1. Any insight or knowledge of the Hasbro thought process for the 6" scale TIE Fighter? It doesn't seem like it can be aimed at the child / birthday present market… Other than maybe a weird FAO Schwartz item, this seems like it could be the highest retail cost for a Hasbro Star Wars item. Is Hasbro looking to get into that lower run, higher cost, "collector" market?
--Steve

The funny thing is that this is actually nothing new. If you want to look at this item in a historical sense, take a gander at the 1980s. Toys like Kenner's Imperial Shuttle, Mattel's Eternia playset, plus Hasbro's Fortress Maximus and U.S.S. Flagg are kind of similar. Those items weren't created to be bought - they were news stories. They were aspirational. Kids would look at those with awe. Parents would rarely buy them, but they did serve a purpose - it gave the aisle with that line a lot more prestige, and helped to drive sales of other products within the brand. Maybe you didn't get a U.S.S. Flagg, but odds are your interest could have scored you a Cobra HISS or Spearhead and Max. You weren't going to get Fort Max, but maybe you'd get Chromedome or Brainstorm. The piece itself was a marketing ploy - and a way for Hasbro and Mattel and Kenner to say to store buyers, in a very real way, "You need to support our line. See what we're doing? This is crazy, right? That's how much we believe in this brand this year - we know it's going to do great and you do, too." There is a little bit of this in the book Toy Wars, which is like a penny on Amazon nowadays. This big toy movie is classic Hasbro product positioning.

As cost goes, I believe the winner for most expensive Hasbro release of all time may still be the 2012 rerelease of the 2008 Big The Legacy Collection Millennium Falcon, $249.99 at Toys R Us. Given how inflation really started to ramp up between 2009 and 2012, and how big this toy is, and also the TRU tax (they tend to charge more on some items) it's still the champ.

Given inflation, new movie, fan demands, and the "gee wiz" factor, items like this do make some sense in the current climate. Historically a TIE Fighter costs anywhere from 4 times (no figure) to 6 times (with figure) the cost of an action figure, so given the seemingly "normal" $25 price tag, $150 or so with a figure isn't entirely outlandish for a toy of this scale. Hasbro has been asked by fans for vehicles at this scale, and they delivered - the issue here is not unlike during Episode I, where if you asked fans if they wanted giant playsets they'd say "Hell yes!" But what they meant was "I want a Death Star or Cloud City!" and not "I want a Naboo Power Annex."

With a new movie, the focus is gong to be on new movie toys. We're in 1999 all over again, and this administration is looking back at that launch rather than the subsequent ones. The Phantom Menace had the smallest window between toys and movie, with under 4 weeks - but we did get a full preview of the line around the same time. This was seen as a pretty big success to many, assuming your company didn't go under and you weren't the one selling to the end user. Aisles full of product, midnight sales, and free press are incredibly important to a promotions-based toy company like Hasbro because the marketing is, ultimately, what is and has driven you to buy these things your entire life. They're taking advantage of the marketing machine to sell what everybody else is selling - the new movie. At this point it's in their best interests to get people interested in the new stories, and probably underserving them for a while so they'll keep coming back for more.

So in a sense, Hasbro gave fans what they asked for. In a movie year, Hasbro is going to focus on new movie - we got a $100 Naboo Royal Starship 15 years ago, and it was more or less the same kind of a thing. People wanted Original Trilogy stuff, but the new movie focus - and a need to find an item to impress retailers and demand shelf space - dictated you do something to say your new movie is a big deal. If you look at this line and its product development as entirely fan-centric, you'll be disappointed. There are always reasons to do characters just for the collector, but in most cases you'll probably find that in a movie year, we're a lot less important as a group. In 2002 we got a wonderful mix of classic - Bespin Luke, Endor Rebel, Endor Han, Cloud City Chewbacca, Ephant Mon, and so on - but that is, historically speaking, kind of a fluke. 2005 was almost all new movie, 1999 had a tiny subset of new versions of classic trilogy characters, and 2008 was more about celebrating everything that had come to pass so far.

Also if you watch fans - and I do - the consumer orgy of a Comic-Con or a product launch (especially during a new movie) often results in some fans buying a ton of stuff. Sometimes in multiples. Sometimes to store for future resale. The notion of anyone building a fleet of the new TIE Fighter is absurd, and at $160 it's too big to really just sit on, too. As such, if Hasbro limits production to something sensible and it sells through within 6 months, this could be an expensive item down the road. It's not like you're going to buy a second one to keep boxed, and the Big Millennium Falcon goes for $600 on Amazon now. It's also possible Hasbro is eyeballing the dollars it lost to Hot Toys or Gentle Giant or the dreaded "third party" toymakers - there's an audience that wants to spend, and Hasbro has picked their opportunity.

 

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2. why do the [Jakks Pacific jumbo 20-inch action figures for] Boba Fett, Han and Luke figures not have blasters? their hands are molded for it, but no gun, what gives?
--Martin

Cost! The goal of this line is, on the whole, to deliver an impressive product at retail at a low price point. During development, some features have to go. Tooling a new part is expensive, so you can save a fortune by leaving an accessory out.

3. Based off what was revealed at SDCC, is it possible to assume that Hasbro believes the future of the "collector's" market is with the 6" figures? To show many new 6" and no SA 3 & 3/4" figures makes me wonder if they feel that line is "bleed dry" and the 6" is a way to move us over to buying the same product but in a new format? They keep saying that September 4th will be great BUT not showing/telling us anything to expect and, considering how close to the vest they are playing their cards for the new line, can we really expect a huge launch of great new product? We know they will show TFA products, but they wont even confirm the type of 3 and 3/4" figure (5 POA, SA, etc)
--Jeremiah

While I can't help with the fishing expeditions, I can say this - historically Hasbro (and Kenner before it) was aware that Star Wars was a figure-and-vehicle property, and 6-inch vehicles - while cool - are not doable for the average buyer. Other scales are always under consideration and some things work, some things don't, and some things just confuse me. Titanium, for example - it's Schrodinger's toy. Is it alive or dead? Whatever you do, don't open the box. It could be both.

I've been predicting the decline of 3 3/4-inch super-articulated figures for some time, largely because of the price. If a 6-inch figure is $20-$25 and a 4-inch figure is $13-$16, the gap as you approach $20 is more pronounced. The market does not favor multiple scales, nor multiple styles. To me (an old guy) 3 3/4-inch is 3 3/4-inch - I like knees. I can also live without them if it means cutting my cost to collect in half. And let's face it - $13 for a Yoda is a terrible deal when $10 gets you Yoda and R2-D2, and the cheap Yoda looks better.

Hasbro - or Disney, is my guess - has gone insane and decided the best way to capture interest and dollars is to not tell you what's coming out. This is, of course, utter nonsense. If Action Fleet, MicroMachines, Titanium, Attacktix, Unleashed, Command, proper Galactic Heroes, or other lines came back it's good to get the word out, just because if you don't find what you want, I know and you know that you'll a) keep looking and/or b) order online. If it exists, and you want it, you're going to get it. You're good people.

Hasbro's notion toward some levels of marketing has revealed that they believe that showing you too many options can possibly cost sales. If you buy The Black Series there are no co-sells. Transformers usually show 1 other figure on the package as a "Go buy this one too!" The product catalogs of the 1970s through the 1990s - which actually encouraged me to keep seeking out toys and enter the burgeoning world of toy collector shows and flea markets and also to keep hitting stores and looking at all their other lines - are no longer hovering over our collective imaginations like some vast, predatory bird. It is possible - and this is just a guess - that someone somewhere in an office who gets paid more money than you or I will ever see decided "If we just tell them to go look at toys, they will - and they'll buy something as a souvenir."

The reality is more like "They're going to take pictures on cell phones in back rooms and it's going to get out." Unless, of course, Hasbro doesn't ship it until the very last minute - which could disrupt the Force Friday September 4 launch, thus rendering your trip out to the store at midnight pointless. We saw diminishing returns over the last four midnight madnesses with off-movie launch street dates being ignored by weeks or even months in the case of Toys R Us in 2010. It's all a little silly and all a little dumb, but Hasbro has decided that it's better than you get off your butt and look at the items up close than to inform you how much money you should set aside for your toy orgy in 6 weeks. It's new. It's different. I don't like not knowing what will be out, either. But this is the world we live in, and it's one where Hasbro has put a lot less emphasis on informing the gradually shrinking collector market in favor of (potentially) making a big splash with mass audiences in a gimmicky launch. I hate this sort of thing on so many levels, I could write about it for pages. Heck, maybe I will.

From where I sit, as non-expanded universe 3 3/4-inch goes, Hasbro should put forth its "last hurrah" for a collector line. After 19 years there's still no "modern" version of the original Imperial Dignitary, plus we can debate the coloration issues on figures like a Power Droid or the grey Death Squad Commander or Kenner's unique Cantina aliens. Or, of course, a mustachioed Bespin Security Guard. I don't believe this line has a sort of "manifest destiny" beyond the original movie figures and we're darned close to finishing them. If Hasbro doesn't give us a retooled Yak Face, I'll be sad but I'll live. If we don't see a new Sim Aloo, well, I'll support whatever petition you guys come up with (and get at least 3,000 signatures on before alerting me to its presence.) 5 joints, 15 joints, or in the case of the Power Droid even 2 joints would be fine. I genuinely don't care, as long as we see updated sculpts so we can all close this chapter in action figure history and move on to a future that's no longer saddled with expectations we've all been holding since the line came back in 1995.

 

FIN

In the annals of new nerd vs. old nerd - some of you have been with me since 1995, so you might remember this. The whole nerd culture-as-pop culture thing basically came on strong with the advent of the iPhone roughly a decade ago, a post-computer gizmo for when it seemed that everybody was given a computer in college - and now high school or earlier. Things changed a lot. Back in 1995 and much of the 1990s, the population at large weighed in on Star Trek versus Star Wars as "I don't know the difference." What's funny is now that seems almost unthinkable - there's still a fair amount of people who don't necessarily know Marvel from DC, but it seems increasingly unlikely that your average man on the street doesn't know which one has a lightsaber and which one has a phaser. Of course, many still don't care - but it's less the norm than it was, thanks in part to the new generation being raised on this stuff, possibly by force, courtesy of the brute force cultural parenting styles of the original Star Wars generation.

20 years ago the thought that we'd have not one, but multiple Marvel movies a year was unthinkable. Now it's gone to a sort of overflow where seeing the new one is less of an event and increasingly an obligation, and as we see with Ant-Man they're not putting the same energy into promoting them these days. Given the amount of grief so many of us took as youngsters for our plastic proclivities and paper pursuits, it's strange. We "won" pop culture. We dial-up early adopters, comics-at-the-newsstand readers, arcade video game players, and media importers with an unnaturally large collection of VHS tapes from over-the-air sci-fi specials and mailed tape trading got what we wanted.

So did everyone else.

The level of success may be tough to see at first glance, but we entered an era where Hasbro is making a TIE Fighter for our 6-inch figures, and we complain about it because a) it's expensive, b) we got so much stuff that it is, admittedly, a little on the preposterous side, and c) it's not something we've wanted since 1977-1983. We claim to be angry at Hasbro over Star Wars because we're not getting the individual figures we want - after the second thousand, the chance of a fanbase in agreement on one item is, to say the least, minimal. I see Vlix as the holiest of holy grails - something I saw on TV as a kid, read about in magazines, discovered was released in Brazil before I turned 10, and will continue chasing until I'm dead. (Let's face it, Hasbro will never make me one, as an exclusive or otherwise. I'm going to keep asking though.)

All of us have our "Vlix," some for longer than others. For me, it's a character I saw when I was young, on TV, that never had a toy that I could get. It means a lot. For some, it's something from a trading card, or a sticker book, or maybe just the next character on your list since you got everybody else. We've all still done very well, or so says the Arcee figure standing next to the Korben Dallas figure on my desk right now. If this isn't a victory, I don't know what is - but we're always going to be chasing something. Like the Blockade Runner, which is the first vehicle in the saga and there's no figure-sized toy yet. Or whatever it is you want.

We're in an era where Hasbro is listening, but in the way a digital assistant listens. A small number of us demanded a Sail Barge recently, but that was a small number. We didn't regroup and ask for a Death Star or some other monstrosity. We collectively say "We want more big vehicles!" a lot. We collectively say which vehicles we want rarely. Uniting us is a tough business, and the realities of overseas manufacturing in 2015 being what they are we may be well beyond some items without a reasonable boost from whatever the Disney version of Star Wars brings us. If you love or hate the idea of Rogue One, movies which highlight the construction of the Death Star and early Rebellion may mean playsets of the Death Star and a Blockade Runner. There's hope - there's always hope. A new hope, if you will.

Just remember where we've been. Many of us lived through the 1984-1991 dead zone of Star Wars and some of us are still operating in the mindset of eternal scarcity... which hasn't been an issue for quite some time. Some of the things Hasbro will give you will be boring. It's a safe bet that if a major, recognizable vehicle is in a movie, they will make or reissue the toy of it. Hopefully things will be better, after all, as we supposedly won the pop culture wars - those of you who are trying to rationalize the powers that be's decision on not knowing what toys are being made as some sort of blessed surprise with some sort of virtuous ignorance are completely insane. If you didn't value information and the ability to make informed decisions about your collection, you wouldn't be reading this or other sites for toy news every day.

--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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