Posts Tagged chaos

I’d like to talk to you a moment about Daemonettes.

Several years back, Games Workshop put out metal Daemonette and Seeker of Slaanesh miniatures sculpted by Juan Diaz. These miniatures replaced the old Daemonette line, which mostly consisted of hideous, bald, roughly-female humanoids in leather with cartoonishly-large crab claws. In contrast, the new Daemonette was sleek, lithe, definitely female, and disturbingly alien-yet-attractive. One of their most noticeable features were bare breasts – sometimes multiple sets of them. They fit Slaanesh’s theme of being simultaneously deadly and seductive, monstrous and alluring. For years, when you bought Daemonettes (or Seekers), this is what you got.

Then, a couple of years ago, GW revised the Chaos Daemon codexes in both Warhammer 40K and Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Coupled with the release of these books was a brand new line of plastic Chaos Daemon miniatures. One of the sets released was a new box of plastic Daemonettes. Taking advantage of improvements in their plastic production process, these new Daemonettes were well-detailed and very customizable, with a good selection of bits on the sprue. However, design-wise, they were a throwback to the old crab-claw Daemonette sculpts. They were strapped into leather corsets and had oversized (but not cartoonishly-so) arthropod claws. Their faces were furrowed and sneering, and their figures were far less feminine than before. As the woman behind the counter at one of my local game stores said, “I like the old models better. These new ones look like butch bikers.” You be the judge:

Image © Games Workshop. Used without permission.

The reason for the redesign, as far as I understand it, was to appeal to a new customer demographic: mothers of teenaged boys. Games Workshop, like any company, is trying to grow their customer base, and one of the markets they’ve been trying to capture is the 12-to-16 male market. However, those customers don’t tend to have their own money. Instead, it’s their mothers that drop them off at the hobby stores and fund their hobbies that have the purchasing power. The new Daemonettes, looking less naked and feminine than their predecessors, would be less offensive, and they’d be more likely to buy GW products for their children.

On the surface, this is fair logic. If you’re GW, you’re trying to make your game a bit more family-friendly to boost sales without compromising too much of the flavor, and if that means using a revised version of an older, more palatable aesthetic for a couple of miniatures, it’s a fair trade. I can’t fault Games Workshop for making that decision. Given their circumstances, I might have made the same one. However, I have to question how removing some bare breasts from the line would make the game that much more friendly to the moms. You’ve got Chaos Terminators sticking the severed heads of their fallen foes on spikes and wearing them. Necron Flayed Ones are covered in shreds of human skins. There are Bloodletters and Skulltakers and Fabius Bile wearing a coat made out of faces. Maybe it’s just me, but a pair (or three) of visible nipples seems tame by comparison.

Even with the new plastic Daemonettes readily available and decently affordable, the old sculpts are still in high demand. One has only to look at the secondary market on eBay and look at the prices these miniatures are going for. It’s not unusual to see a set of ten – the contents of the previous Daemonette box – to go for $95 or more. Seekers are even harder to get a hold of, because no new plastic version was been released after the metal topless version was discontinued.  Obviously, there’s still a market for the less-family-friendly sculpt, even if the models aren’t as customizable as the plastic versions. If the online marketplace is any indication, I’m not alone in my opinion.

Is there an easy solution to this? I don’t know. I doubt that the Juan Diaz Daemonette sculpt will ever be re-released; I imagine the molds have long since been destroyed/worn out. I also don’t see GW scrapping the current design and returning to a revamped version of the naked Daemonette, as it would be counter to their current marketing plan. I do see a potential solution, though: Forge World. Take the Forge World Keeper of Secrets, for example. It’s basically the Diaz Daemonette made huge and cranked up to 11. Since FW is owned by Games Workshop, obviously they realize that there’s a chance to sell a more mature-oriented model. A line of resin Daemonettes done in a similar style would be well received, I imagine. Would it be more expensive than the plastic versions? Without a doubt, it certainly would. However, it would beat having to claw your way past auction snipers on eBay, and would still be more reasonably priced. It’s a nice idea, isn’t it?

Miniature and photography by Saff. Unedited version available here. (Potentially NSFW.) Used without permission.