From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu May 9 05:29:38 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id FAA29291 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 9 May 1996 05:29:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from time.cdrom.com (time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id FAA29286 for ; Thu, 9 May 1996 05:29:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id FAA04374; Thu, 9 May 1996 05:29:30 -0700 (PDT) To: hackers@freebsd.org cc: velte@cdrom.com Subject: A stuffed Daemon plushie (Chuck), anyone? Reply-To: jkh@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 09 May 1996 05:29:30 -0700 Message-ID: <4372.831644970@time.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Some of you will recall our earlier plans to introduce a line of daemon stuffed dolls for those of you out there who absolutely need such a thing to sit atop your terminal or entertain the wee ones (more prurient uses for him can go unreported and I won't mind at all, thanks! :-). Well, our very own Joerg Wunsch has finally found someone in Germany who seems capable of making a daemon plushie that actually _looks_ like a daemon (as opposed to some of our chinese factory samples which looked more like mutant, satanic rabbits with horns) and so we've decided to see if we've enough interest in them to actually order and resell a few. I believe 50 is the target we need to hit before it actually becomes a reasonable proposition for the factory, and hence this mail. There is, of course, a downside to having the daemon made by the same German craftsmen who brought you the Porche and the BMW, and that's that they want a fair bit of money for it! $60, to be exact, which is indeed pretty high but I suppose that if you really want a stuffed daemon which will last more than 10 minutes in the hands of a 6 year old, you gotta pay the price. And so, here's the deal. If there are enough of you out there craz^H^H^H^Hinterested enough in owning a stuffed Chuck at this price then please let us know so that we can decide if this order is going to make financial sense. I'm not sure what the deal with European orders will be yet, but I suspect that you'll be able to order them directly from the German distributor at a somewhat cheaper price (in Deutchmarks) since Walnut Creek's markup won't be tacked on. I don't think it'll be a LOT cheaper, just somewhat so (and naturally shipping won't be quite so expensive). I'll give fuller details on this after we've determined whether or not a run of these guys is going to roll out of the factory at all. To indicate your interest, please send mail to: plushies@time.cdrom.com And I'll tally them up. This is NOT an ordering process and you should NOT send me credit card info or a shipping address or any of those sorts of details yet! I'm simply trying to gauge initial interest, after which I'll send followup mail to everyone who responded with more information on where to send your money (and in what denominations), depending on where you're ordering from. A simple "I'd like a plushie!" or even "yes!" sent to this address will more than suffice. Also, please don't send me email asking for pictures of the daemon or haggling over the price. In the first instance, I don't have a picture of the final product yet - we looked at a sample, made some comments about a few small alterations we'd like to see (even though the first-draft sample looked better than any other we've seen to date), and now the factory is waiting for our go-ahead before making the final version with our suggested alterations. I have confidence that they'll do a good job of this and can only ask that you trust Joerg and I on how this looks. I'm sure Joerg, who's a lot closer to the factory than I am, will screech if the first daemons come off the assembly line with 3 horns or something. :-) Second, the price is fixed and non-negotiable (barring a really big order, which I'm not counting on). We tried to get it as low as we could for a 50 piece order, and that's as low as it gets. Sorry about that - I'd be more than happy to see the little guy going for $30 rather than $60, but see the comment above about German manufacture. I'd like a new BMW 320i for $10,000, too, but I'm not going to get that either. :-) So there you have it. Again, the address is plushies@time.cdrom.com (though "plushie" or "daemon-doll" or even just "dolls" will work - I made lots of aliases to catch the strays :-). Send mail to it if you want one and I'll tally up the provisional orders. The votes will be counted by grep, so long messages sent to that address will be wasted; if you have further questions not answered here, please send me personal email. Once I've got a count, I'll give the factory a yes/no decision and send you all more mail about how to order, assuming that we have enough people to make it fly. Hopefully more than 50 of you will respond and we'll make the quota even if a few folks decide to back out. If a LOT of people respond, we may even be able to get that price reduced somewhat. Thanks! Jordan