1. I was so excited for the Hunter Vintage Collection Figure because I love the Bad Batch team. It came out great, but we haven't had any word on the rest of the crew from Hasbro, despite having many events for them to pipeline reveal them! It seems weird we got 2 sets of costumes in Black Series, but not even one full team in Vintage. Any thoughts on the future of my favorite clones showing up in vintage figure form?
--Jeff

At this point, I'm not sure - fans were requesting it to Hasbro at fan events since they debuted on The Clone Wars, and as far as I can tell there's no particular reason why figure gets released in one scale, or not another, or why they're a deluxe in one scale, but not another. Given that The Bad Batch is more of a kid show, I'm kind of surprised there wasn't a bigger emphasis on that crew for kid product, like the Epic Hero Series or some other format. (And also, they didn't make most of Star Wars Resistance either, axing the line after a wave and leaving who-knows-what on the table.) If you look back at Rebels and The Clone Wars, we didn't get a heck of a lot of product for later seasons of those shows either.

I would probably blame the usual stuff. Hasbro has too many competing scales to balance, and Lucasfilm has had - in the last year - Andor, Ahsoka, The Bad Batch, the Fallen Order game sequel, The Mandalorian, and Young Jedi Adventures competing for product resources and fan dollars. And the anniversary line for Return of the Jedi plus "spoiler" product for The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and also a HasLab The Ghost and for reasons nobody understands, a Star Wars Holiday Special Chewbacca. Also, the previous 40ish years of Star Wars characters and stories. We've somehow reached a point where not even the main characters of a show are guaranteed product in all sizes. We still haven't got The Force Awakens Leia in vest as a 3 3/4=inch figure, it has been eight years.

Given that Hunter exists, one would hope that Hasbro cash in on the rest of the batch as retools. Honestly I would have also bet money that we'd have seen Delta Squad from the Republic Commando game yet again as 3 3/4-inch figures, since they share a lot of parts, but that hasn't been the case either. It certainly seems that Disney+ gets a little more of a push in The Black Series with The Bad Batch as you've cited, plus Andor characters, Cobb Vanth, and several others being more or less only in that format so far. Personally, I wouldn't mind it if they decided "6-inch is new stuff, 3 3/4-inch is old stuff" at some point, but as always, that's just me.

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2. I have really been enjoying the Mission Fleet line as it has scratched my itch for fun vehicles. The Mission Fleet Mandalorian N-1 Starfighter vehicle has appeared on store shelves all over recently. The box art for the N-1 shows two other vehicles from 'Kenobi' that were announced back in June 2022 and were supposed to be available 'Fall 2022' - a T-47 Airspeeder with Sully Stark figure and an Inquisitor's Starship with Reva figure. However, I cannot find any evidence that these products were ever released. I assumed they were cancelled but their appearance on the N-1 box art has me confused. Are these releases still coming or have they been cancelled?

And do you have any other insights about the future for this line? The 'Grogu's Training Adventure' figure set is in stores now, Amazon has two new-ish exclusive sets, and it looks like Ahsoka's T-6 Jedi Shuttle is coming soon. But on the other hand, the missing T-47 and Inquisitor ship, plus the fact that other rumored releases (a Bad Batch Marauder and a Cad Bane speeder bike) are nowhere in sight, has me feeling like the line might be on its last legs.
--Matt

In your position, I would not expect anything beyond what has previously been announced. "Last legs" implies "legs," and at this stage I hope/pray Epic Hero scale gets a few new vehicles because we're really not getting much in Vintage (and zilch in Retro.)

Given its appearances at closeout stores, I do not believe the Mission Fleet line has a future. It's being phased out of the planograms in stores and few to no pre-orders have been posted in a while, plus a new kid line is on the horizon to replace it. Mission Fleet is a pretty good line, with quality ships that would have been things that would make me a much more excited fan had they been scaled to 3 3/4-inch figures. That Outlander TIE Fighter is quality stuff, and I heard the Razor Crest is also very good/easily modded to work with Retro. While I didn't collect it, I love the ones I've picked up and I'm super happy that they actually made a Blurrg. You may also want to look into the 1980s Play-Doh Kenner Snowspeeder as an item that, with some paint, might look pretty close to the right size on a shelf as a stand-in for that Airspeeder you probably won't be seeing soon.

The Kenobi vehicles seem to have gotten pretty far along - if memory serves, there were packaging shots - but they never made it to stores. That doesn't mean they won't ever show up for sale somewhere as a prototype or limited production run... but I wouldn't hold your breath. A tiny handful of the 3 3/4-inch Titanium Series Jango Fett trickled out to stores, and as far as I know none of them were online collector shops or big box stores. Orders that were placed were canceled - yet, I have one, I got it on eBay for ten bucks when nobody else cared about that line.

There's always a chance a small number of these got run (or may get run in the future) for some store, somewhere in the world, perhaps as an exclusive. I wouldn't bet money on the T-47 or the Inquisitor Starship hitting shelves, but I know I got at least a couple of Hasbro items that aren't widely known to exist through dumb luck finds - some of those samples wound up in someone's desk which could mean they show up on eBay in a few years. (Set up an eBay alert, if you haven't already done so.)

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FIN

This wasn't a great week for the toy business. Super7's crowdfunded Cobra Mothership missed its target. Hasbro announced a 20% cut of its workforce - which is a soul-crushing 1,000 jobs being lost around the holidays. There are massive toy discounts, excess inventory galore, and not everything is flying off the shleves. A lot of people have asked me how this will impact the future, and it's presently unknown. 2024's toy line is mostly baked - some stuff might move around with the strikes and related delays - but it's not like they're going to throw out their Deadpool 3 plans or abort The Phantom Menace's small 25th anniversary program. (Maybe they should.) Right now we're seeing a glut of really good toys on closeout store shelves, so all toymakers will have to figure out how to keep the lights on by making smaller runs and more enticing product. This probably means more expensive items, less cheap stuff (I don't have high hopes for Retro or Epic given what I assume Hasbro's needs to be), and probably some more crowdfunding since that's easy money when they do it right, with minimal risk. What I'd prefer are neat, cool vehicles for around $30-$40 that would inspire fans to also buy some figures (sold separately), as as "collect them all!" is a message absent from packaging, catalogs, and so forth.

That may sound easy, but as someone who has been in and around this business for quite some time I can tell you we're a fickle bunch who are aging out of this hobby. There are increasingly specific audiences for this stuff, with some fans only wanting high-end LEGO sets, or retro Kenner figures, or "anything classic" without grasping Disney's definition of "classic" included Obi-Wan Kenobi at its debut and a heck of a lot more than you'd guess while also being wildly different from fan to fan. (1990s kids might see prequels as classic, for example.) Specificity is everything now - make the wrong Skeletor, or a lesser version of Snake Eyes, or too many Jar Jar Binks figures, and you're going to suffer the consequences. (I assume we won't see a reissue of him this year in The Black Series, but also, I saw $5.99 Mando Ahsoka Tano figures at Ross over the weekend and they brought her out a couple times more.)

I feel awful for everybody who has lost and is about to lose their jobs, because there are massive infrastructures at work and countless people at multiple people at several companies debating what's good, and sometimes "make the funnest toy for fans of all ages" isn't it. LEGO does a good job, but Hasbro has so many markets to cater to that it's amazing they manage to keep the ship going. The 6-inch audience is frequently a newer collector without decades of stuff, Vintage 3 3/4-inch tends to be a little older and that market isn't exactly growing, there's a new kid line, and I don't even know who Retro is going to. Me, of course, but is it old Kenner kids? People who love history? Someone who didn't realize they didn't buy a Vintage figure until they got to the register? I have no idea.

...which is why I am grateful The Book of Boba Fett The Retro Collection figures are arriving in the mail, and Gizmodo got a preview of The Phantom Menace figures - a product for which I would assume I may be the only customer. For all I know we're nearing the end of retro new guys - or possibly retro remakes - if there's a changing of the guard. From where I sit this was what I wanted all along, and I'm in the minority, but for all I know Vintage could be knocked out, or the kid line could be a short run. After all, Resistance had a 3 3/4-inch line of singles and 2-packs that lasted exactly one wave each, with no vehicles, and left out a lot of main characters. Anything can happen in this business now, so enjoy what you can, while you can. Star Wars ran from 1978-1985 and died. Then it ran from 1995 to now - that's a remarkable run, so even if the whole thing imploded tomorrow, it would still be a huge success.

It is peculiar to me that one of the things I'm looking forward to the most are Maul, Jar Jar, and Amidala figures that may actually be able to sit in vehicles better than the dozens of figures I already own. Even when Hasbro does a stellar, "AAA" job on its super-articulated figures, I just want something simple. I'm old. I like my games 8-, 16-, and sometimes 32-bit, my music to come on a disc, and my action figures to have about five joints. Oh, and lower prices, especially lower prices.

--Adam Pawlus

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