1. Many years ago, you had a figure made with your own likeness, right?

Seems like a great way to make money, so why did it fail when Hasbro tried it?
--Brad

It ain't me - while an Adam Pawlus figure does exist, it's a one-off from Hasbro's Selfie Series that they offered to me last year when I was at a thing and (I assume) they saw I had glasses. I assume the figure you're thinking of the late, great Adam May's contest prize, a Stormy Sevenspire which was made for him special by Hasbro back before bespoke head manufacturing was A Thing.

Hasbro is both the very best (and worst) company to do this kind of one-off custom product. While they have excellent figure bodies to work with, they work in big quantities for a mass market. Doing one-off figures for thousands of people at a premium price has a pretty low ceiling, and while I'd love to spitball numbers at you my back-of-the-envelope math would tell me there aren't enough potential customers to support the number of employees to make this kind of a product work for long. The funny thing is I'd rather buy other people - if there was a Steve Sansweet Naboo Extra or a similar cameo, I'd be very interested in that.

I assume you're asking why did Selfie Series suspend operations - and I assume the answer to that is economics. When Hasbro does a run of figures, it is typically not a small run. Each head needs to be custom-printed, and QCed, and then someone has to put that head on a body (and, presumably, put that body in a box, which then has a slipcase over it, and so on.) It's a tremendous amount of work for what amounts to a custom head for an existing action figure, and I can't help but wonder if they would have streamlined it better by just throwing the head in a baggie with a normal $20-$25 retail figure... but that doesn't provide a good user experience. Each headless body probably has its own SKU and each SKU has to achieve certain revenue targets to be viable, and I'm going to guess they were not viable and there's a warehouse of these headless bodies that may be destroyed or stored indefinitely.

I don't doubt a lot of people want a figure of themselves, but it was never something that's going to get people to buy multiple figures per customer. Hasbro tried to do it as a 12-inch figure too - there were kiosks in Burbank Target and Toys R Us Times Square, for example - but they didn't last long. Also it's not really something you're likely to play with, so it just goes on a shelf like any other collectible. Satisfaction rates didn't seem terribly high.

Were it a 3 3/4-inch figure, or a trooper with a helmet, or something else? Maybe it would have worked. But my assumption is Hasbro probably couldn't make the balance sheet work given the labor involved of just making heads, packaging the figures, and shipping them out. There's a pretty low cap of guys and gals and non-binary pals that want to shell out $60-$80 for a vanity collectible when what they really want is a Princesses of Power Scorpia in her Princess Prom dress, but sadly, such a toy does not exist. $35-$55 extra for a basic figure with a custom head that looks vaguely like you, while quite the achievement, has a pretty low ceiling.

I'm really interested in the future of this product as a secondary market collectible. Will people sell theirs off - and will people have collections of just Selfie Series figures? I've seen very few pop up on eBay, and there's something amazingly cool about tracking down someone else's custom figure as a one-of-a-kind collectible with a backstory you may never know. But that's going to be a few years off, and it's going to be so weird going to your local comic shop to see Ghostbusters figure with faces of randos.

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2. Hello, Adam. I have a question about TVC Besbin Lando. I'm sure, seeing as you and I might very well shop for figures in the same locales and others on the interwebs have had similar sightings across the country, what is the deal with TVC Besbin Lando pegwarming sometimes a dozen or more at stores after all these years? Why do these same stores clearance out other Star Wars products but not poor Lando? This is a real head scratcher for me. I have seen other figures pegwarm (retro Obi-wan wave) for a while but Lando has been full price for three years now. Thank you, curious collectors want to know....
--Norman

The newest The Vintage Collection Lando is a very good figure, but there have been multiple Lando figures I didn't even include in this anecdote so a lot of fans were just happy with what they have. If a figure is packed at 1-2 per case (as they all are now), what you are almost always seeing is the remainder of multiple cartons of figures over weeks or months. Hasbro used to be good about taking back bad stock here and there, but it was never perfect, and one bad figure can stop an entire line from continuing. If Target or Walmart get 8 or 10 of a figure - any figure - sitting from an assortment, the store's systems say "do not order more of this." And that gets everybody in trouble. If Hasbro doesn't put an effort forward to getting them sold (rebates, mail-in offers, buybacks) then the entire line suffers.

And that's the optimistic answer.

Math? Racism? Saturation? And it's not unprecedented. Back in 1995, the first modern-era Lando came out at 2 per case - and when he was quickly cycled out of the assortments, which then kept popular figures running and old figures out, he shot up to $40 at some collector shops. And sold. He came back later but demand was soft, so people stopped wanting him once demand caught up with supply.

When I moved in 2005, the remaining Original Trilogy Collection Vintage Lando figures were all sold out in Phoenix. But oddly, not in Los Angeles, were they were massive pegwarmers for quite some time.

The part that the business isn't saying out loud? We're all very old. The original trilogy kids are all in their 40s or 50s, and they're not buying and re-buying as much - but you can usually sell a basic figure of Luke, Han, or Vader. Subsequent generations like this stuff, but they may not need every last variant or have a preference for another set of movies. I would like to point to a lack of theme as being a problem - buying one or two figures from a movie? There's no point. Buying 3-6 figures from a movie, and maybe a vehicle? OK, I can see that. A lot of figures are just collecting dust on pegs now, and many of them are strangers. You might buy Han to go with Chewie, or C-3PO to go with R2-D2, but you're never going to buy Lando to go with Pre Vizsla. A Millennium Falcon could inspire fans to buy as many as a dozen or more figures, depending on which movies they want to bring home. Star Wars is now like Star Trek, too many different series and Hasbro (and Lucasfilm) will probably never get everybody on the same page again. The good old days are over, and while there's certainly a future for Star Wars toys I would bet it's impossible to see any sort of unity on pegs at stores without a massive marketing push. (Young Jedi Adventures being a recent example, and that didn't click - go get it at Ross on sale, right now.)

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FIN

It's been a heck of a week for announcements. One story making the rounds, albeit not from official sources, is Patty Jenkins Claims She's Back Working on 'Rogue Squadron'. I don't believe anyone explicitly said it was canceled, which is sure to make for another fascinating chapter in the book that nobody will ever write about Star Wars under Disney. The sheer vastness of projects that were announced and quietly swept under the rug in about a decade is kind of phenomenal, and that's not counting the torrent of material that they released every year. You probably not only never watched Young Jedi Adventures, but also, probably weren't aware the figures were basically 3 3/4-inch-ish with giant heads, vehicles, playsets, and they're being dumped at Ross t his week. In a perfect world a Rogue Squadron movie could result in a Force Friday with X-Wings and A-Wings and the kind of action figure vehicle tie-ins that we dream of... and will likely never again see.

We also got some new Hasbro announcements, with the reveal of... Darth Vader and a bunch of Stormtroopers. It's not nothing - Vader is specific to the original film, although it seems he shares some parts with the Obi-Wan Kenobi version. (The Obi-Wan version is basically the Rogue One/Original Star Wars costume, with a few tweaks, the most important of which are the robes going under his breastplate.) The Ahsoka Zombie Troopers with Enoch looks fun, and the basic Stormtrooper should sell just fine. Is any of it exciting, though? Given there is a basic kid Vader on the shelf now and literally dozens already in your collection, probably not.

It's fascinating to think about that the very current era - just the 10 years of Disney era - has given us three "all ages" cartoons, some kiddie shorts and a full show, five full live-action movies, a Clone Wars encore season - and the Tales of the Jedi shorts, whatever you want to call Visions, and a half dozen or so live-action episode seasons. By comparison, from 1977 to 1987 we got one theme park ride, three theatrical movies, two TV movies, a couple of cartoons, and a few comic series. I've wondered if our fanaticism for those old movies came out of scarcity - we rewatched them, we read about them, we collected them, and we would be excited to pick up most background characters or very, very minor bit players as toys. And now? No bit players. No rewatching. No guide books and any "educational" products like trading cards seem deliberately hard to come by, leaving most fans ignorant as to new character names and unable to request them.

I don't know if there's an appetite for new Star Wars, but I will say there's probably a lot to exploit from the last 10 years. Put out more art-of books, maybe put them on streaming with pop-up video trivia tracks, and really give fans the reason to dig in. I really love The Mandalorian series, but I don't feel there has been any sort of awesome guide book (and if there is, I missed it) showing off all the cool costumes. We've probably never had more stuff unleashed at us, but it seems like everything keeps the movies and series distant. It feels somewhat unknowable, and with The Bad Batch wrapping up shortly I've certainly been asking myself what, other than repairing "Somehow, the Emperor has returned," is going to be the takeaway of this series.

Granted, that's not for me (or you) to decide. We'll have to see what the kids of today decide is important, and that's a ways off. Unsurprisingly, the prequels and The Clone Wars got a lot more love as time went on - but there was a lot going on in there with plenty to sink your teeth into. Also, popping around some used toy stores, you can buy a lot of 20th century figures (carded) for $2-$4 - there are no shortages of merch outside the big box stores.

I assume the next project coming up is The Acolyte, a show where I saw and forgot that I saw the trailer. It takes place closer to the "High Republic" time frame of Young Jedi Adventures, and I assume if the show isn't amazing we're going to have a lot of confused people not understanding when it takes place and why their favorite characters are absent. Or, they're just not going to tune in, which increasingly seems to be what happens with franchise as they reach a certain mass. (See also, Star Trek and Doctor Who and Marvel lately.)

If nothing else, if you're hungry for figures and ships, start checking out your local comic or collectible shops. Some of them feature some stunningly cheap stuff and are able to give you significantly more than a figure or two for your $25-$50.

--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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