1. I'm a bit perplexed at Hasbro stopping Star Wars pre-orders. I know collectors were getting fed up with having many items on a long pre-order and not being able to budget properly, but I feel Hasbro have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous! I live in the UK, and the only way I get any Star Wars vintage collection items is by pre-ordering from online retailers. Shops here rarely get Star Wars vintage collection items.

Surely the best approach Hasbro could take is to announce a much shorter pre-order window, say a couple of months or less, and to announce a complete wave all at once, instead of the random figure approach that they've had? If retailers aren't allowed to take pre-orders, won't that unfairly advantage the retailer who gets the stock first? Also as a collector it will be much easier to miss stock as it could arrive at any random time without warning! If a couple of waves drop at once without warning, surely that is worse for collector budgeting?

Do you think online retail specialists will be allowed to offer stock for pre-order when they know stock is due within a few weeks, or will they not be allowed to sell them until they are physically in stock?
--Jane

When it comes to collector budgeting, I'm torn. When I have too many pre-orders I start to cut back on what I collect - if it's a number that makes me uncomfortable, I spend less. I might miss things. I might not - maybe I'll just get them on clearance later. I would prefer Hasbro go back to a pre-order window that's more like 3-5 months, or some sort of "if you order by date X your pre-order is guaranteed" philosophy myself. But we've been following this hobby for decades, and at no point has anybody ever seemed happy.

As someone who's been in this hobby for decades, I can tell you that the ETAs have almost never been worse, in part because Hasbro's communication has never been better. We get advance looks six to twelve months early. When we were kids, if you were lucky, what was revealed around Toy Fair is what you got for the fall toy reset. Fans want to see into the future, but fans also don't want to wait forever - we can't have it both ways.

Hearing what fans ask for is generally not always good - we don't always grasp some of the negative consequences. Some fans want to be charged when they place the pre-order. For those who can't budget, it makes sense - "take my $20, I don't have to think about it." For those who actually want to be safe with money, this is an awful idea. Some stores could go out of business, or lose your order. The pre-order model where your card isn't charged until the item shows up in the warehouse is best for you as a consumer. You'll need to keep tabs on what you spend, and when it comes to collecting things you don't need (and in some cases may not actually want) I doubt Hasbro or toy stores will be sympathetic to that particular issue.

I reached out to someone and there may be - and when I say "may be," I mean "we'll have to wait and see" - a communication problem regarding what seemed to be a very clear statement regarding there not being pre-orders. So put a pin in that, there may be more to say shortly, but it seems foolish on Hasbro's part to just say "we give up."  They want this product sold, too.

For what it's worth, finding Vintage in the USA is also a challenge. If it's exclusive, you may find it. If it's regular product, I've had a pretty bad track record of seeing a lot of waves - or the leftovers of waves. There's just not much showing up, and what's funny is that a lot of people don't seem to like it either. So we're getting a repetitive line, in small numbers, and by all accounts much of it is selling through. But not all of it. It would probably be better if more of it got to retail shelves so people could see it and go "Oh, maybe I should start collecting this."   Toy stores aren't really a thing here anymore, so you have to order online or go to a big box store and hope for the be

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2. Is there anything that comes close to https://www.bricklink.com for 3,75" Star Wars collecting, both vintage and modern? The closest to a working database I've ever found is https://www.galacticfigures.com , which is great, but doesn't even come close to the fine tuning and level of completion that bricklink brings to the table. Yeah, I know Kenner/Hasbro collecting is a different beast, and there's your very own saying of "different enough to make you mad", but I would really love to have some sort of ultimate source.
--Pepe

There are lots of archives that are varying levels of "good." Not every major detail is shown, and some are really tough to show off - during Power of the Force (1990s), a lot of figures came with almost (but not quite) identical Han Solo-style blasters. Sometimes "identical" parts may come from slightly different tools, and it's hard to know if you're looking at a variation, a replacement mold, a weird pull, or what.

There are some pretty good guide books, but nothing is complete and probably can't be due to the size of the line. This sort of pokes back at my last question - there's too much stuff. The 1980s line (not counting variants) was barely over 100 figures if you got into the cartoons. Now you've probably got over 300 Clone Troopers in various sizes. There are over 100 Luke Skywalker figures. You'd probably need someone to start over with a packaged collection where every item is meticulously shot and catalogued, and with thousands of figures I doubt any one person, or team, could do it. If you set up a Wiki with the specifications you seek there's a chance a community might come up to point out what's missing, or wrong.

I know this is very "old man," but it was better in the old days. You had fewer figures and figures never had more accessories than they could carry. It's great that you might get a figure loaded with gear, but you're being charged accordingly - it's exhausting, it's anxiety-inducing to not lose your parts, and it's one of the reasons I keep elbowing everybody to just adopt Retro. This hobby shouldn't feel like a job.

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FIN

You may have known him as or Andrew Sorohan, Boltax, or "that guy who posts a lot of amazing Transformers art on Twitter or Discord," or Jhi, or the Obscure Transformers Website guy. He passed away last week. He had a lot of great toy and art in his many, many posted drawings and he shared this one with me when it went up a few years ago. We haven't traded notes in a while and I was going to reach out to him last week regarding something I was working on and I thought it was too soon - I guess it wasn't. I saw new things from him pop up fairly regularly and was always delighted to see the many variations on an idea he'd come up with in less time than it took you to pour a glass of water. The toy fanatic world will miss you, Andrew.

If you've got someone you've been meaning to reach out to, I'm sure they would love to hear from you. Now is a great time to send that message.

--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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