The Good, the Bad, The Ugly: AR NFTS

As most of you have heard by now, Mattel Creations has launched an Acceleracers NFT Garage program, which is HIGHLY polarizing amongst the AR Community. However, with such a varied response, it is very telling that there are good and bad aspects to the promotion. Let’s take a quick breakdown at some of the good, bad, and ugly things about it.

First off, to give a quick breakdown of the program, the gist is that Mattel Creations released a set of 24 Acceleracers NFTS with varying rarities, like a trading card set - just digital. The rarities were common, uncommon, rare, super rare, and ultra rare. For those who were able to complete the NFT set by January - you would receive an official Teku Deora II Diecast - exclusive to this promotion. One heck of a prize, as most of the community would probably regard it as the most popular movie car that was never released as an official diecast. However, getting it would not be easy: the NFT packs were $20 a pop, for a pack of 6. In each pack, there would be commons, uncommons, and a rare slot, where you had a roughly 65% chance to get one of the three regular rares, or a 35% shot to receive one of the super rares or the ultra rare. So one rare per pack, guarantees a minimum of 6 packs to complete the set. In other words, a minimum of $120 of packs with perfect luck to obtain the Deora - the rough price of a custom.

Before we go into the bad of this program, let’s talk about the good. We’ve been getting tossed Acceleracers bones here and there over the last few years, mainly Acceleracers cars in Hot Wheels Unleashed, the Teku paint job on the real life Deora II, and now an expansion in HWU 2 for Acceleracers, but this was the first real big step in actually testing the waters of the Acceleracers fanbase. This was a true measuring stick for Mattel to toss these NFTs out there with a singular diecast prize to see how many NFTs they could sell. From what I heard, over 10,000 of the roughly 40,000 packs sold within the roughly 12 hour window they were available, meaning a $200K surge for Mattel. We don’t know exactly what sales point they were looking for, but 200K within 12 hours surely showcases noticeable demand. After all, we were buying digital cards, with no tangible backing, and they still sold over 10,000 packs. Just imagine if they actually sold physical diecasts for $20 apiece. Something tells me they would have sold 40,000 Acceleracers cars within that 12-hour period - I would have bought several hundred dollars worth myself.

So - there is a lot of good that can come from this program - the community has officially been acknowledged in a sales capacity, not just a digital content capacity, and I personally think we got an even better turnout for Mattel than they expected. I truly believe this was a HUGE step in an Acceleracers diecast return. After all, it’s one thing for people to pine and complain about not having Acceleracers items, but it’s another for the fans to put their money where their mouths are and buy a ton of NFTs. Plus, there is a huge portion of the community that would never spend money on NFTs, myself included - so just imagine the sales for a product that is tangible and not digital. I have high hopes for where this is headed down the road.

As far as the bad goes - the downside to the NFTs generating something in the $200K range is that it does not provide Mattel with any incentive to do anything better for the community. There’s nothing stopping them from simply running another NFT program every six months for a different diecast, and raking in the 200K each time. From the data I saw (uncomfirmed), it looked like a little over 500 of the ultra rare NFTs were pulled - meaning there is a maximum of that number of Deora IIs that will be redeemed. So theoretically, Mattel raked in 200K for the cost of simply minting the NFTs and making 500 Deora IIs. That’s not bad at all, and they could definitely repeat the process with a Teku Slingshot, and multiple other custom cars. Another bad aspect is that this program caused quite a bit of a divide in the community - the people who simply love anything Acceleracers and were willing to buy NFTs and gamble on the system to get the Deora II, and the people who HATE anything NFT-related, and with fair reason. It caused quite a bit of dissention and bickering in the subreddit, and that’s definitely not the vibe that we want to give off to Mattel. It is going to be very interesting to see if Mattel launches another NFT Program or if they move to something more tangible in the future.

As far as the ugly goes - my heart goes out to the collectors who managed to snag 20+ of the 24 NFTs and came up short on completing the set (mostly because of the Ultra Rare Deora II NFT). That is heartbreaking for me to see community members, mostly young adults who dropped $100-250 on these packs trying to support the franchise and obtain the Deora, only to come up just short and waste their hard-earned cash. That is the problem with the lottery style systems, some people win, and a lot of people get screwed. Hopefully they can find an ultra rare on the marketplace before the promo ends, but if not, they lost all of their invested cash on digital trading cards, and that just sucks. I truly hope Mattel makes a physical promotion next time, where people aren’t throwing their money into a roulette wheel, praying for a diecast.

All in all, there’s a wide range of reactions and emotions to the NFT Program, but time will tell if it was a big step in the right direction towards that glorious AR Return, or if it was a step down the slippery slope of NFTs and predatory market practices.