1. So, are you gonna buy a $27.99 Amananamanamanan? At least there is a POTJ-era precedent for considering this one a deluxe figure

Also - Although about Netflix, I saw this article and thought of your good point that Disney hasn’t let the Star Wars universe sit enough to build engagement. “Netflix’s competitors have been turning away from the binge-drop model in favor of more or less weekly schedules, because they’ve realized—or relearned—that the time when a show’s not on the air is as important to building its audience as the time when viewers are actually watching.” Good stuff:

https://slate.com/culture/2026/07/netflix-season-2-ratings-avatar-beef-four-seasons-show.html
--Todd

I'm generally in the market for new aliens. $28 for a new new alien (the Amani Guard) is worth my while. This guy is a bigger, super-articulated monster with limited (but not zero) reuse potential. It's too big for a modern standard blister, and has extra gear that I might actually want to use - so this one was a no-brainer for me. Yes, I'm buying at least one Amani Guard, and maybe some Armani too. I think $30 might be the breaking point unless Hasbro starts including two figures in the blister. I look forward to handling a final sample, because this looks like Hasbro is really trying to make the price point seem worth it.

But TV?

With the right kind of show, Netflix dumping-in-full makes sense. Stranger Things' first three seasons really thrived since they were basically really long movies for television, and I appreciate the split seasons later on so nobody could spoil it while people were trying to catch up - like the article says. That kind of social engagement is important, and I know people can get pretty upset if you want to talk about the show if they're not caught up yet. But I also have rewatched precious little in the past 10 years - there's just too much to catch up on. I liked Star Wars as a kid, because I rewatched it dozens of times. I liked Stranger Things enough to squeeze in some rewatches, which made me like it more. I haven't rewatched Andor since season 2 finished. I need some time.

Slate's articles pretty much nailed it. I've been hearing similar sentiments on The Dana Gould Hour and Fun For All Ages, which both frequently cite the value of a show with a lot of episodes creating fans. Twilight Zone is an old show that ran for five years, but it's the kind of thing you can watch all the way through and then start over. Star Trek fandom exists because of looping reruns so you could watch an episode a day for three months, and then start over. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has any burning desire to loop around 8-10 episode seasons. You watched it, you're done, and go watch something else. I watched The Simpsons reruns on a loop for years.

Weekly engagement is good. During the old days, we spread engagement over eight or nine months. You would get 23-26 episodes, with a few reruns and breaks, between September/October and April/May. You'd check in every week to watch a show you liked even if it was a repeat, just in case it was new. You were on a schedule, and you may have even built your day around catching The Simpsons at 6:30 PM or Seinfeld every Thursday. Now you can watch whatever, whenever, and that has resulted in a lot of people just saying they'll get to it "later." And "later" is never.

Modern viewers (kids) supposedly watch a show. Suits or The Office are cited as a thing people start watching and will be their main entertainment for months, or if it's Grey's Anatomy, years. I don't doubt a new show having 10 episodes out-the-gate does wonders for generating excitement and buzz, but you have to keep that going. Audiences react poorly to studios saying "well, this entire TV show did its thing in a month, we'll be back in four years for season two." The Mandalorian spent a lot of fuel and I don't know that it's worth revisiting him in his own show again.

I think Disney did the right thing spreading its best shows over weeks and months, and I also think they were smart in Andor being released in chunks. It is exhausting and unwelcome to have literally every episode be a three-week three-parter when we just want to finish the story. This irked me in The Clone Wars as every season was built with three- or four-parters, since one of the great things about most 20th century TV was you got a new story, every week. There were ongoing threads, but the story wrapped up. Streaming rarely does that, and I think it's a problem.

One of the great things about old TV shows is that when an episode ends, you probably want to watch more. If you have a story that gets you less than one episode per month (on average, over a few seasons) and never really resolves anything, why do you want to watch it? Friends kept being successful because there was a buffet of Buffay. If you like the show, you can watch all 236 episodes on a loop forever without having to say "but I just saw that one last week." If you want to watch all of The Mandalorian, you can probably do it over a long weekend.

Podcasts and rewatches of old shows are more engaging than most new streaming TV. The budgets for new shows might be too high, and don't pay residuals, so I don't even know what to say here. Lower-budget Trek was more rewarding but I like the new show, too. Star Wars portions are too small to be life-changing, and too frequent to be cultural events. I don't think corporations want to put in the effort to be a 365-days-a-year presence in our lives, but they want that kind of attention. They're pretty good at getting it with product drops and merchandise, which certainly feels more of the goal these days. I'm of two minds about that, but at least I'm being entertained.

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2. Adam, simple question: When was the last time a Star Wars Hasbro item (aside from Retro) truly excited you?
--Brad

I had a different answer I tossed out, because it missed the point of what I think a lot of us are going through. I've been in some version of "Star Wars figures are hard to get, I am going to go look for Star Wars figures" since 1985 or 1986. Be it Toy Shop magazine, garage sales, antique shows, or weird hardware stores, I was always keeping my eyes open. And each of those finds was exciting. And when JustToys brought out Bend-Em's, that was exciting. And Galoob's MicroMachines, Dark Horse Comics, Ballatine Books, Kenner action figures, Lucasfilm Games NES cartridges, I could go on. That's a lot of excitement. How often can you be excited to buy another one of the things that are like the thing you already own? A hundred times? A thousand? Over three thousand, over multiple decades?

With Star Wars I've watched my little toy hobby blossom into internet writing, magazine articles, and eventually an actual job. I love the perspective I get (and have undoubtedly lost) being around this stuff all of the time. I'm a toy collector, not as someone who got into this to buy the newest and best version of something. The Black Series and The Vintage Collection let me down by being good. Every few years we find out the Luke we bought in 2017 as the best ever isn't anymore, and we have to pay $25-$28 to upgrade. Or, as I had discovered, we don't have to do that.

So what am I enjoying?

I was excited to play with last year's Epic World of Action vehicles. Cheap, $20 and $30 vehicles, that look cool and can fit almost all the 3 3/4-inch figures too? Amazing, novel, and compatible. All of the HasLabs (excepting the Gunship) were very exciting, and I was really excited to get new The Vintage Collection figures from The Mandalorian and the rare few from the original trilogy too. I get very excited by many of the new streaming figures, but the excitement is brief. Once I got the Best Face Paint Rerelease of Cassian Andor, I went "Wow, this is amazing!" Then I took the old one off the shelf, put up the new one, and never looked at it again. Whereas New Retro Wedge made me pull out the Epic X-Wing and mess around some.

Last year's Cantina (with Tonnikas!) and Cantina Adventure Set (with Kennery Aliens!) were a blast. I loved the Barge. The Ghost is great, but it's difficult to play with - my excitement got cut short with the teensy Phantom II being too cramped for figures to pilot. Hasbro's new The Vintage Collection vehicles are incredibly exciting, but usually fall short of expectations. Either they're not as sturdy as my older models, or lack action play features, or just seem like better display pieces. I really like the new Landspeeder, but it's also a new Landspeeder. I have three previous Kenner and Hasbro models, and this one costs more without doing much new. It's an astonishing item for the price, but again - I'm a toy collector. I'm not here to get replicas.

I'm still getting a lot of juice out of The Vintage Collection but I get the most excited from new things like Morak Boba Fett or an all-new alien. Boba's Palace was a fantastic item, because it resulted in me doing something I never did before - mixing and matching figures from nearly every era to set up a little display with decades of my favorite toys. That sort of thing is a rare gift, because not only do you have a great new toy but you also get a reminder of what keeps you in the hobby. It's fun to have a reason to play with your entire collection, rather than focus on the newest thing while you ignore what made you happy 30 years ago.

More than anything, I want to get new toys that enhance my enjoyment of the toys I have. Give me vehicles for figures, figures for playsets. I want stuff that makes me feel like a kid, and dioramas are less fun than ships that make noises and can fly around in my hand. The Black Series are incredible, but they are collectibles with expectations and are hard for me to enjoy on their own merits. I feel obligated to compare them to other items in a way I don't with Retro. Vintage is easy to like with new figures, but remakes invite (demand) comparison. Retro just wants to be played with. I almost feel bad reviewing them because with few exceptions, they're not the kind of product that needs to convince its audience - you want it, or you don't, I just need to make sure you know it exists.

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FIN

I got in this hobby to have fun, and sometimes that's hard.

Have you ever had to launch a toy on a web site? Have you ever had to set up costs, prices, freight, defect allowances, UPCs, descriptions, images, keywords, or categories? It's a lot of work, and mistakes are pretty easy to make. Sometimes you make them, and sometimes you're sent outdated or incorrect information. Surely you've seen the occasional item go up $10 too cheap or $20 too expensive, only to be changed an hour or two later as a supplier realizes an error was sent, or the store crew finds a mistake they made in a spreadsheet. Everybody does their best to ensure it doesn't happen, but thankfully this kind of thing is usually rare.

In the era of the Internet it's easier than ever to access others, and to screw with their careers or general sense of well-being. Did you know I got death threats when I was writing my old Star Wars newsletter back in the 1990s when I was in high school? Did you know fans have been running Kenner and Hasbro employees away from online communities for at least that long? The best thing you can do to drive home your displeasure is to deprive a person of attention or a product of money. The plastic-free packaging not selling certainly helped bring classic packaging back. Higher-priced items will not come to market if they stop selling or if previous items fail to meet certain milestones. Or sometimes you find out that the tides of global commerce have rendered a product incapable of being brought to market at any price.

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks, and the crystal ball on my desk says there are a few things that will make fans very excited in 2027. Not all fans will be excited by the same things, but it's been like that for nearly 20 years. Some figures are for new fans, some are for lifers. Some are for prequel fans, some are for gamers, some are for the old men. What makes me a little sad is precious little is for kids - that's not unique to Star Wars. Nearly every IP has licensed products that are far too expensive for children these days, but it's also worth noting that the 1978 X-Wing Fighter would be about $102.43 when adjusted for inflation. That may make other items look like a much better deal, or at least put into perspective why a $139 2026 X-Wing with two figures might cost what it costs in this economy. (Or more - I'm going to take every recent price reveal with a grain of salt prior to going on sale.)

I hope everybody comes back and can keep communicating as long as it makes sense (and is something all parties want to do.) People get pretty heated online. Just be nice to people, because some of these people are fans just like you that are trying their best to keep you informed and delighted to the best of their ability. I'm not saying you have to like what's coming, just remember we're all people, we're all collectors and fans, and in my case we're weird kids who just want to rip things out of the boxes and have a nice time. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week.

--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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