Tomy has announced two new things about their 1/350 scale die cast Enterprise:

1) The 5,000 backers needed has been reduced to 2,500 (they currently have 1061)

2) The deadline has been pushed back to July 24.

These should make it more likely that the effort will succeed, and for a few reasons. Chopping the number of needed backers in half not only makes it easier to achieve, it also makes the thing more desirable to collectors: instead of there being 5,000 of them in the world, now there will be 2,500. The secondary market in years to come will probably make the price balloon substantially. Additionally, Comic Con International in San Diego is July 22-24, and I imagine Tomy will be there. I suspect that if they have their prototype on display for the thousands of nerds with fat stacks of disposable income, they should rack up a good number of new backers. I can’t immediately dream up another reason to end the campaign on the 24th.

I still remain a little annoyed that Haslabs $300 “Hiss tank” has nearly 13,500 backers with more than a month to go. Hmmmph. At least the Haslab “Reva” (the disliked character from the Obi Wan Kennobi series) light saber looks likely to fall far short of funding. It’s $500 with 1300 of 5000 backers with six days to go. I don’t *know* why that one is failing; maybe there’s a cutoff just north of $300 that people are willing to spend these days. Or perhaps Reva is just not intriguing of a character. Or perhaps the Star Wars fans with cash are no longer in the mood to keep funding a franchise that keeps insulting them.