Thanks Rose, for posting Lonnie's comments.
I second what Rose has suggested -- if it is possible to let Lonnie through, then that would be pretty cool. I can imagine that the majority of people in his position would have gotten pretty angry having read some of the sarcastic remarks... but Lonnie saw took things with a pinch of salt, and used the feedback to make at least some improvement to the cards.
If Lonnie is reading this, I have a few thoughts regarding the project -- I'll split it into positives, and not-so-positives.
*The positives*
(1) Putting in numbers in place of the face is definitely an improvement. With the faces, the it was far too difficult to tell what the card value actually was -- you'd have had to memorise the faces in order to tell in an instant what card it was.
(The improvement appears to have been good enough to make up for the pledge that was lost.)
(2) Removing pledge tiers which were not exactly reasonable was another good move. At the end of the day, you have to make a campaign come across as serious on all levels if you're looking to get people to part with their hard earned cash to invest in the project.
(3) Removal of the part where it was mentioned that the goal was to have a million decks sold in just over a month. That goal was about as unrealistic as it gets. The maths is obvious: to sell 1 million decks at 25 bucks each would mean that the campaign is expected to raise 25 million bucks (excluding extra for shipping). The most successful playing card campaigns have been brilliantly designed decks, and they didn't manage to get to quarter of a million, let alone 25 million. 1 million decks really was a crazy target -- I'm sure most who saw that would have questioned whether this project was serious or not.
*Questionable aspects*
(1) I think Lonnie's target audience for this project is different to our community over here -- this project's appeal is likely to be for those who are into movie memorabilia and/or those into sci-fi related stuff.
Seeing as:
(a) the movie not yet made, and
(b) there isn't very much publicity about the movie
The main things that would help sell/promote a deck like this are missing.
(2) The reason for there being marked version of a deck like this is not entirely clear to me...
Marked decks are useful for magicians/performers and gamblers/deception artists... the decks in this project cater to neither. Most magicians use cards which have recognisable features like courts and centre pips -- anything that's totally different raises suspicion. Similarly, gamblers or card game players are unlikely to use a novelty deck like this. Therefore, my personal opinion is that markings are somewhat out of place on a deck like this.
(3) The price. Although it may be common for movie memorabilia to sell for 20 bucks or more, it would have to be a huge franchise such as 'The Hunger Games', 'Lord of the Rings', 'Star Wars', etc. Due to the already established mega success and popularity of those movies, big prices are relatively easy to justify. For an unreleased movie (which is not even based on a successful book), with no publicity or hype, a high price is really tough to justify.
(4) The printer -- although it's been mentioned that the cards are printed in the USA, it's not explicitly stated who the printer actually is. A playing card kickstarter project really should say who the deck is being printed with.
That's all for now. I'm genuinely curious to see how the movie turns out!
