1. I really like the idea of one scale to rule them all. And, within that, there is simply various qualities a figure, ship or playset would have. You can have your kids $30 x-wing and toss a vintage figure in it. Or, you can have a cantina with old school blue Snaggletooth talking to vintage Mando. What is stopping this? Are fans against the cross-contamination of vintage? Or, is there some marketing magic that I don’t get? Is Hasbro trying to split the field to ensure there is a Vader in every pot?
--Dan

Nothing is stopping fans from mixing and matching other than fan personalities. Some can't do it. Some can. Guess which ones post on forums and are very loud on YouTube?

As long as the size is roughly 3 3/4-inches, I am not picky. If Hasbro wants to make Jaxxon, I'll buy him in Retro or Epic or Vintage or something new. I bought the 6-inch one, nobody else did, but I wanted a Lepus Carnivorus at home.

Collectors can't agree on what's good or acceptable. There are very online fans who feel the only acceptable product, ever, is a mega-articulated figure on black-and-silver packaging - and nothing else is ever OK. I disagree. I'm a big fan of making a product to fit a specific function, and "toy" function only needs 5 joints most of the time. Some figures need knees, but some don't. Pretty much every Hasbro 3 3/4-inch or 4-inch X-Wing is very good at housing most figures that should go in there. We've seen Hasbro can do a prop-level paint job on an X-Wing for about $120, and a kid-level mold for about $30. Some fans insist the kid one is garbage, and because kids look up to adults, some kids read the forum postings and agree. And a lot of kids just get what they get as a gift and are happy with it... assuming they like Star Wars and that's no longer a foregone conclusion.

If Hasbro made the Tonnika sisters as Epic World of Action toys, you would have seen collectors buy them. They're not going to turn their noses up at "good enough" figures at a fair price. They may complain, but they'll show up for it. Conversely, if they don't care, they don't care. Mother Aniseya only exists as a Retro figure and that is a program still searching for its collector base. It's a nice figure! Fans just aren't ready to want it yet.

Before we got the Cantina, we got Boba Fett's Palace. And you can tell who is a tight-ass by how they play with it. If you only put Boba in it and can't dream of swapping out Jabba stuff, you're part of the problem. I filled it with figures from across the entire line - Jabba's a 2004 release, there are multiple Jawas including a 1970s cloth cape version in there, and while it's primarily TVC there are other randos like a Rebels-era Bossk hanging out. Because why not? If all you're doing is having a figure standing up in a playset the level of articulation is actually not very important. Depending on where the figure goes, I'd argue sculpt is not terribly important in some cases. Do you want a taller Chewbacca? Get the Epic one. I like The Black Series Ree-Yees that was repackaged twice in The Vintage Collection, but the charm and pose of the 1983 Kenner figure is almost better. You might feel the same about the Cantina - we have three different blue Snaggletooth figures. Only the first one really looks like a Kenner Blue Snaggletooth, so why not use it?

You can't have everything you want in life but you can have a lot. Sometimes you have to settle, and that may mean buying an unofficial release, or a custom, or something that's over 30 years old. We all have our own brand of illness when it comes to collecting and what's acceptable. I would like to think fans can be happy with a very good Myo from 2005 or a Muftak from 1998 since they're cheap, and the alternative does not yet exist. Some people need the very best, and that's how they choose to limit their spending. Others need the perception they are buying serious collectibles for adults and abhor the notion of being mere toy collectors. (Fact: we are all toy collectors.)

Ad: Get New Star Wars Pre-Orders at Entertainment Earth! Get Free USA Shipping on Orders $79+

 

2. With the recent announcement of price increases across the board for Star Wars products (www.hasbropulse.com implemented them [October 14]), do you think $19.99 is the break point for collectors for Vintage Figures (Basic Line)? Will we ever see a drop in prices, even if the tariff situation comes more into focus?
--Jeremiah

It depends. If you want to see a drop in prices you have to be willing to give up something. Would you accept articulation to the level of Epic Hero? I bet Hasbro could shave off a few bucks if fans didn't need ankles or wrists or swappable heads/hands.

If you look at other toy lines, we've seen some very expensive items from Takara-Tomy, Medicom, Hot Toys, Sideshow, and others that people just adore. Hasbro's challenge is to find the right item for the right price. They made a very popular $90 Optimus Prime in Studio Series. I just paid (over the course of the year) about $210 for a new, smaller Devastator in Transformers Studio Series 86 and I like it. The last one I got was bigger and cheaper, but had fewer joints and axed a few smaller handheld accessories. If Hasbro can balance features and price, $25 or $30 could be worth it for a 3 3/4-inch figure. If I got some sort of promise of new original trilogy characters with very good molds and bells and whistles, $25 is fine. Amazing slates of new (old) characters ended around 2010, so it's rare we get more than one or two new character figures from the old movies in a year.

If Hasbro is going to keep selling us the same molds over and over, fans will get bored at $19. There's a limit to what non-collectors will buy at any price. In the 1990s, $5-$6 was an impulse buy - if you saw something cool, you just grabbed it. Today there aren't many figures to buy on the pegs, and a lot of them are pretty obscure. Star Wars is a huge franchise now, but to a lot of fans it means a few specific movies and we're not getting a lot from those. Some of you would be thrilled to pay $20 for Zombie Palpatine from The Rise of Skywalker. Others wouldn't buy it for $5.

While Hasbro has innovated in finding new ways to make Darth Vader, I am not really excited to get new fancy Darth Vader figures at a higher price. I'll get them because I'm curious to see how they turned out, but I got my first Vader in the 1980s and I feel that short of RFID-powered light-up elements you can't get me to experience serious excitement for a retread. If they can make something magical, I'm interested - but collector figures tend to lack anything other than steps toward improving authenticity, usually.

For the right item, price is less of a concern. Would I pay $20 tomorrow for Tzizvvt or a Jabba's Palace Ishi Tib or Kiro or Rik Duel or Dani or Jaxxon or Vlix or Sim Aloo or Syril Karn with a bed on which to faceplant? Sure. Give me something new, and I'll give you something green. The relative quality of a "basic" The Vintage Collection is very good, but the characters are repetitive and - quite often - now what this higher-end, older fan audience wants. Asajj Ventress was great, I liked Carson Teva a bunch, the Bo-Katan Kryze was excellent. The new Han is fine, the new Luke is good, Chewbacca being roughly 50% 2004 figure is irksome. A one-off Skeleton Crew figure is of little value. Or more accurately, $3.99 at Ross.

If Hasbro offers up another $20 repaint of K-2SO or a trooper from a video game I'll never play, it isn't exciting. I've bought a lot of them, maybe all of them, but a lot of them remain unopened and unloved. It's not what I want. Maybe it's what someone else wants, but you have got to make smaller runs for some of the less desirable figures. I've got a Merrin figure from a case I bought and I may never open her. I just don't know her and "human with new color of skin" is my least favorite kind of alien.

Hasbro rarely (but not never) drops prices. We saw a little wobble after Episode I because fans didn't want $7 figures - but $6, they were a bit more agreeable to. In 2002 we got $5 figures and those seemed to sell well, as did the $5.25ish Revenge of the Sith figures. After that they've mostly gone up except when - you guessed it - they dropped features. We saw the Mission Series/Saga Legends figures for roughly $10-$11/2-pack or $5/$6 for a single, but with 5 joints. In 2007 Hasbro gave us $10 comic packs, which often included a redeco, a retool, or a figure missing a few joints - but you got two whole figures and a comic for barely more than a basic figure. As long as fans demand more joints, more gear, more paint, and 1970s-style single-figure collector packaging? No, we're not getting a price drop.

Become a Patron!

Special thanks to our generous Patreon patrons, especially: JT, Jared, Bobb, Christopher, Daniel, Dan, Tim, Jayson, Matthew, Michael, Robert, Stephen, Todd DrReiCow, Eddie, Jeremy, Mario, and Todd! Thanks for helping us keep the servers on!

FIN

A new season of Star Wars Visions came out on Wednesday. I didn't see a lot of fanfare. I'm in the biz and don't recall if a specific date were shared - perhaps I missed it - and there's certainly no "Force Friday" launches or any special weekly drops that I'm aware of. It was on the front page of StarWars.com, and maybe I'll check it out at some point. I hope it's good - the reviews are surprisingly negative for the third season of a streaming show. More often than not, reviews are only written by fans as any given show goes on.

Hasbro has a few new things in store this month. Are they for Star Wars? Can't say yet - but there will be a lot of things and a rough schedule to them if you know where to look.

If you're a 3 3/4-inch fanatic, I have a few recommendations since Star Wars may be slow. Unfortunately, some of them have sold out - but recolors are likely coming soon. First: the large-for-3 3/4-inch scale Manglomortis sold out, it's a big bony guy that looks stupid cool. I have mine on my desk, and it's really something. Other Manglors are available.

Super7's Universal Monsters ReAction+ Figures are also shaping up to be great, with G.I. Joe-style o-ring construction. I got the first trio and hope they keep going. Bela's good, the Wolf Man is better, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon is really something. They're not Kenner-style Kenner-sculptor figures, but they're distinctive and fun in a different way. And you can put them in a Cobra FANG. I posted some comparisons on the socials.

Also from indie world (and sold out, with repaints all but inevitable) Pheyden Infinite Standard (and his cohorts) turned out great. $20, Four Horsemen and Matt Doughty sculpts, swappable parts, and a distinctly sci-fi bent that looks like it could be behind some scenery in your Star Wars dioramas. There was a rerun preorder, but it closed before anybody got their orders in-hand. There may be some of these guys popping up on eBay as I assume some flippers likely got involved, so wait until December or January and see if the secondary market shows up or if they're cheap.

What's more, The God Beast put out the Mothman Monstor and Sectavorian figures which sold out pretty quickly. Mine should be here at some point Monday - but painted figures in other colors are expected in the future, such is the business model.

And the reason for the season, The Retro Collection will continue and I log info on this page. CZ-3, if you missed it, is joining Garindan and additional figures in the next set. Also you can expect the eissue of Mon Mothma, Yak Face, and the others to start shipping very soon. (I know it says December. But it should deploy before then, if all goes on schedule.)

--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.

Social media? Sure. Bluesky | Fediverse | Mastodon | Tumblr | Instagram

I'm on Instagram! All Pictures from a GameBoy Camera.