Fantasy Toy Box

This is not irredeemable, but you are going to have to go above and beyond here to rectify this. Ethics matter a great deal in this space and people have a long, long memory.

Right the ship and do your due diligence and you can make this work yet.

As others have said (and as I'm sure you've noticed), the indie fantasy toy space is not tolerant of 'shenanigans'. Where you are sourcing molds, who you are dealing with, how you use AI (A free tip: Don't) are going to be put under immediate scrutiny.

New update!

There were a variety of bugs and data issues that came with the refactor - those have been largely addressed! Thank you everyone who reported issues :D.

A known issue here is that changing the a filter value always jerks you to the top of the page. Fix incoming eventually...

We're back to adding vendors! We have added @tentickletoys.bsky.social and made some other minor updates to the index today.

There should be another vendor yet on Friday per usual as well!

And as always, please report bugs. I'm sure some are lurking and I can't exhaustively test the entire site so reply here, ping me, bug me on discord, do anything! Lots and lots of underlying systems have changed and the data structures are completely different so I expect some problems to surface.

With this as well, normal weekly data entry will continue. We've been on a 4 week break from that as the refactor was taking place.

With more details available on per-size, we are excited to add more features around that as well! For the curious, I might do a yap post about the refactor in a bit!

The major refactor update is now live! It's been a long time coming, but it's finally done. The big gets here are easier data entry and potential for way more features.

One of the coolest new features is live right now. You can modify Price, Length, and Circ. and it will highlight matches per size!

What the hell - this is so awesome!

A quick update:

The data entry rebuild is complete and most of the data refactor is done on the site! I expect we will see new updates against starting next Friday and they'll hopefully be more consistent and with more features!

This is a improvement over the old site! I would say that the cards being a random size for your products is...definitely a choice, but the product page itself is snappy and the workflow is clearer.

I'm on a bit of a crusade to make vendor websites better - I attached an MSpaint with more feedback.

No update this Friday, but we are actively working on improving filtering options. I'm super excited to demo it when it's finished but it involved completely blowing up the existing data entry system, which is gonna take a minute to rebuild.

Stay Tuned!

Fair enough! You guys have been slaying it with new designs and I'm stoked to see what the future holds for your designs!

Out of curiosity, are you going to replace this with a different model but the same general idea?

I think this is basically entirely unique in the fantasy toy space and I'd love to see the fantasy continues in some fashion... even if we have to wait a bit :D

An addition to this: Sometimes, there is literally not a single photo of your products on your site.

On top of this being a pretty questionable way to market, I can't list a product I don't have a photo of at all.

If the only photos you have of your product are listings, that's a mistake.

Those are the common pre-reqs that are not being met.

I cannot express to vendors how important your principle photography is. There are so many toys that are hard to 'sell' on the site because the photography isn't good. Spend $70 on a grey box and light! Your toys deserve it!

If the Average User™ looks at your site and has to ask, 'is this a scam?' We have a problem.

You don't need to be beautiful, and frequently less is better than more, but you need to at least clear the 'gut check' hurdle.

This also does come down to design to some degree. If you have a bunch of elements mushed together that makes it look like the site might be a scam, it's hard to list that kind of a site - it compromises the trust I want Fantasy Toy Box to have. FTB should be a list of 'known good vendors'.

3. Your site doesn't work

I've let some sites skirt by on this, but if your site takes 12 seconds to load a product page, or if my VPN flags it as suspicious, or if I see 60 API calls to tracking services blocked by uBlock, that might disqualify you.

If I'm directing a customer to your site, you need to have stock, or some custom order system "most of the time". I'm working on a system to flag stores that are more drop-based and to surface that info to customers, but that's relatively low priority, so for now: You have to be able to buy stuff.

2. You have no stock

If I'm indexing your store, I'm ostensibly listing stuff that some could, ya know, actually buy. If you are fulling embracing Drops that sell out inside a couple days, I'd be trolling if I'm listing your stuff.

If you are going to do something outside of 'neutral background - 30 degree shot against grey', you better really know what you are doing. The only vendor I've seen successfully execute this is @master4fancy.bsky.social. So unless you are exactly them, maybe stick to '30 degree shot against grey'.

I'll do my best to cut out noise from your available photos to make it look good on the site, but I have limits of what I can reasonably do here. Make sure you have at least one photo that just shows the customer what your product actually is.

1. Your Principle Photography Sucks

I need a photo of your toys that clearly shows what it is in one shot. Preferably against a neutral background. Bad Dragon, Weredog, etc. have figured this out - just copy them. Take an evenly lit, 30 degree shot of your toy inside a grey box.

I've gotten a few questions from stores about being listed in cases where I've had to say 'No'. I want to talk about why that is in this thread. The common reasons are:

• Your principle photography is really bad
• You have no stock
• Your site doesn't work

Lets talk about it in this thread [1/X]

Finally, I think I want to try and sneak another vendor or two into the site over the weekend. I have a healthy queue of vendors again and I'd like to start aggressively getting those done!

Thanks again everyone for spreading the word about Fantasy Toy Box!

I'm definitely spooked about bugs. Like everything else on the site, this is a custom solution and this isn't a 'plug-in'. I tested it on devices I had, but please aggressively report issues to me either here, or via the feedback form on the site. I want to be confident in this solution.

The implementation I landed on was loading 100 products at a time, and I start grabbing the next 100 when you are about 70~ products away from the bottom. This means that unless you are scrolling full blast down the page, it should feel completely seamless.

The driver of progressive loading was that if I had to redraw the page, it had to redraw all the loaded pictures and especially on slower / mobile devices, this feels bad. I hate that crap on ecommerce sites and I hate it even more when it's loading 5 things at a time.

So, progressive loading was something I was as bit spooked about adding, but it turned out to not be that difficult and I'm once again mad that Internet at large for making this so bad.

The goal was to make progressive loading a thing, but the user shouldn't feel it.

Big update today!

• Added a new vendor: Delices Defendus!
• Added a new feature that's long overdue: Progressive Loading on the Products page!
• Added some new tech to start re-doing all of the filter system.

If you want to hear me yap about Progressive Loading, read the rest of the thread!