1. What's going on with Hasbro's normal Lightsaber assortment? I know for 2015-2018 we had Bladebuilders, but with Rise of Skywalker it changed to another style for the electronic basic line but only featuring one new hilt- Rey's Skywalker saber along with another version of green Luke and Darth Vader. Are/were there any plans for new hilts that aren't the same two released since the Force Awakens? I'm really wondering why there hasn't been any basic version of Rey's yellow, Ben Solo, or even a new Count Dooku that aren't Disney Parks/The Black Series. Thank you!
--Max

Lightsabers are big business for Hasbro - for many of their customers (the stores, I mean) the business in lightsabers is much, much higher than action figures. Depressing. But I digress - this is why we're seeing all sorts of variations on a theme, like the short-lived but wonderful Nerf Lightsabers in 2015, or the Bladebuilders collection allowing construction and combination, or the increasingly eye-poppingly expensive (but worth it) Force FX Lightsaber line getting more ornate and more obscure every year.

Sadly, Hasbro doesn't like to announce its kid lightsaber plans like its collector figure plans, so there are things coming up that are going to remain secret without some sort of press event. Every year until the license expires, you're probably going to see newness of some sort sprinkled in because pretty much everything Hasbro sells is refreshed once every year or two. Earlier this year we had some oddball figural lightsaber hilts that reminded me of another kind of toy some adults like, but that's none of my business. I can tell you there's more new stuff coming, and you're probably going to find it interesting. Interesting doesn't always mean collector-friendly, but I'm also out of the ages 4-11 demo and sometimes have a hard time letting go of a world when all the toys were squarely aimed at kids my age who were me.

As you know there's a fancy FX Darksaber coming, and the rest will undoubtedly be announced by Hasbro. Unlike the action figure market, the toy lightsabers tend to be actual toys with real play features and things that kids may theoretically find to be fun. I think the weirdness of Bladebuilders were great, but seeing the same toys from 2 years ago at Ross alongside rereleases in new packaging at Target did not go well during the sequel trilogy. I look forward to seeing the 2021 models! There's no plan to end lightsabers at any of the price points as far as I've been told.

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2. Where do you see the toy industry heading in regards to career and education planning, either with a maker or a vendor? Any advice for high school students as they start looking at college programs? In our families, one is heavily into content, lore and design aesthetics, one very much enjoys engineering, painting, and has an entrepreneurial mindset, and one likes math, storytelling, and problem-solving.
--Tim

I am probably unqualified to help anyone. Anything I say is just a wild guess. I was in high school right when the dial-up era of the Internet was blooming, and I was putting together Star Wars newsletters because nobody was putting out stuff in a format I wanted to read at the time, so I gathered what I could and put out what I could. My dad handed me HTML books and whatnot and I just wanted to know as much as possible about toys, and now I'm a toy buyer. It was a lot easier to get noticed before the entire world was online, but the internet of today lets you design and manufacture your own stuff too.

Toys in general are hard to predict, as they seem to be swinging toward adult fans more than traditional kid/collector dynamics. The good news there is there may be a new future that hasn't been mapped out yet - it's possible tomorrow's hit toy will be an indie darling that blows up big, so the best advice I could give anyone is to do it yourself. I somehow turned writing a text newsletter about action figures into being noticed and hired for a job nearly a decade later, and I assume any kid that wants to work in toys and collectibles should think similarly. What can you do to get noticed? Is there something you can work on that nobody else is doing right now? What skills can you work on now, in your own time, without waiting for a class or for someone to show you how to do it? If you're the guy making a perfect Black Series-scale Jedi Robe or Poncho for Qui-Gon and Luke, then you might get noticed. Or sell doll clothes.

There will always be demand for freelance sculptors, artists, colorists, game designers, copy writers, and so forth - so any jobs there that you can get now are a great stepping stone to building your resume. (Also, it's money. Don't do it for free unless it's purely for your own enjoyment.) Picking up on engineering is good, but now that we're in the era of Shapeways and Kickstarter, you can design and market your own product while manufacturing it on someone else's dime.

It is difficult to know how someone will be hired - sometimes it's because you're the best, and sometimes it's because you're local and inexpensive to pay. The best thing you could possibly do is to help me design a new Mini-Rig toy and sell it on Kickstarter, of course, so I can just make a big fuss about it and we can all be legends. But really, if you have a kid who wants to get in the toy business you just need to start making connections and get your reps in - writing, sculpting, marketing, whatever it is. Nobody would've predicted an idiot with an email newsletter would be a toy buyer, and I doubt anybody would predict you could play video games on camera and claim it's a job either. The future is weird, so get interested and practice, practice, practice... having low expectations about the future. I don't even know if traditional toy manufacturing will be here in 20 years given shipping container shortages and whatnot.

3. Was votc Farmboy Luke the first instance of ball jointed hips? Why give him that while at the same time giving lame swivel elbows to Obi Wan and Leia in the same series?

Later on, why give Saga Legends Anakin an upgrade with all jointed hips, but leave in the aforementioned swivel elbows?

As you can tell, I'm not a fan of swivel elbows? I'm just wondering how the logic works when it comes to planing out the placement of ball joints vs swivels?
--Derek

As far as I recall, that 2004 Luke was the first Star Wars figure with that kind of hips. We didn't get our first "super articulated" figure until 2003 and Hasbro would gradually roll in improvements in figures (and take some away) steadily from 2003 until about 2008, where things seemed to stagnate until new changes to hips were introduced in late 2016.

This dovetails into a topic that keeps coming up - pricing. Sometimes Hasbro says "every toy in an assortment has to meet a budget and we don't have one that costs more and one that costs less to average it out." But this is probably untrue in spots - the 2004 Vintage Original Trilogy Collection was $10 each, and had figures with soft goods, figures with loads of articulation like Luke, and 5POA figures like C-3PO - which were twice as expensive and less articulated than the 1995 figure. Can I explain it? No.

It's possible it had to do with cost, durability, cutting corners, or something else - but as far as I know it was never specifically addressed. Since we saw a lot of those figures repackaged in the lower-priced assortments later on (often with bonus accessories, trading cards, or display stands) I can't explain it as a financial thing. There may be other reasons, perhaps tax purposes, or just wanting to get more out of existing tooling because regardless of the cost per unit, the total manufacturing costs (even with more stuff) could be lower. Nobody tells me these things.

As far as upgrades go, Hasbro does what Hasbro wants. They saw it as sufficient, but I assume Hasbro also knows that they need to make a new version of the heavy hitters every few years. If one comes out and it's half-baked, there's going to be another one later. Sure it might be ten years but they can keep selling an existing mold and then make new ones. A number of recent super-articulated The Vintage Collection releases are over ten years old. The new Shock Scout Trooper is a mold from 2006 with new accessories. For those of you who are bad at math, that's a 15-year-old mold. For those of you who are bad at time, the entire Kenner line ran its course from 1978 to 1985 - that's about seven years.

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FIN

Since it's Independence Day weekend, I thought we'd have nothing to talk about - instead, Lucasfilm finally released a trailer for the long-gestating Star Wars Visions. The series hits Disney+ September 22, and as far as I know there aren't any toys planned for launch, or some sort of Force Fridays/Mando Mondays thing. It's probably just going to s how up and any potential merch will come much later, if ever.

I was starting to worry it might be another abandoned, buried project but it looks like it's moving along and will stream about a month after The Bad Batch finishes its first season. As the first anthology show on a screen for Star Wars, we don't know if it's going to be canon (probably cafeteria canon at best) and we don't know how long each "short" episode may be. Tokyopop had a series of Star Wars comics that was largely ignored by canon over the years, but got good buzz. Dark Horse Comics' excellent Star Wars Tales was not necessarily intended to be canon, but some stories worked their way into the greater continuity, others just didn't contradict anything, and others still were just super goofy and that was that.

With any luck, this series will flourish and we'll get a new batch every year or two - and hopefully it'll go beyond Japan and just give us that Star Wars-flavored Liquid Television that we've always dreamed of. Seeing teams make new stuff that won't have to worry about bumping in to an upcoming movie's story or a comic book's arc would be great, and if someone comes up with a concept for a character that's good enough it can always get drafted by a streaming series or film. It worked for Aayla Secura!

--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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