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1. Adam, Republic Commando redone for Switch and Playstation...it's never looked better, which means it's the logical time to re-release the squad as 3.75" figures, right, and not the new ones; I'm talking the classic molds that had crappy legs but great arms for gun holding poses!
--Derek
Probably not - Hasbro's tooling is in factories not owned by Hasbro. I don't know their specific policies, but tooling often requires storage fees and the history of Star Wars toys is peppered by interesting stories around Kenner regarding not doing the bare minimum to keep their legacy/tools/license intact.
There was also a retool a few years later which I almost forgot about - and I doubt those tools are intact either. But looking at the Bad Batch figures, I would wager someone at Hasbro is going to give GameStop some more Gaming Greats 6-inch figures of these clones.
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2. Several months ago, I read a story on the future of retail after the pandemic. It theorized that brick-and-mortars will evolve into mainly "order online and then come pick it up there if you want to" models.
While out last week at Target to pick up my Boba Fett Deluxe ROTJ Black Series figure, one of the stockers told me as much: they only got 1 case (6 pieces) in, and none were put out on the pegs, because all their stock was used to fulfill those online orders for store pickup. Had I not ordered online, and instead chose to try to get one off the pegs when the store opened, I'd have been out of luck.
Do you think this is another nail in the toy-run coffin? If we can order full cases online from toy e-tailers and have it sent to our homes, or order figures online and pick them up in stores, retailers might be tempted to just order nothing but the very basic kid toys.
--Chris
What you describe has been GameStop's model for years - they just send stores stuff to cover pre-orders, with a handful of extra units. Believe it or not this is the system fans were asking for 22 years ago, and Toys R Us briefly experimented with during post-launch Episode I product with those paper pull-slips (like for video games.)
Target stores reorder and have pretty good systems to not get overwhelmed by stock. I assume they'll probably have more cases for replenishment down the road, because Hasbro made more Boba Fetts than Jar Jars. But Boba Fett is also 10-20 times more popular than Jar Jar among collectors, let alone the general populace, so you're going to see more of him as time goes on if you're hunting regularly. Collectors always find a way to make sure they get something out of the first shipments, and that sometimes means other collectors don't even know that they missed something. A lot of people - and I might even include myself in this - fancy themselves experts, but there's so much to keep track of that the reality is we have no idea what we never heard/already forgot. There are lots of holes in what we know.
There's no coffin for toy sales at stores - if anything, you've just shown how there's even more opportunity. The only people participating in the brick and mortar pre-order schemes are hardcore collectors and maybe a few well-informed fans. There are tens (or hundreds) of thousands of fans who don't even know this is an option, and who give no thought to toys beyond what is on the shelf in front of them. If they see it, they'll buy it. If they read about it, maybe they'll go look for it. Entertainment Earth selling cases online in 1996 didn't kill Toys R Us, Kay-Bee, and everything else... you can blame the vampire capitalists there.
Buying toys now isn't terribly different than 25 years ago, other than there are probably fewer scalpers, more adults, and more online options than ever. A lot of people still hunt at the stores, and stuff still sells out before you can find yours. The key difference for the past year is parents. They're buying everything. It's like permanent Christmas mode here - even back in the good old days, I wrote about how collectors were a drop in the bucket - once parents/aunts/grandma is involved, they don't know anything about collecting and buy whatever they see. If there's one figure on the pegs, that's the one they're going to buy - and the pandemic has resulted in a lot of adults buying toys for their kids in an effort to keep things "normal" so you've got a whole lot more competition from any adult with a kid who isn't aware that there's a difference between "kid figure" and "collector figure." Also consider there really isn't a "kid figure" line out there anymore.
3. Exactly how many live action TV shows is Disney making this year? It's hard to keep track of the franchise at this point. Do you think Star Wars is becoming too watered down with all this content? I mean having just the Mandalorian is fine but Asoka, Obi Wan, Boba Fett all with their own shows?It seems excessive.
--B
The only live-action show in production for release this year - that we know of - is The Book of Boba Fett. We also know Andor, The Mandalorian, and Kenobi are in some stages of preproduction/production. I really don't believe we've heard any other shows confirmed for this or next year.
Is it excessive? Maybe, maybe not - it looks like the goal is for Disney+ to have a Marvel or a Star Wars show streaming a new episode every week - and like when we had 2 Star Treks every week from 1993-1999, it can't last forever and eventually you run out of things to do.
We don't know how all these shows are working, but an Avengers-like story where we focus on Ahsoka for a bit, Boba Fett for a bit, the Rangers for a bit... this just might be a single story with a lot of perspectives. We don't know.
I think Star Wars was too watered down with 1 movie per year for 5 years. Every 3 years was a pretty good amount of time to reload the hype machine, sell more products, and give fans time to absorb every last detail from rewatches and the various guide books. With the advent of The Clone Wars, by 2010 I realized I didn't need to pick up comics or novels any more - I'd have something new to watch every week with my cable bill.
My big complaint about modern TV is about not enough stories, rather than too many. Back in the 1990s, most TV shows gave you a new problem with a beginning, middle, and end every week. Now we're seeing a single movie split up 6-12 ways. Falcon and the Winter Soldier is effectively a low-budget long-form film with bathroom breaks, and each episode really doesn't stand apart in the way we saw in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
There is really no way to know what to expect from Kenobi and whatnot, but I'm expecting a lot more film-like things without a lot of stories that I can easily remember which episode was which.
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FIN
Things you may have missed this week:
There is still much to pre-order and announce on the horizon, some of which is going ot be pretty exciting too. But, we're back in the groove again of weekly Star Wars on the small screens with no new movie expected until at least 2023, at least as far as we know (or Disney will confirm.) Rumors still persist that Detours will be released with zero factual citations, but Visions - the anime-inspired series you forgot about - is still expected to release this year. While there are lots of leaks out there of merit, there are also a lot of people making very good money with uninformed speculation on YouTube being picked up as fact. I really got in the wrong business.
--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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