1. With the amount of toys dumped at Ollies and other like businesses, do you believe it is a result of pricing, character selection, over production or a combination?
--Jeremiah

"Did they make too many?" is a hard question to answer. Well, that's a lie, it's an easy question to answer - yes. If stuff gets dumped at Ollie's, someone goofed. Maybe there was an order processing problem that resulted in orders going unfilled and it took too long to ship. If someone didn't come in for their order, that could also be an issue. Predicting market need is incredibly difficult - take it from me - and I feel for anyone who is in a position to try to guess what fans want to buy from a show they haven't seen yet.

Hasbro is not unique here - Funko, Mattel, and other companies also overproduced toys and collectibles from a number of brands beyond Star Wars. If Hasbro made Vlix and made 500 of them, it would be worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the secondary market. Doesn't matter what it costs, there are at least 500 people who will pay an unreasonable price for that action figure. If Hasbro made 500,000 it would be a massive failure, even at $0.99.

Let's say you're a toy company and you sell a respectable 50,000 units of an item. (All of these numbers are made up and nothing is an actual production quantity.) And all of a sudden, America has been grounded at home because of COVID-19, and people are watching toy livestreams rather than being in offices. Everybody sees your new reveals and places pre-orders. And now maybe you're selling 100,000 of an item, or more. Are these new fans here forever, or just visiting? By late 2022 we found out that they're not going to be lifelong fans. That Baby Yoda/COVID fear/my God make me feel something trifecta wouldn't last forever. But the forecasts were in, the plastic was ordered, those toys were going to be manufactured regardless of the market need.

Andor was good and a lot of people liked it. But, most Andor figures from season one are worthless - if Hasbro intentionally shorted the market, they would be expensive collectibles. Hasbro made a quantity (and I don't know what it is) that was greater than the market demand. Now, it can be had cheaply. Anyone can find any reason to blame - did the show not hit kids right? Did Hasbro make too many? Was a lack of momentum for future releases something that made fans tune out?

I think character selection over the past five years for many toy lines has been a little scattered. If you collected The Retro Collection, each wave came from a single movie or TV show (minus the prequel AOTC/ROTS set.) Everything else was a giant mess, with lots of relatively obscure troopers from games and TV shows with relatively little in the way of weird aliens and droids, and in some cases, major characters. I've mentioned to some people that the hobby is somewhat inaccessible to new fans, even with some of Hasbro's smarter initiatives. You can probably get Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Mando, and/or Darth Vader between Target or Walmart today. That's good! But there are very few companion figures for them in their same scale on the pegs - I feel that's a problem.

Pricing is hard to judge, because I think fans will show up for the right, new, good thing. You can sell a $25 Optimus prime, or a $100 Optimus Prime, and they're very similar - but target different audiences. Star Wars probably could do the same thing, but I don't think Hasbro has made a case for its "deluxe" figure scales. (Shipping in solid cases, they're all very common and are never perceived of as "rare.")

Fans right now are going nuts trying to figure out what's going on with Target's 2025 The Retro Collection set. eBay prices are soaring, there's conflicting information about how it's coming around, but people want it, and the price is right, and if it were $80? Because of what it is? I don't think sales would be lessened. If you make the right item, price is almost not an issue. If Hasbro waited until 2020 to make the first Boba Fett figure and it was $50, people would buy it. But people have dozens of Boba Fett figures, so a new take is going to be a little less exciting at this point. (I saw the Deluxe The Black Series ones, boxed, at a collector shop for $10 each on Saturday. And it's a good figure, but people were done with it.)

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2. You and I just took over the action figure license. Congrats! Target agrees to keep core characters on the pegs at all times in addition to other case assortments. We get to pick an allotment of 12 core character figures to consistently ship to Target in a core character case. Assuming we can’t swap or charge the assortment later - what would be the 12 core characters / figures you would choose for this case?
--Patrick

But which format? We have so many.

It's probably a good idea to have some sort of "fresh start" or "onboarding" opportunity every two or three years. Every year is too often. If you look back to the Prequels, they did a pretty good job of wiping the slate clean (with ample looks back) during a three-year window.

If I was given the chance to populate an assortment of core characters, it probably shouldn't be 12, and it would probably be cycling in and out figures so nothing appears stale on pegs. (See above - fans think something is a pegwarmer if they see it more than once or twice.) The current Mando and Vader figures we're seeing generally ship in solid cases, which might be too much. What Hasbro did for 2024 Epic Hero Series was a pretty good selection. Vader, Ahsoka, Stormtrooper, Luke, Mando, and Grogu were a good start and probably the best possible choices at that moment given the expectations of the market... but it's not enough to make a brand statement or to be an inviting jumping-on point for newbies.

If I had 12 characters to cycle in and out of pretty much any figure form factor, I'd probably pick these guys today. Literally today. Things would change depending on what was going on in the greater marketplace.
1. Darth Vader - rotating which suit you get every 6-9 months would be ideal in any format.
2. The Mandalorian - ditto, refresh him with different accessories or new features once a year or twice if you can swing it. He sells.
3. Boba Fett. At a basic figure (not deluxe figure) price, he always sells out. At a deluxe figure price, he doesn't sell as well. Keep him around but don't plus him up, and everybody wins.
4. Luke Skywalker. A different version should probably be on-shelf at least once or twice a year, even if it's just a rerun. I don't see him on shelves very often.
5. Chewbacca (who's coming back again.) He tends to sell well, as long as he doesn't overstay his welcome - so maybe rotate him out for somebody else every few months, and bring him back again the next year.
6. Stormtrooper - ditto. Plain white regular vanilla Stormtroopers, not color variants, should be around at least once a year and would probably do well to take a nap once a year, too. You don't want too many, but you do want them around so someone like me will buy an extra here and there. Replacing him with Scout Troopers, Snowtroopers, TIE Pilots, and so on could keep it fresh.
7. Darth Maul. Another one to refresh and rotate in and out - he doesn't have many legit variations, but you should probably see him in every format every year or two.
8. Jango Fett - another basic one to rotate in and out. Keep him simple, and rotate him out for a break at least 3 months a year.
9. Grogu (as an accessory). I'd like to see Grogu variants packed with other characters - Peli Motto, Scout Troopers, and so on. There's not much to him, and he might help sell some lesser characters as an accessory rather than being the core figure himself.
10. Yoda. Yoda should be available in stores at least once every 1-2 years, and it's been a while. He seems to sell well, so keep him in rotation. It would be fun to see some increasingly specific variations on him too - the first The Black Series version had a lightsaber and a snake. Maybe it would be good to make an aggressively The Phantom Menace puppet version, or a very specific CG Attack of the Clones one.
11. R2-D2 - cycled in and out with differing gimmicks and, of course, repaints as other droids.
12. Vlix. Because screw you, that's why.

But it's probably moot. I don't think we'll ever see a case of Hasbro action figures - non-preschool, non-mini stuff - with 12 characters ever again. The Black Series is down to 6, Marvel Legends tends to flip between 6 and 8, and so on and so forth.

I would also suggest Hasbro just go back to themed waves. From 2006 to 2009, we usually got mixes that were about 50% familiar faces and 50% new faces that go along with them. The Legacy Collection in 2008 kicked off with "Sandstorm" versions of Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewbacca plus Darth Vader... along with Gargan, Ak-Rev, Leektar & Nippet, and Bane Malar. It's different enough for collectors to go "OK" and classic enough for neophytes to go "this looks good." And the next wave brought us a Clone Wars wave which mixed in Obi-Wan, Padme, Clones, and some awesome droids and aliens. It was a strategy that felt satisfying - but admittedly, I can't say I know what Hasbro's sales numbers were.

I'd much rather see a line that's constantly refreshing itself to be appealing to all possible audiences. I'd also prefer it to be The Retro Collection but hey, I gotta be me.

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FIN

I'm working on a special Q&A thing for August - if you remember any question and hated the answer, or want another riff on it, let me know. I am picking out a few from the archives and I see that I went from tweet-sized answers to verbose novels.

I have a lot of stuff in the can but I guess my goal for the next batch I write - I'm a little ahead - is brevity. Let's see how that doesn't work.

A couple weeks ago I checked Target.com for the Star Wars Retro Collection Star Wars: A New Hope Figure Multipack and lucky me, I got one. It took just over a week to get here, and there was some weirdness in when it got scanned... or didn't get scanned. As of my writing this I've only opened Dr. Evazan, who has purple pants and pretty good sculpting. His scars aren't as intense as the wrinkles around Squid Head's face or the detailing on Klaatu, but it's pretty good, with decent deco, and probably more paint than Kenner would have budgeted. The others look great, and I'll be popping them open over the next few weeks. I have no idea when the next Retro item will actually hit, so like before I tend to drag out opening them all. I look at every one of these Kenner items like it could be the very last one.

In the interest of keeping things short, it's a good set. It's not like most modern Han Solo figures look like Harrison Ford, so why should a Han Solo designed to look like it came from 10 presidential terms ago? It's weird, but it also feels like a pretty good representation of what Star Wars action figures might have looked like had they been given just one more wave before The Empire Strikes Back, or after the end of The Power of the Force.

Buzz has it more of this item are coming later. The first sightings were a couple of weeks ago, most stores don't seem to have any yet, and Hasbro is not known for tiny runs. (Also, most fans who are buying this want two, or three, or more.) Be patient, don't feed the scalpers yet, and know people will be clamoring for reruns if the secondary market prices stay high.

For my money, I assume the past month is as good as Star Wars gets for 2025 with Andor and Tales from the Underworld and Light & Magic and this set. And of course some pre-orders I couldn't get in on yet, and some very bad industry-ball-kicking things. (No offense if you're into ball kicking.) Next year we have a new movie, and probably some new cartoons, and I assume at least one live-action season of something or other, but spring 2025 is going to be hard to beat.

The future of this particular segment of the toy line has been described as benefitting from fan chatter online. So do your part. Do you want Andor stuff? Vlix? Tzizvvt? Arleil Schous? Make some noise. Unfortunately 40-50-somethings are probably far less likely go to go the Tiktoks and Instas and whatever to make noise about a line, so I assume we're probably going to get 6 or maybe 12 figures a year, and we're going to have to like it. But if you're up for making some fuss, showing off your pictures, starting a conversation somewhere... it might help the rest of us get some more plastic men here and there.

--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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