Upset over some dinosaur toys

Post Reply New Topic

I really wasn't sure where to put this, I feel like it's not big enough of a deal for the haven, it's pretty dumb (as you can tell from the title). But it's something that upsets me nonetheless, so here it is.

Some time ago I became interested in collecting scientifically accurate dinosaur figures. I got excited to start but while exploring I found one of the principal companies in the market had been behaving very poorly online, primarily on their facebook page and on a forum dedicated to dinosaur toys where they have their own board and an active representative.

To try and make this as short as I can, they made controversial choices in marketing; claiming scientific accuracy while not applying it in their product and mocking people who urge them to. The slightest negative criticism was met with tantrums. They've childishly mocked, belittled and insulted many people (calling others "nazis" several separate occasions).

When compelled to apologise, they mostly go on about how they've been unfairly criticised and harassed by haters, excuse their overblown reactions, deny things they've done and blame anybody but themselves for the ensuing controversy. They play victim and rouse their fans against critics.
And after it's all done, they fall back into their old behavior. This repeated several times over about 5 years till now.

I find this behavior unacceptable from anyone but a company especially. But they've never really faced consequences for it.
Their facebook has nothing but fans (I've heard critical comments have gotten deleted), the forum is full of people who tell anybody who urges the account to sincerely make amends to get lost (some of the moderators are on their side and have used their powers to suppress criticism on the company), they don't care about the abusive fits as long as they can get their shiny toys and all the shops promote the hell out of them, even if they're aware of what's happened.

It's made me disillusioned and depressed. I'm just about to give up on the hobby altogether even though I got really excited for it. I've got enough stress in my life that I don't want any during the times I intend to have fun. It's just sort of ruined for me, you know? I was looking forward to it but now I'm not sure if I'll ever manage to enjoy it.
Nobody seems to feel as strongly about it, so I assume I'm just the wrong one.

I feel like I'm making a bigger deal out of it than I should, but I just can't get my head around how people have the opportunity to stand against unjust behavior and just... don't. I feel like all my values and morals are invalid and pointless.

Anyway, that's my little rant. Reading it over I feel rediculous because I've got more than enough other things in my life I could be upset about, seems stupid something like this could stand out.
Any advice would be awesome because I feel rather lost on what to do. Cheers.

I am into model railways. To be fair to the manufacturers they have all been good to their customers in this way and I have never heard stories in this way. I have seen the ones who are in the hobby clash on occasions and yes, I have seen manufacturers clash with other smaller manufacturers who are mostly retailers as it is about a conflict if their contracts.... But this is not the same thing.

What I have seen though is the large manufacturers losing customers by pumping up prices way beyond what I consider is reasonable and therefore alienating many of their customers who would have otherwize bought their products.
One of the reasons for the hikes in prices has been the attempt to try to make the models more realistic, but to be honest, the most popular British scale is quite a compromize as the gauge to scale is out to begin with, and they use unrealistic couplings, so why they try to make the rest more accurate without addressing these two prominant features I don't know.
The other reason is the two main manufacturers started to get big loans to try to buy up all their smaller competition and then recession hit so they had less customers, so they had to double prices overnight, and then later double them again to survive.
As an example of prices, back around 2005 I was buying Freightliner wagons for around £10 each. Today the exact same wagons but in new liveries (They keep changing liveries every few years to add more choice. It is just a different colour) have a recommended retail price of £47.99 each.

But to add what I was going to say but did not get to say it...

When the prices zoomed up I had left a rather good job when I hit the first burnout, so I had no income and at times a low income depending on when. This meant that to enjoy the hobby I had to change because to me, 00 gauge which had been the cheapest and the most popular until then generally became out of my price range.
To cut a long story short, the solution came to model in 0-16.5 instead and concentrate in scratchbuilding using the scrappier 00 gauge items that I had for parts.
I also turned to freelance modelling with it, which oddly and unexpectedly added a new sense of realism because I had to think how things worked before I set out to make them. For example a diesel locomoticve has a diesel engine and exhaust and a radiator and a fuel tank etc... So when making a representation of a diesel locomotive, even though it is one made up by my own imagination, it still has to have the crucial parts to make it look believable, so in a way more effort is done to make it look right then if I had copied a real locomotive directly and scaled it down, because when scaling down one simply is just copying in a smaller scale and one is not neccessarily thinking about what the actual parts are and what they do.

I do also buy the odd kit when funds allow and the good thing is that because I paint everything, it all has an element of consistency, so my scratchbuilt items can blend in with the kitbuilt items and not stand out looking odd. When I used to try to make things myself in 00, no way could I build or paint to the manufacturers standards so my efforts really stood out. Yet with my current approach, everything blends in perfectly!

And the great thing is that I can make things for a much cheaper price so the hobby becomes affordable where it was before becoming out of my reach.

I think I can relate to some extent... I used to read this very good series, but when I saw how rude the author was to anyone who criticized her (his? I'm not sure; the author used an alias as it was a story only published in the internet) work, including me when I pointed out I didn't like the sexist, hypocritical attitude of one of her characters, I just couldn't enjoy the story anymore. So I stopped reading it. I would've actually liked to still read the story, for I liked it as a whole, just hated one character, but the author's attitude just ruined it.