1. How hard is it for Hasbro to upscale their tooling? I am specifically thinking about the 3 3/4" Snowtrooper with removable helmet. I'd love to see that figure appear in the Black Series line. They have Snowtrooper body sculpts recently. They have head sculpts in the line that would work. They would really only need to upscale the helmet. Do you have any idea if that is something that is even possible for them to do? Asking if X-figure will ever come out is generally a no no. So I am trying to avoid the ask. I'm just trying to figure out if that is something we fans should start asking for. Or maybe I'm the only one who really loved that figure. Hell, I'm generally a sucker for all removable helmets.
--Chuck

With current manufacturing techniques, upscaling tooling isn't really a thing. You have to make a whole new tool, and while there are techniques to scale up or scale down an existing sculpt, it's still expensive to produce a new head.

The removable helmet Snowtrooper is, if memory serves, pre-digital sculpting. While there are ways to take that item's original sculpt (or taking a 3D scan, or making an entirely new sculpt to match it) it probably wouldn't be something Hasbro has a need to do. Once they create a 6-inch sculpt of character previously made as a 3 3/4-inch figure, they still have to cut tooling which costs many large quantities of dollars to do. Given how Hasbro has perfectly good and still functioning 6-inch Snowtrooper tooling, they're unlikely to do that. Even if it was just for a new helmet (or a new torso, with a new head and removable helmet) I would not anticipate their pursuing that if good sculpts and good tooling already exist. If all you're asking for is a single new masked head (sans removable helmet) it could probably be done, but it would probably be a new sculpt.

Given how the storyline of The Bad Batch seems to be going with a subplot on clones versus recruits, I would not anticipate ever seeing Clone heads under Imperial helmets unless some things are settled in terms of story.

Now if you just want Hasbro to do variant heads (or helmets), I'm sure that's something they'd consider if enough fans asked. If Hasbro could mix up the battle damage and tweak how the mask is sculpted, there might be a business opportunity there. I personally would not ask for reissues of old figures with new heads, unless that resulted in a new character - but that's me. If you guys really want something, you can't go wrong with petitions, forum threads, or generally making it known to Hasbro. Recent figures seem to be walking a fine line between cost-cutting last year, and price increases this year, and we don't know yet how the figures are going to settle out at $22.99. My hunch is they're going to have a few extra pennies for accessories or deco, but I am unsure if fans are needing a massive Snowtrooper 6-inch army. (But if they want to do a Snowtrooper Officer, now that would be different.)

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2. First, what's going on with Marvel Legends? Why all of a sudden are we being offered huge expensive figures like Surtur and Iron Monger? I'm pleased they are being made even if I'm not personally interested, but it feels like they're doubling down on Marvel Legends at the same time they seem to be somewhat neglecting Star Wars. I'm not sure what an analog to these large figures would be in Star Wars; maybe someone with a beast in the 6" scale, or something like Rey with her speeder (which I know, they've already done and we don't really need a re-do). Just curious.

Second, I'm sure you're aware, but Dollar General, of all places, seems to have an exclusive toy line called Final Faction. Of course for a dollar a pop they aren't fantastic, but on the other hand, for a dollar a figure, they're pretty damn good. And while normally I don't even look at stuff like this, I must admit, there's a certain appeal of being able to get a whole line for something like $12 to $15, the price of ONE figure in the same scale from Hasbro (you can't compare on the quality, natch). Thoughts on a line like this? If they can make them this cheap (assuming they aren't loss leaders), why, aside from quality (and rightsholder costs), am I being asked to pay $12 to $15 for, say, Vintage Hulk (a great figure, but just as an example)? Again, just curious.
--oshram

Bigger figures have been a part of the line for years, although mostly as exclusives or build-a-figures sold as a whole, complete units.

In a perfect world, Hasbro wants to sell you bigger, more expensive items as part of your collecting diet. If they can sell you a $40-$60 bigger figure (or 2-pack) that gets more shelf space at a store, they want to - and right now, retailers are very interested in that kind of thing. When given the option of selling you a bigger figure at a higher price, or making a build-a-figure, it's in Hasbro's best interest to just sell you the bigger, more expensive figure.

The build-a-figure is probably a holdout that is here through the grace of a Marvel executive insisting on it. No other Hasbro collector line has anything like it right now (although there was a brief exception recently with Maccadam in Transformers Cyberverse.) I don't know what the licensing costs are for Marvel as opposed to Star Wars either - there may not be money in the budget for it, or maybe they just want to take more margin, or perhaps Hasbro is cutting corners in Marvel with more shared parts (true) and fewer accessories (often also true.) Hasbro certainly could do a build-a-droid or something else if they felt like it, but there are undoubtedly reasons they opt to not do it at this time. Marvel definitely offers the best bang for the buck in the format, especially as you can sell off those extra limbs on eBay if you don't want to make the complete figure.

Star Wars has some "big guys," but not many. In the last year we've gotten $30 Jar Jar Binks, Boba Fett, General Grievous, and Wrecker to name a few - some of which are worth the extra money, some of which are kind of a stretch. If you go over the grand history of Star Wars, there aren't many true "deluxe" figures. Everybody is pretty much the same size except for a few shorter figures. They could, on the other hand, do a "build a Cantina" line of $30 aliens with bar sections or benches, or something like that.

Final Faction is pretty neat! And there's a similar line of Hasbro figures - there are bagged Marvel 3 3/4-inch figures (with minimal deco and articulation) for about four bucks at some value/food/drug stores. They're a little lacking in the quality department, but it's certainly something Hasbro can do and is doing right now. They're just not easy to come by. Over the years we've had numerous examples of the "is this a good deal?" question, and bluntly, no it isn't. Mattel has 3-inch Imaginext figures with 8 points of articulation - and a DC license! - for $4. So why is a 4-jointed R2-D2 $8-$12? Why is The Black Series The Child $10 and The Vintage Collection $13? That's how they want to sell it, and it sells. Similarly Hasbro has a larger not-really-scale 6-inch The Child in its "value" line for $5. It's what they want to do. Maybe it's something Lucasfilm or Disney demanded. But is it fair or sensible that a bagged 4" Hulk is $4 and a carded one is $13? Or that the very same Qui-Gon Jinn figure in 2012 was sold on a The Vintage Collection Cardback for $10, while one peg over, it was sold with a whole bunch of extra accessories, a stand, and a trading card for only $8? Nope. But that's what happens and it keeps selling.

If Hasbro thought there was interest in a 4" figure line for $4 with limited articulation, I bet we'd see it. (Or Disney would find a way to make it work. Look at the original Kenner figures - you can make these things with very little paint if you want, and I assume they'd sell a lot of Stormtroopers in a simpler format - at the right size.) But they don't want to do it, so it doesn't exist right now. Depending on how the next few years go with inflation and all, I would not be surprised to see toy companies swing back toward impulse price points and away from the $15-$23 figures. If you're a kid, you probably don't want to spend Switch game prices on an action figure. Or spend more on an action figure than you would on a nice LEGO set. The collector action figure world does not follow the same rules as the rest of the toy business, and Mattel has done wonders keeping Hot Wheels down to about a buck for decades.

3. What's the point of having upcoming figures (say, next 2 or 3 months) labeled with code names? It's not like some other toy company is going to rush out and develop, create, and ship their own version of Star Wars figures before Hasbro. It'd be great to see a list of all figures going to be released this year ahead of time. I'd like to know, now, how many figures in the Mando-verse will be available in the Fall to hang out with my Razor Crest.
--Chris

The snarky answer is marketing people - they have a job to do, and those slow-drip reveals are part of their gig. If a code name gets out, they can still do their big reveal. If the real name gets out... frankly they can still do the reveal, but sometimes they seem upset about it. (I don't know why they don't reveal the name, and then some concept art, and then show the toy later for 3 reveals of a single toy to get more attention - but I digress.) The code names are on lists that are used for business purposes for up to a year - or more - before the code names make it out. In Transformers they don't use code names, so fans know pretty much everything coming early.

The bonus issue is that people love secrets. It doesn't matter that it's ridiculous - for The Force Awakens there was "Alien Sidekick," which was Chewbacca. The code name resulted in me being let down when I realized there wasn't something new to be had. In more recent projects, Hasbro sometimes includes a classic figure in a wave that they are keeping secret for some reason or another, and sometimes those figures are a surprise tie-in to The Mandalorian or something else. A great example of this is The Black Series Archive wave earlier this year with a bunch of Rogue One troopers and a Tusken Raider. At first glance, it's just a bunch of cool reissues - but it turned out they all had something very similar (if not identical) on the streaming show. If fans learn they can start reading in to some of those reissues, or that classic figures may shine a light on upcoming plot spoilers, it's kind of understandable that they want to keep them under wraps.

But on the other side of the fence, sometimes they wait too long and toy reviewers get toys (stolen, early, however) and put out full video reviews before Hasbro even announces the product. This seems to be surprisingly frequent in Transformers, whereas it's relatively rare in Star Wars. I completely agree that it would be great to budget for the year with a list of names, but sometimes things get cancelled, or moved. There are numerous examples over the years of products that weren't exclusives being made into retailer exclusives, too. Also in this no-convention world, Hasbro does get pretty good mileage slow-drip revealing figures every few weeks to keep us interested in new pre-orders and announcements since they can't do it all in a convention hall in San Diego/New York/where ever.

I would agree that some things have waited a little too long - a few Vintage guys last year made it to shelves before being announced, for example - but they have their way of doing things. As companies get bigger, more things slip through the cracks, especially as more eyeballs need to approve announcements and reveal dates and so on and so forth. Hasbro doesn't have a "Director of making sure they bothered to announce a product."

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FIN

Be sure you send in your questions for next time. The mailbag is out of on-topic questions, so if you got some, send some in.

A couple of weeks ago, Hasbro announced they're working on a HasLab item for The Black Series. But what? I've been scratching my head over this one. Someone speculated a Rancor Monster, but that seems out of the current line's scope. Other than the big TIE Fighter, it's been smaller stuff - a Rancor seems too big, and the 3 3/4-inch scale ones can have problems standing up as it is. So I was thinking "what would be the item that would be broad enough to sell to a wide audience but also weird enough to not fit in the main line?" So I'm making my guess here: The Book of Boba Fett teaser throne, presumably with Boba Fett and maybe Bib Fortuna and/or Fennec Shand. That's my guess - it's an item hardcore fans want and would buy. It's an item fair-weather collectors would buy. If you're a dabbler or a lifer, you would probably see an item like that and buy it. If you have Jabba from a few years ago, you already probably want at least one Jabba Throne anyway. It is, to say the least, a very sensible thing to do - not unlike the Razor Crest.

It covers the bases. Boba/Mando fans. Original Trilogy fans will want the throne. Fans of cool figures would want it. Fans of statues could also make a reason to clear space for it on a shelf. And it's probably not something you could sell at Target or Walmart easily.

It's certainly not what I'd personally want the most - I'd probably exploit HasLab for "here's a weird character that'll never sell unless 10,000 of you buy one." I also hope it's not another giant ship, mostly because after having owned The Black Series TIE Fighter for five years, I can safely say I don't want something else like that taking up space. There's another specific item it could be, but due to Reasons, I can't post that speculation here. But I really do hope it's something practical as a display piece and not a vehicle you'll look at, shrug, and go "I guess I got that" after you unbox it.

But more importantly, Droids is on Disney+ right now and it looks better than I ever remember seeing it.

--Adam Pawlus

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