1. Feel free to call me clueless, but it seems to me that Star Wars could increase sales if someone was willing to absorb a hit on their profit margin if it meant lowering the msrp on the product.

So, we have Disney charging what I presume is a hefty license fee for the IP.

We have Hasbro having to cover the aforementioned fee, as well as their raw materials and labor costs.

Then we have the retailers, who have to carve out a profit on what product they are selling versus what they paid to acquire said product.

Should everyone take a relatively small hit (in my mind impossible, since at least 1/3 of the players is likely riding a pretty thin margin for just breaking even, let alone making profits), or does Disney wake up to the fact that their product is not what it once was.

I feel like the Mouse House needs Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder to say to them that Star Wars is a lot like Tugg Speedman.

What do you think?
-- Derek

What would you be willing to give up for that lower price? Given the nature of the toy market, it is unlikely anyone is just going to take a pay cut so your figure can be a little bit cheaper. But that doesn't mean there isn't a roadmap for a lower product - I just can't imagine the billion dollar companies would take it.

If the answer is "nothing," I doubt prices will ever go down. Hasbro could make a less-premium figure - just slightly less articulation, no swappable hands, that sort of thing - at a lower price. They're doing it right now, you can get a $10 Mando at Walmart with 5 joints and it's a sturdy figure! It lacks the paint and articulation of a $17 figure, but that's the trade-off. If you know how Hasbro's wholesale pricing works, there's not a lot of wiggle room for stores. I don't know what the Disney tax is these days, and after things like freight and packaging, Hasbro probably isn't exactly making money hand over fist on all of these things. (Having said that, the repacks of less-fancy figures at 2024 prices? Someone is making money here, and it might just be the factory.)

The part count - and often deco - of Vintage and Black Series are now very similar, and the size doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference. You can get a 12" Titan Hero Series figure for about the same size as a 4" figure. Such is the way of things. But if you dropped ankle joints and wrists - for example - of non-Jedi, non-Clone figures, and got the price down to $15 - who would miss it?

I really do believe Hasbro would sell more product if pricing (and product) were right-sized. $25 for deluxe Vintage Jango is a lot. But so is $17 for an average figure. I'd be perfectly happy buying 5-jointed Cantina aliens for $10-$15, with a blaster, a glass, and maybe a specialty joint or accessory if it made sense to do so. If they're not sitting in a chair, what do I need knees, or rocker ankles for? Momaw Nadon looked great as a 6-jointed figure - and I assume there aren't many that will benefit from the extra costs. Similarly, do you need super articulated Ewoks? No, you don't. But collectors on forums and/or streamers demand it and will threaten to burn down Hasbro if they so much as whisper about removing ankles or wrists on the furballs. Grogu sure as heck doesn't need to be $17 - but he sells in nice quantities, and nobody is going to say no to a hit.

I don't think you can get fans to accept Luke, Vader, Leia, Han, or the like with a reduction in joints in Vintage but I would absolutely love seeing Hasbro take a page from the old Kenner days of excess inventory and put out a 2-pack on more generic cardbacks of simpler figures. We've seen comic 2-packs for excellent prices, but those frequently invoked repainted molds or simpler figures - and sold well. It's doable. But are fans willing to accept it? Would Disney even be interested in a line for teens and adults that wasn't "all premium all the time"? I think we would be, if the goods were... good. I don't need a super-articulated Sim Aloo - I'd take a simple one, if it was bundled with a simple Stormtrooper or Royal Guard or something like that for $20-$25 for the pair. I'd love to find out if swappable arms are cheaper than articulation - we saw it in the 2004 Original Trilogy Collection Dagobah Training Luke, and it worked well. But would you as a fan accept it?

The market for high-end items from LEGO, Hasbro, Hot Toys, and so forth will have an end point because you can only make something so perfect, or so expensive, before people say "I've had enough." And some fans won't touch the cheap stuff, in some cases because it's redundant - Epic Hero Series is awesome, but lifers already own those figures in other formats. Multiple formats. So to you, I would say you should petition Hasbro to make simpler figures, or figures that may be a bit closer to statues, if you really want prices to come down. Given how many figures remain packaged for eternity, and how many open figures go on a shelf after they're posed exactly once, it seems silly that Hasbro wouldn't go this route. But if you read fan forums, they will not take any perceived slight in quality (well, they will, until someone points it out to them that they were "wrong" to like something, and that is a whole different silly issue.)

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2. Unrelated to Star Wars figures, the Delta Emulator has dropped for iOS.

What are some of your favorite retro games for NES, SNES, Gameboy etc? And what are your favorite NES home brew games?

I am digging the app a lot, I am playing Metroid Zero Mission by using Airplay to mirror the screen to my TV. It’s like having a wireless console! And I’ve got the official Nintendo SNES Switch controller on order, which reportedly works as a Bluetooth controller for iPhone.
--Jason

Well, we do have space. And have you heard the word about MiSTer yet?

I'm a very big fan of the homebrew scene, in the sense of "we're making new games for old consoles" more than the "homebrew is code for other things." People are getting old hardware to do some fairly impressive stuff, and we're seeing a mix of low-level proof-of-concept games alongside surprisingly polished titles.

Just last week, I finally finished playing Goodboy Galaxy for Game Boy Advance on my Analogue Pocket - because two years later, the Kickstarter hasn't delivered my cartridge. It's a Metroid-like game where you play a dog in space exploring various planets and puzzling your way through various levels, looking for new gear and meeting aliens. If this were an actual game released 20 years ago, I think gamers would be discussing it as one of the best. There's also a free demo for it.

If you're an NES fan, pretty much anything by Morphcat Games is excellent, especially Micro Mages. It's sort of a reimagining of games like Ice Climber, except with more upgrades and up to four players. I wish this came out when I was younger - I haven't even convinced someone to be player 2 yet, let alone a full group of 4. It's all made with a design restriction in place so that it's done with the same memory and hardware used for the very early NES games, making it a really impressive technical feat. The developers put together a video showing how they did it all in 40kb, which is a really impressive think to witness.

I am also fond of Parisoft, as their NES ports of Berzerk and L'Abbaye des Morts are pretty amazing. The latter has been ported to other consoles as well - there's a Sega Genesis version that lets you skin it to look like various retro PCs or consoles.

Some are a little harder to find, but that doesn't mean you can't find a download somewhere. I'm really fond of Jay & Silent Bob Mall Brawl - basically Mighty Final Fight meets Double Dragon - and Trophy is a Mega Man clone of considerable quality. And for fans of more licensed things, Rugrats is finally coming this year.

I'm hoping someone over at Limited Run - or elsewhere - considers making all-new Star Wars games on an old console, mostly because I very much don't like the ones we had growing up. I do have a soft spot for the Super NES Super Star Wars trilogy of games, though. I could go on forever, but so many of those old games are nostalgia pieces that go up against your patience. I think The Legend of Zelda for NES is a nearly-perfect game, but also, I played it for hours when I had literally nothing else to do in a pre-Internet landscape.

As to which games are good, there are so many. But I'm a big fan of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Game Boy Color is arguably better than the standard B&W game), Warp Warp (Famicom - so should play on NES), Life Force (NES), Donkey Kong (Game Boy 1994 game), Secret of Mana (Super NES), Metroid Fusion (Game Boy Advance), and just before the prices took off I lucked into the Bit Generations games for Game Boy Advance. Sometimes somebody sells the full set of 7 for a reasonable price (per game, singletons tend to be pricey) and they're a mix of the derivative (Boundish is basically a fun Pong clone) to the truly out of this would (Orbital allows you to absorb planetoids in a 2D, pre-Katamari Damacy rampage through the cosmos.) Soundvoyager relies on you navigating by sound - the series is truly unusual and well worth a look as - to Americans - a lost bit of retro gaming. These were rated for US release, but never came out on the Game Boy Advance... although some did get Wii remakes.

But I also like NES Wizards & Warriors, Goonies II, and Goonies for Famicom - the one you may have seen in Nintendo Vs. cabinets in the 1980s, that never got a US release. The big question for so many of these is how much you're willing to put up with. I don't know if constant deaths and occasional needs for walkthrus are your bag, but even with a guide, a lot of these old games are an enjoyable romp. Also I really love Zelda II, which puts me in a very small group. Most of Nintendo's first-party offerings for the original Game Boy were a lot of fun, if simple, but you can probably skip Pokemon unless you're of that generation of kids.

Now if you want recommendations with a lot of context, Jeremy Parish puts together some great videos explaining why a game was important (or not) back in the day, and how it feels now.

I'm also itching to try Mr. Run and Jump for Atari VCS, but it's cartridge-only last I checked.  Unless you want a modernized version.

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FIN

While the world of toys in the 1980s and 1990s zig-zagged with new brands every year - or every few months. Modern Hasbro has largely been less than particularly dynamic in the past decade, plus or minus a few licenses. For example, Hasbro bought Power Rangers, and as of this week Hasbro will be licensing out Power Rangers to Playmates. We've also seen Basic Fun! take on Littlest Pet Shop, Jazwares manufacture MicroMachines, and Just Play take over Easy Bake Ovens. I assume the deal with Takara-Tomy will prevent Transformers from going outside the Hasbro halls, ditto Disney and Marvel and Star Wars, but we already see Super7 has designs on o-ring G.I. Joe and that will no doubt continue to evolve. The Op (formerly USAopoly), Winning Solutions, and Winning Moves also licensed Hasbro board games in the past, from special licensed versions to reissues of classic games in retro styles. And who could forget Basic Fun and their various retro remakes (and keychain remakes) over the past couple of decades?

The big question of "why" you farm out your IP can probably be answered by Hasbro being a really big company and having a small team handle licensing legalese (and cashing a check) undoubtedly brings in more dollars than doing it themselves. Power Rangers is a classic brand with three decades behind it, but it may not bring in the dollars (and/or price points) needed to justify Hasbro doing it themselves. A smaller company like Playmates, who can do a bang-up job with a brand with significantly less overhead, can probably rake in a more sensibly sized business which may or may not take adult collectors into account. It might not be the same thing, but seeing Hasbro Power Rangers toys on closeout shelves, is that a bad thing? Sometimes it's good to wipe the slate clean and try something new - but for all I know, they'll continue Hasbro's branding and style, sort of like how Hasbro (eventually) carried forward the Toy Biz Marvel Legends brand, after trying to not do it for many years.

This sort of thing isn't at all unprecedented, as Super7 took Mattel's Masters of the Universe baton and ran with it for a few years - and made a ton of great stuff. I think all of us have sat and wondered what would happen if Hasbro ever let its grip on Star Wars go a bit, especially since it would be hard to make a line with fewer vehicles than we get now. I would imagine Hasbro would fight to keep its hold on the brand just to make sure nobody else can have it, but who among us in the 1990s didn't dream about what Playmates might have done with Star Wars had things gone a little differently? I for one can't wait to see what they do with Power Rangers.

But more importantly, weren't we promised a new The Vintage Collection HasLab on May 4? I believe we were. For those keeping track at home, the Cantina and Death Star have been speculated as likely by fans, and I assume the least interesting option would be The Bad Batch Marauder vehicle now that the show going to end this week. (If you haven't watched it, it went from being a fairly exciting mission-of-the-week The A-Team in space to a slightly more repetitive prison/escape/prison exploration in the final season.) I suppose it could also be a 25th anniversary item for The Phantom Menace, but I don't think we live in a world where Hasbro would revisit the silver Royal Starship or finally make a figure-scale Bongo. Even less likely is riffing on the fifth anniversary of The Rise of Skywalker, which I have still not watched a second time.

--Adam Pawlus

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