1. What are the chances we get a release of Captain Enoch by himself in either TVC or Black Series? They let down fans of Amos from The Expanse by only selling him in $50+ sets with Night Troopers.
--james

Low, but not 0. We've seen Hasbro do some incredibly simple choices for "new" figures - Thrawn with a new head, Howzer reissued with the right name on the cardback (he was Ballast as an exclusive), a tweaked mainline Axe Woves after he got dumped on clearance as a Target exclusive, and Bo-Katan with a new shoulder pad tell me that there's a market for more similar figures on a Vintage cardback. They might do it. I'd say they should probably give it some thought, perhaps if there's a season two of the show, because they could get it out in a hurry and it would be relevant.

But is it on deck? Not as far as I know. If it were 10 or 20 years ago, I'd say it would be a great retailer exclusive - it'd probably sell to people who want carded figures, or who don't follow online reveals like you or me. It might even do well in the main line. But, as the refrain goes, I sure as heck don't know of any plans to do these guys on individual cardbacks.  Odds are by your asking this question in a few places, Hasbro will see it and go "Great idea, we can get another $16.99 out of these guys."

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2. Is there anything you draw from the Haslab Cantina vs The Haslab GI Joe current campaign and the number of backers the GI Joe project has vs how many the Cantina ended up with? and the GI Joe still has almost 40+ days to go
--Jeremiah

I'm getting a lot of variations on this question. Ultimately, it's probably just "less is more." If Hasbro slashed the number of SKUs, fans might be hungrier for more. Joe fans have less they can buy. Star Wars fans are exhausted.

It's a different animal, with different price points and different wallet share. Right now, a Star Wars fan can select from Vintage, Retro, and Black Series. And Hot Toys, Gentle Giant/Diamond Select, LEGO, Funko, Kotobukiya, BanDai, and beyond. There are a lot of options in the "fan" space, so if you're not looking to "collect them all!" on a brand, boy howdy are you spoiled for choice. Do you get a $400-$500 Hasbro playset - itself a tough choice - or some 12-inch Jumbo Kenner guys? Or a statue? Mayhaps a giant LEGO build that will take you a few weekends to put together? A $500 item, even a perfect one without any "maybe it won't come with the figures we're paying for regardless of its success" caveats, is still a lot to ask of anybody collecting a huge line with massive quantities of stuff up for grabs.

New G.I. Joe, on the other hand, is manageable. Hasbro has its 6-inch line, plus some Transformers crossovers, a few other collector line things, and Super7's stuff. And Mezco. And Hiya and a few others. It's not that much stuff, and I think on a per-SKU basis, it benefits Hasbro. If Hasbro only made The Black Series, we'd probably buy it. If The Retro Collection were the only game in town, this is what fans would pick up. 4-5 drops of 4 $25 Classified Series figures, plus a few exclusives or variants, isn't a lot of money out of collector pockets. Most of it is new, or at least, is self-evident in its "you need this"-ness - so fans have a lot of money left over, and space, and are eager to drop $300-$350 on a big vehicles with 3-4 figures and electronics in it.

I feel the older Star Wars fan has a lot of stuff and is probably looking around going "Do I still want all of this?" Maybe they loved The Clone Wars, or just the original trilogy, and a torrent of stuff is overpowering the desire to buy something that is arguably the kind of thing they've been waiting to get for decades. Or not. I don't know that we're going to feel the Cantina was ultimately worth the asking price (5x $16.99 figures leaves you with a $300 or $400 dollhouse) and we'll find out later if it's any good. It has no action features - the Rattler has some. There's no display stand or other special enhancement either. It's some walls, some tables, and a lot of glassware - and 3 of the 5 figures you potentially already own a "good enough" version of and have had it for decades.

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FIN

After a slight showing at Comic-Con, Lucasfilm showed a few more of their future cards - but not everything - at D23. StarWars.com posted D23 2024: All the Star Wars News from D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event - Updated with stuff on the new LEGO show, some new theme park stuff, minimal details on The Mandalorian and Grogu movie, the new season of Andor, and not a whole heck of a lot of wild weird excitement.

We got the new Skeleton Crew trailer, and I'm assuming people are taking a wait-and-see approach to the show, but there seem to be nods to Captain Eo and at least a few aliens. So that's a plus. The show has been described as "Goonies" by a lot of sources, and looking at the trailer, they're really going for it. Also the name seems to be literal, as you get to see the skeletons. Will it be good? Suburbia has proven to be a great jumping-off point to a lot of movies, but "we found a Jedi mentor" in series like this sounds a lot like, as has been said before, the premise for Star Trek Prodigy. If it's effectively training wheels to get kids interested in all the other stuff, I don't know how that will work - typically the new thing really needs to stand on its own, and saying "this isn't for you old people" might result in something a new generation might enjoy. We'll see what happens.

An exclusive Starspeeder 3000 with the entire ride playable on the video screen is coming Monday, and at $300 (at a limited edition of 3,000) it's probably going to sell through in a day or two. I'm on the fence leaning toward "no" due to my completism for Disney droids being blocked due to the one Rise of the Resistance ship with 1 of 4 droids (and my having none of them), being unable to get the Hotel droids or R2-RNBW, and the like. While I could get them on eBay, the calculus of "How many hundreds of dollars will these cost me?" starts to add up, and it's more or less what kicked me off The Black Series train. If the Starspeeder goes on sale, though, I may pick it up anyway. (Or if I decide to sell a bunch of other stuff and torpedo any Star Wars not from before 1999, or something.)

In short, there's not much new happening right now. and I didn't hear a lot of fuss as the weekend wore on, but at least things are moving ahead and it's not like our classic stuff is any less cool. I can't say Skeleton Crew is making the best first impression, but hopefully it'll reveal itself as some really fun kid thing. It looks like a decent week for stuff overall, but $300 and the accompanying real estate sure sounds like a high price of admission these days.

--Adam Pawlus

Got questions? Email me with Q&A in the subject line now! I'll answer your questions as soon as time (or facts) permit.

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