1. Adam, your recent comments about the Mos Eisley streets being conceivable, but not intentional, add ons to the cantina for me thinking:

If a Death Star is impossible because it's not going to be able to be reasonably priced if it is going to come anywhere close to giving people all that they want (a hallway in the detention center for a shoot out, a trash compactor, a tractor beam, a crossway for Luke and Leia to swing across, an imperial officer meeting room) then here is my idea:

Make a grand announcement of modular parts that will come every 2 or 3 months. Make a big deal on social media that such and such film is coming next, and then cap it all off with whatever will be the biggest add on as a Haslab project.
--Derek

Nothing's impossible - but it might not be exactly what you imagine or as completely as extremely online collectors may hope.

If Hasbro were still doing "kid" toys, I think a monthly (or at least, quarterly) Death Star might work. If it was before Hasbro got bit by the collector level of pricing and quality, it wouldn't have to be $50 or $200 or $500 for a chunk - but now, it might be. I think the Mos Eisley street set is pretty good, but an equivalent set for the Death Star would likely be little more than Leia's cell, some floor, and a single figure. Or a chunk of floor, a chunk of elevator, and a droid. (Actually, that last one sounds pretty cool.)

Modular parts - or multiple playsets - are the best way to go, as mentioned previously. To do a truly complete build where everything fits together perfectly might be ridiculously sized and punitive to anyone who missed a crowdfunded set - causing fans to stop at each stage - and we don't want that. Some fans may also want places to put a fleet of ships, be they starfighters or captured freighters, which is one of the reasons I've been fond of suggesting they do something like the Kenner Micro Collection Death Star World. You get a lot of Death Star-flavored things, but it's not going to be perfect. It provides a place for your figures, and can also fit in your house without exiling the cars to street parking.

I don't think fans consider what your money may get you. The LEGO Trash Compactor was around $72, and it doesn't offer very much to the collector. If Hasbro were to give a Death Star Trash Compactor the full Vintage deco treatment, it would probably be unpleasantly expensive. Paint is not free and fake grime is a lot more expensive than real grime. Mattel's Eternia set was around $600 for 3 towers and a monorail, and Hasbro's Cantina was quite expensive - but with over 100 accessories (glasses, chairs) it maybe didn't need to be. Having seen what the Cantina and Boba Fett's Jabba the Hutt's Ruth's Chris Palace can get you, Hasbro likes to tool a lot of accessories as a way to "add value." While the Death Star is mostly pretty sparse, the garbage dump could be loaded with a creature and lots of debris. In the old days it was foam and/or yarn, today it would probably be high-quality expertly-painted toy debris - impressive, but potentially overkill.

My big question for a Death Star should be "Now how much would you pay?"

Looking at what you get with the Cantina, Hasbro might be able to make a The Vintage Collection-quality detention block, garbage chute, trash compactor, and the shootout lobby area with minimal accessories for $500-$700. If that sounds utterly ridiculous to you, I advise you to look at what the Cantina is and how many walls, alcoves, and lecterns you would likely get. What would this piece count look like as a Death Star? And that's assuming we don't get a price increase from 60% tariff on Chinese imports, the typical year over year inflation, or Hasbro just saying "we found a way to make it even higher quality." No shade to Hasbro - the quality of the paint on ships and the general "wow" factor of its $100 helmets are presently staggering, but that means you're getting what you pay for, and what you're paying for isn't a toy like we got in the 20th century.

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2. With all the reports/rumors flowing around about the license brand being dumped/sold/not renewed by Disney and the "Rey" movie now on hold, is Star Wars really in this much of a "bad state"? As a result, will this affect toy lines and what is brought to market?
--Jeremiah

Rumors are rumors. Hasbro (or its competitors) have yet to make any announcements yet and since they've never given up the entire license before, or at least not since the 1990s change of having the exclusive master toy license, we won't know anything until a hypothetical change gets made. I assume it's going to get renewed if only because the last couple of times these rumors have come up, Hasbro renewed. That can change, but so far, things have not changed. We've gone through this a lot recently, as it seems Hasbro may be going through 2- or 3-year Lucasfilm contract renewals. I don't know it for a fact, but this press release shows we got one in 2020 and another in 2022. By saying "multi-year," two is more than one, so it's possible we're about due for another one. With a new movie in the works, you'd want your toy partner shored up and hopefully capable of delivering the goods with the movie this time.

Fans have been predicting the license leaving Kenner and Hasbro since the 1990s. Even I thought Hasbro might be giving it up after the ho-hum 2019-2020 product for The Rise of Skywalker and the surrounding months. ($10 tube figure repacks? Not a good idea.) The license was shopped around for the prequels - I'm familiar with stories of at least two presentations from that era, Playmates' evidence has been shown to the public but so far the other companies have not. The other company's I've never heard discussed outside the halls of the manufacturer, so I dare not say more at this time. I don't doubt people fight for it every few years, but I assume Hasbro's large check keeps getting cashed and the likes of Super7 or McFarlane Toys aren't yet getting it yet.

Could someone else do a good job? Sure.

Spin Master's Batman toys are good and cheap - I don't know if Disney's fees would allow for it, but I would love to see a kid line priced closer to those. Hasbro's $100+ The Vintage Collection playsets and vehicles and The Black Series helmets are of a quality that nears prop replica or maquette, but are priced much lower than a high end product. It's a high-priced toy-license product. It would sting if Hasbro couldn't make any more The Retro Collection Kenner figures - those are a treasure. The Black Series basic non-exclusive figures at $24.99 are generally excellent, with great facial likenesses and very good articulation. (Character selection will always be an argument, nobody is going to be happy with a dozen movies from which to pull.) At that size, McFarlane has been delivering slightly larger DC figures with build-a-figures in some cases, and at a lower price point to boot. No matter what we're going to lose something great if this brand jumps to a new company, and we might miss out on something exciting if it stays at Hasbro. If Jada could have got Star Wars for its Nano Metalfigs, that could have been a new Micro Collection and I'd have shelled out all the money to buy those.   Jazwares is doing with Micro Galaxy Squadron what fans have been begging Hasbro to go back and revisit with Action Fleet for years.

With the Mando movie in 2026, a Rey movie (or any movie) would be 2027 at the earliest. Blockbuster development time is shrinking, and some announced movies get delayed as a result. Let's all see what happens with the very-quickly-cooked Jurassic World sequel coming next year - I wouldn't be stunned for a delay on that one too. But I digress.  You need about 18 months to bake a movie toy line, so hopefully whoever is doing that is getting to work now.

Since we saw a Hasbro renewal in 2020 and another in 2022, I'm a little surprised we haven't already heard about one in 2024. Maybe the last one was for three years - we've been teased 2025 pipeline product for next year already, after all. Hasbro owes us a new Momaw Nadon, we've got a Cantina in the works, and goodness knows what else might be on deck. From what we've seen - and what we're about to see - Hasbro has stuff coming for us in 2025. If there's something for 2026, I sure can't remember hearing it yet.

Fans should probably search their own souls and ask what a license change means to them. Would a fresh start - like Mattel's generally excellent Jurassic World line - be such a bad thing? Is there anything in the last few years that you felt was so amazing that it would be a massive loss to the brand? Are you seeing anybody doing anything you'd like better? Would you continue if the line had a hard break? Or would you take the money and instead buy all of those $90 multi-disc Frank Zappa CD reissues?

If we lived in a world where Hasbro no longer made Star Wars toys, the hobby could become even more interesting in the sense that there are literally millions of dirt-cheap unloved figures out there for all of us to buy. (Well, not me, I bought them.) There may be a comic shop near you with a $4 Momaw Nadon from 1996 or 1997 - why not buy one? It's awesome. It's goofy and lovely, and you don't have to wait a year for a pre-order... and there are hundreds of other really cheap toys to buy that nobody currently cares about. And yeah, if Hasbro stopped making new stuff I would probably come up with a new feature to write about the 1990s and early 2000s again, because what a glorious era of creativity in trying to appeal to children and adults all at once.

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FIN

Social media can be informative, but you never know what you're going to see and how much of the norm it is. In the last few years I've seen a lot of product locked up at Walmart and Target, starting with LEGO sets at both stores. And then a few Targets started to lock up, of all things, socks and underwear. (Kinky?) Now Joe Moore on Bluesky is posting a Walmart locking up its entire toy aisle which, honestly, is kind of amazing given toy numbers aren't exactly going up right now.  This isn't an isolated incident, I saw Redditors posting similar pictures of Hot Wheels aisles over the summer.

I know there are some toys I buy on a whim only if I can flip through pegs - Hot Wheels, for example - and I'm far more likely to leave the store than ask an employee to unlock the cabinet and stand around while I see what they have in stock. I hope this isn't the norm, because there's a kind of collector who will call over employees and look through the pegs every day and not necessarily buy anything. And to those collectors, I say do your duty and irritate the store. This is dumb - I should have complained more loudly when it started with LEGO, but I do not collect LEGO, I don't buy Tide specifically, and you know that spiel. This kind of thing isn't just hostile to the consumer, it's suicide for this kind of business. How many kids bring a toy to mom and dad to buy? A lot. How many parents are going to wait around to get help so their kid can examine the toys or pick out a car? Not many.

I wonder if any "But I saw it first!" fights will begin with collectors should this hostile contempt for customers continue on surprisingly low-cost items. I doubt there's much you can do about it other than not make a purchase and leave comments to web sites or managers about why you're not buying anything. If anything, it's going to save parents and collectors a lot of money, while also costing them a lot of time. If the end goal is to remove toys from stores (they are a low-margin item compared to apparel) this will probably help convince shareholders and buyers to reduce the toy footprint and put in more fertilizer and rubbermaid tubs.

From where I sit as a fan, this is bad. Most people who collect toys learn about stuff in stores before seeking out more online. Online-only toy brands tend to remain somewhat obscure if only because you can't accidentally stumble on them while you're buying granola bars and toilet paper. Masters of the Universe Origins seems to do well because people can get it in a store much of the time, as opposed to the online-only Masters of the Universe Classics which required a very specific, dedicated behavior to make a purchase. Putting up literal barriers to entry in any hobby seems foolish, and I can't imagine there's enough stolen product to justify thousands of dollars (or more) in glass cases per store, plus employees having to take a few minutes out of every hour for literally every toy purchase, without some sort of price increase. If the entire point is to shift sales online, it's guaranteed to make toys sold in assortments suffer. (Which is to say, the bulk of most non-LEGO, non-Nerf toy brands.)

Those of you who are very old may remember those "catalog stores" like Best, or Service Merchandise, or even LaBelle's, where stuff was in the back and they pulled out bins of product on a conveyor belt. I remember going to Best, seeing one new Star Trek series 2 figure, and asking "Do you have more of these in the back?" at which point employee #1 calls the back and employee #2 puts a bunch of figures in a tote to send up on the belt, so I can look through them, and this all happened at the cash register. This entire model of store has since died, it's unhelpful - except to the kind of person who has nothing but time and no sense of their ability to impose on a worker. You'd have to be a real monster to do that, and - oh yeah, I'm that kind of monster. I will probably waste the time of an employee so I can look through Hot Wheels cars if they're locked up until morale improves or they let my plastic people go.

There's part of me that wonders if there's some sort of plan to make toy collecting a thing of the past - and that may not be the worst thing. The sheer volume of stuff in our homes that is unloved, unblogged, and un-written-about is vast - if new toy sales end, well, I guess I'll need to find a new job. But maybe I can go back to toy journalism school and put out some books and magazines for people to read on the toilet.

--Adam Pawlus

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