and complete and utter disregard for how the industry works. In order to change the established you must first become the established and then change it from the inside. Otherwise you will always be on the outside looking in and thats what happened here. They over promised and even assumed they could pay artists later instead of first, thus making an environment in which there was a risk of there being no way to pay later.
Always pay the talent as they are the ones that deliver the vision. If you don’t then expect substandard work and prepare to fail.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Why the hell they had a license for the tick and a cult nintendo game I’ll never know but the whole 3 country business stuff, loads of licenses and pretty marketing was him wapping his “sclong” around for people to see rather than simply producing a lennon figure and when that became a success doing another and building steam.
No doubt a lot of it was for show to the investors but at the cost of building real, strong foundations within the figure making world (artists/factories etc)
Like Budget Stark said, he met him and saw he was all talk and if he did then so did the rest of them.
Just remember there is a finite amount of talent in 1/6 scale making and Hot Toys have a huge monopoly on it. Their reputation is such that most factories and artists want to work with them first as they are fully established and secure. Someone like M8 would struggle to get in there at the best of times but to try and do so while touting 3 month turnarounds, insane accessory promises and claiming to be better than the already established king/queen of the 1:6 hobby was just plain arrogant and naive!
That is what I think most of us saw from the beginning, the arrogance and complete and utter disregard for how the industry works. In order to change the established you must first become the established and then change it from the inside. Otherwise you will always be on the outside looking in and thats what happened here. They over promised and even assumed they could pay artists later instead of first, thus making an environment in which there was a risk of there being no way to pay later.
Always pay the talent as they are the ones that deliver the vision. If you don’t then expect substandard work and prepare to fail.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This was answered in the piles and piles of posts thanks to someone else's research. Search it out if you want.
The licenses were officially registered and leased out to M8.
Again, licenses paid for with other people's money to look legit isn't the best proof of legitimate intents.
Actions speak louder than words, and we all know what Vijay's actions were. With a long history to boot.
I think any glimmer of hope from Vijay to start a successful business was only if it somehow happened despite his common bad habits of cheating people and his likely large salary. I mean, in any con, who wouldn't want it to be successful? Ask Madoff.
Actions speak louder than words, and we all know what Vijay's actions were. With a long history to boot.
I think any glimmer of hope from Vijay to start a successful business was only if it somehow happened despite his common bad habits of cheating people and his likely large salary. I mean, in any con, who wouldn't want it to be successful? Ask Madoff.
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Agreed, it's a textbook startup scam. He bought the licences and produced a few half baked prototypes (hiring numerous independent contractors makes it easier to bail, who's going to take him to court?) to justify costs which allowed him to pump more money from his investors. He pays himself a nice salary and makes it seem like he had positive intent all along. It's shocking that people actually think he had good intentions here. He did the exact same thing with his video game company.
He's from the tech world so he's just following the exact startup business model that so many douchebags follow in Silicon Valley and they get away with this same garbage unscathed. It's really sickening.
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I told you guys all along getting all the license rights could eat
up most of the seed money. There is no shame or crime
in making a profit for his investors or the company but not
paying his vendors at all are wrong.
It is such a pity because even now with all the
rights ( assuming they all in fact has been approved )
, it is very well possible the Taxi Driver,
Wonka will now never see a production for all the fans
out there.
Have anyone heard from VIJAY ?
I think it really heards the company when
the founder does not make a
Press announcement with all the cloud surrounding
Lennon and VIJAY remaining radio silence.
up most of the seed money. There is no shame or crime
in making a profit for his investors or the company but not
paying his vendors at all are wrong.
It is such a pity because even now with all the
rights ( assuming they all in fact has been approved )
, it is very well possible the Taxi Driver,
Wonka will now never see a production for all the fans
out there.
Have anyone heard from VIJAY ?
I think it really heards the company when
the founder does not make a
Press announcement with all the cloud surrounding
Lennon and VIJAY remaining radio silence.
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Seriously? What's he going to say -- sorry, I got really busy and things fell through the cracks, I'll fix it right up?
You won't hear from Vijay again on this. But look forward to his next endeavor where he plans to shake up the establishment and reinvent what you thought was possible.
ebor
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You can't be serious with any of this post
...the wheel...at the Detroit Auto-show
Molecule9 Endoskeleton Car.
Will revolutionize the automotive industry
jal76
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Were you saying that it is possible that M8 MAY not produce Wonka and Taxi Driver...? I think it would be safer to say that it is pretty much impossible that these or any other figures will see the light of day from this company.
Following my post on here previously, I have had a number of people contact me and I am very grateful both for the support that they have shown and for the information they have provided. This has helped to fill in a lot of gaps in what I knew about the way the company has been run and I believe will prove to be very useful.
I also wanted to say thank you to the forum in general for its response, I had feared getting a lot of abuse for being in any way involved in Molecule8 and for being naive/stupid/idiotic... (enter descriptive of your choice) enough to have been sucked in the way I was.
I’ve seen some of the questions here about the original intentions, licenses etc and thought I could help clear things up and provide a small amount of insight.
Again, as per my earlier post, I have to choose carefully exactly what I can say at this stage but I hope that the following is informative to some extent at least.
All the licences listed on the website are real and have been negotiated with the studios. In addition there is at least one more license, Travis Touchdown, which is not listed and which I was not aware that M8 had taken until after seeing a post on this forum. There may be more that I am not yet aware of also.
I disagreed with Vijay about the number of licenses we took from the outset, you only have a finite amount of time before a license expires and I believed that we had more than we could produce within the timescales allocated.
Vijay said that it didn’t actually take long to produce a figure and he wanted to produce 3 or 4 a year minimum. Looking back now I can’t say for certain whether this was his genuine belief or something he just told me but I did trust his judgement at that time.
One of the biggest points about which we disagreed was why it was necessary to ask for full payments up front on orders rather than just taking deposits. A deposit is enough to show that a customer intends to purchase, there is no need to take a full payment until the figure is ready to be shipped. Pre-orders are taken to gauge interest and forecast the total number of units that will need to be produced. We were a well funded company and did not need customers’ money to produce product.
I’m sure that a lot of people already know this but for those who don’t and are interested, the way it works with licenses is as follows.
You bid on a license and have to convince the studio not only of your ability to pay but of the fact that you can actually do justice to their property.
The license fee is an advance on royalties and the total sum agreed is the minimum guaranteed (MG) number of units that you are undertaking to sell.
If it turns out that you sell below the MG that you forecast, you still have to pay the MG amount of course. If you sell more, you pay the licensor the additional amounts as the units become sold.
It is rare that a license will be paid for fully up front, typically payment is made in 3 or 4 stages with only the first payment due upon signing. The initial investment capital put into Molecule 8 was not largely consumed by license fees as a result of this.
So the licenses that M8 displayed are all real however in the time left, it would be impossible to complete all of them now without obtaining extensions.
For me this has been a disastrous venture not just financially but personally too. Some of the licenses we took were favourites of mine, such as Taxi Driver, Lord of the Rings and Big Trouble in Little China. To know that an opportunity to produce these figures may be being lost is very galling.
I have been working on ways in which to try to salvage something from the situation, either by the possible transfer of some licenses or by convincing Vijay to step down and away from the company.
To date I have been rebuffed on all fronts as Vijay is still adamant that he is in charge and feels that he should continue to be so.
Although I have not fully given up hope of trying to force something, especially with some of the information that has come to light recently, I am still looking at litigation as the primary way forward to retrieve anything from this situation.
I would like to sincerely apologise to everyone that has been negatively affected by their dealings with Molecule8, although I had no control over the conduct of the company the fact remains that I helped to facilitate its creation by my investment into it. That this was done with good intentions doesn’t seem to matter so much just now.
If anyone does have any further information that may be helpful in any way, please do send me a PM. Its all helping to put together an overall case which I hope will prove to have a successful outcome.
Thank you all again for the support and understanding that has been shown.
I also wanted to say thank you to the forum in general for its response, I had feared getting a lot of abuse for being in any way involved in Molecule8 and for being naive/stupid/idiotic... (enter descriptive of your choice) enough to have been sucked in the way I was.
I’ve seen some of the questions here about the original intentions, licenses etc and thought I could help clear things up and provide a small amount of insight.
Again, as per my earlier post, I have to choose carefully exactly what I can say at this stage but I hope that the following is informative to some extent at least.
All the licences listed on the website are real and have been negotiated with the studios. In addition there is at least one more license, Travis Touchdown, which is not listed and which I was not aware that M8 had taken until after seeing a post on this forum. There may be more that I am not yet aware of also.
I disagreed with Vijay about the number of licenses we took from the outset, you only have a finite amount of time before a license expires and I believed that we had more than we could produce within the timescales allocated.
Vijay said that it didn’t actually take long to produce a figure and he wanted to produce 3 or 4 a year minimum. Looking back now I can’t say for certain whether this was his genuine belief or something he just told me but I did trust his judgement at that time.
One of the biggest points about which we disagreed was why it was necessary to ask for full payments up front on orders rather than just taking deposits. A deposit is enough to show that a customer intends to purchase, there is no need to take a full payment until the figure is ready to be shipped. Pre-orders are taken to gauge interest and forecast the total number of units that will need to be produced. We were a well funded company and did not need customers’ money to produce product.
I’m sure that a lot of people already know this but for those who don’t and are interested, the way it works with licenses is as follows.
You bid on a license and have to convince the studio not only of your ability to pay but of the fact that you can actually do justice to their property.
The license fee is an advance on royalties and the total sum agreed is the minimum guaranteed (MG) number of units that you are undertaking to sell.
If it turns out that you sell below the MG that you forecast, you still have to pay the MG amount of course. If you sell more, you pay the licensor the additional amounts as the units become sold.
It is rare that a license will be paid for fully up front, typically payment is made in 3 or 4 stages with only the first payment due upon signing. The initial investment capital put into Molecule 8 was not largely consumed by license fees as a result of this.
So the licenses that M8 displayed are all real however in the time left, it would be impossible to complete all of them now without obtaining extensions.
For me this has been a disastrous venture not just financially but personally too. Some of the licenses we took were favourites of mine, such as Taxi Driver, Lord of the Rings and Big Trouble in Little China. To know that an opportunity to produce these figures may be being lost is very galling.
I have been working on ways in which to try to salvage something from the situation, either by the possible transfer of some licenses or by convincing Vijay to step down and away from the company.
To date I have been rebuffed on all fronts as Vijay is still adamant that he is in charge and feels that he should continue to be so.
Although I have not fully given up hope of trying to force something, especially with some of the information that has come to light recently, I am still looking at litigation as the primary way forward to retrieve anything from this situation.
I would like to sincerely apologise to everyone that has been negatively affected by their dealings with Molecule8, although I had no control over the conduct of the company the fact remains that I helped to facilitate its creation by my investment into it. That this was done with good intentions doesn’t seem to matter so much just now.
If anyone does have any further information that may be helpful in any way, please do send me a PM. Its all helping to put together an overall case which I hope will prove to have a successful outcome.
Thank you all again for the support and understanding that has been shown.
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