New Look at Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Red and Black Dragon Revealed Via Bookends

WizKids has provided Dungeons & Dragons fans with a new look at the 2024 Red and Black Dragons thanks to a new set of bookends. This week, WizKids revealed two new 7-inch resin bookends, one featuring the head of the newly redesigned red dragon and the other featuring the head of the newly redesigned black dragon. Both individual bookends will be released in Q2 2025 with a recommended retail price of $59.99. Notably, WizKids has stated that this will be the start of a new line of official D&D Bookends.

As part of D&D's 50th anniversary and the release of a new set of Core Rulebooks, Wizards of the Coast also redesigned the game's chromatic and metallic dragons, marking the first significant redesign of the game's iconic monsters since Ted Lockwood's versions of the dragons for D&D 3rd edition. Wizards has revealed each of the dragons at a slow and deliberate pace, using the new dragons to promote the just released Player's Handbook. The dragons themselves will be in the 2025 Monster Manual, which will be released in February.

WizKids also recently announced plans to produce a miniature of the redesigned Black Dragon, marking the first of the new dragons to get their own tabletop miniature.

 

[Corinnguard]

If there were additional bookends that had the remaining Chromatic Dragons, you could turn a desk, a table or any flat surface that was big enough to hold them all into a shrine for Tiamat.

 

[KYRON45]

This is what monetizing the brand looks like.
tchotchkes, widgets and doodads.

 

[Christian Hoffer]

This is what monetizing the brand looks like.
tchotchkes, widgets and doodads.

These are all licensed goods, so Hasbro sees very little direct revenue from this (if at all.) Not what the beancounters meant by monetizing the brand.

 

[Oofta]

These are all licensed goods, so Hasbro sees very little direct revenue from this (if at all.) Not what the beancounters meant by monetizing the brand.

Wait ... you're serious? WotC doesn't make any money off of this kind of stuff? Good grief.
Listen, I know it's important to keep the conspiracy theories alive that somehow they're going to start forcing people to buy ... something ... but this is exactly how you monetize things. It's how licensing works. If this, and all the other minis WizKids makes didn't make
WotC money they wouldn't do it.

Every time you buy an officially branded bookend, t-shirt, miniature, keychain or Lego figure, WotC gets some of the money for very little cost or risk on their part.

 

[Christian Hoffer]

Wait ... you're serious? WotC doesn't make any money off of this kind of stuff? Good grief.
Listen, I know it's important to keep the conspiracy theories alive that somehow they're going to start forcing people to buy ... something ... but this is exactly how you monetize things. It's how licensing works. If this, and all the other minis WizKids makes didn't make
WotC money they wouldn't do it.

Every time you buy an officially branded bookend, t-shirt, miniature, keychain or Lego figure, WotC gets some of the money for very little cost or risk on their part.

Let me rephrase - this is not what Hasbro’s CEO and CFO meant when they said the D&D brand is undermonetized. This is covered under a pre-existing licensing deal and again, Hasbro takes a relatively small cut on individual sales (if at all, as the licensing deal could be for a flat licensing fee.)

 

[KYRON45]

Some of us may not, but most of us do not know anything about how licensing works.

 

[Oofta]

Let me rephrase - this is not what Hasbro’s CEO and CFO meant when they said the D&D brand is undermonetized. This is covered under a pre-existing licensing deal and again, Hasbro takes a relatively small cut on individual sales (if at all, as the licensing deal could be for a flat licensing fee.)

Let me rephrase. I disagree. We don't know the exact details of the deal but I don't see any way that it would be "Make whatever you want, whenever you want, at whatever volume you want for next to nothing." That makes no sense.

We don't know exact details, but I guarantee that the money companies make money off of licensing is a decent chunk of change. Typical deals are somewhere between 5-10% of the retail value each sale, often with other up front charges. We don't know the details of what WotC is getting for this or other licensing agreements, but they aren't letting WizKids or Lego do this stuff out of charity.

NOTE: technically these may be royalty fees instead of licensing fees, it's just a difference on how the agreement is written and how payments are determined. Since we don't know how it's set up I'm using licensing.

 

[KYRON45]

Even without royalties; athletes, pop stars, influencers and brand names in general all can make exponentially more money off of licensing deals than they do on their main gigs.

This is exactly what "insert name of Wotc big wig" meant when they said they wanted to monetize the brand.

 

[Mark Craddock]

Is it just me, or is the red dragon more black than the black dragon here...?

I can see where you are coming from, but I love the new look of the Black Dragon.

 

[TiQuinn]

I seriously dig the skull look of the black dragon.