Let's talk new characters in this week's Q&A! Each new one is a big cause to celebrate. Let's also talk fresh faces - they bring new newness all over!  We'll look at big giant new figures, too -  how do they stack up against smaller pocket-sized counterparts?

As always, send in your questions for next time. Read on!

1. Now that I've got Toryn Farr on my Echo Base shelf, the line slowly inches that little bit closer to being 'complete' (well, my version of complete - everyone's definition is different). Toryn's inclusion in the line after all these years got me thinking - has everyone who had a speaking line in the original trilogy now received an action figure? (I'm not counting background alien mumblings or rebel/imperial death screams)

Aside from the few Kenner hangovers (Imp Dignitary, grey suit commander, vintage style Sy Snootles etc) I'd be happy to call it a day and cherry pick the few and far between 'new characters'.... But there's one massive omission that I'm still surprised at never receiving - an action figure representation of Declan Mullholland's stand-in Jabba from ANH. I was certain we'd see this, with a new name and slightly tongue-in-cheek backstory. Do you think we'll ever see this? Or are we more likely to see your long desired Vlix? :)
--Matt

My opinion on 3 3/4-inch character selection right now pretty much boils down to I am interested in any and all new characters. I don't know if Ezra Bridger is cool or the worst thing since Jar Jar Binks, but I still want one and now I've got one - similarly, I'd buy Declan Mulholland (as Jabba or Heater), a Vlix, or whatever Hasbro feels like putting out that I don't have one or two (or fifty) of already. Newness is king!

As far as unmade characters with lines go, there are actually a few left form the original film. You don't have to go all that far, either, as Commander Praji (who I know his name only thanks to a trading card game) from the original Star Wars doesn't exist in Hasbro's line - Sideshow did make one, though. He had a few exchanges with Darth Vader, and there are actually a few Imperials with one or two lines that haven't yet seen plastic, like the ones who had an exchange over the launched escape pod. "Fake Wedge" (Colin Higgins) is arguably more of a technicality, but we haven't seen him as a toy either. I consider the Dejarik monsters to be significant, and we have yet to see them all replicated - personally I'd like them as full-size figures, but that's probably unlikely. We haven't seen Willard yet, either. Now I'm not saying these are all good choices to make as toys - nor am I going to go over all 3 movies right now with a notepad - but it does show that if you really want to get into it, this line could probably go on for quite some time. At our current rate of about 2-3 new original trilogy characters per year, Hasbro could probably keep this going from now until the license needs renewing around 2020 or so.

One of my concerns is that the fan community isn't what it once was - there aren't 200,000 people looking to buy everything, nor are there rampant speculators. Heck we really don't even have new blood - the best strategy Hasbro had to sneaking out new characters tended to be in gift sets, exclusives, and battle packs as it afforded Hasbro to give us one or two hard sells with one or two easy sells. (Or as of late, a bunch of stuff we already own.) You can't rally fans behind any one character these days, so Hasbro seems increasingly gunshy about producing new, obscure characters. But why, I don't know, it's not like these days any one figure will get better distribution than anther - it's all online or bust. Or both.

 

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2. Was the Hasbro design team (Daryl Depriest, Mark Bedreaux, etc) replaced by all these new faces at the SDCC Hasbro Star Wars panel? I wonder if they all got the hatchet because of the dismal direction the line took recently.
--Mike

Like in any career, people tend to get moved around - or move themselves around - over time. For example, Mark Boudreaux has contributed to other lines over the years like Batman, Care Bears, and the Transformers Titanium Series line of transforming robots in disguise to name a few. Derryl DePriest got promoted - and promoted some more - to oversee numerous brands at Hasbro, not just Star Wars and G.I. Joe. This means there's room for new blood, and we've seen people moved over from other departments - Transformers' Eric Siebenaler was moved over to Star Wars, Aaron Archer of Transformers has left the company, and so on and so forth. There is some - for lack of a more appropriate phrase - "brain drain" in the process, as some unwritten procedures and policies get lost in the transition. (See: vac-metal plastic deco and the return of labels in Transformers.) But at the same time, you get fresh perspectives and new takes on things - team members who don't like things held up some toys being released for years, like the Cloud Car vehicle from a few years ago. You get new opinions, you lose old ones - it's a trade-off. You're also in a transitional period, which probably makes things more awkward than any personnel change.

Ideally, none of us are in the same place in our career forever unless we really, really love it and/or the money is good. You want to get promoted, and with any luck, you will - and some of the faces on Star Wars stick around to represent the brand for quite some time. A big question is if you want to be doing the same thing 10 years from now yourself - maybe you do, and maybe you don't. It's tough to put this in perspective but this line has been running for 19 straight years - some of the heads of the brand I remember speaking with include Rick Ruskin, Derryl DePriest, Jeff Popper, Andy Espenshade, and as of late Jeff Labovitz. I'm probably forgetting a few dudes, and to you I apologize - but each brought us an era with something new and interesting. Mr. Popper had the return of black and silver packaging under his watch, if memory serves. Mr. Espenshade brought in Playskool, which became Galactic Heroes. Derryl brought us some of the biggest years of releases the line ever saw - and after the saga was declared dead because the movies were over. Heck, it's easy to forget but Jeff Labovitz was there when we got 6-inch. Everybody brings something new and great to the table. (And also those Customs motorcycles, but they're not all winners.)

Some of the existing team is still there - they don't all travel to the conventions - and some of them are new, or moving on, or perhaps about to move on. Due to market conditions, the quality of some new products, and of course the rate of new production, the stars aligned in such a way where the glass is certainly looking half empty. Of course, it should - Star Wars is in a transitional phase, and normally when a franchise goes into a transitional phase you see the toy licensee change (see: Batman) and/or disappear completely for years (see: Star Trek). I assume working on Star Wars in 2013 and 2014 must be a pretty thankless job. They're also going to be starting work on the new movie and more new TV show product, which I hope turns out to be great.

This is one of those annoying periods in the hobby - back in the 1990s when things were slow, the fans at large obsessed over things like the .00 or .01 cardback variations, seeking out bio card punctuation variations or changes in the length of lightsabers and lightsaber trays in the packaging. 19 years ago - good lord, I've been writing about this for 19 years - we received news in much smaller, less-frequent intervals and a successful action figure line generally turned out about 12-30 figures per year. By 2007, if you included multipacks, we had hundreds of figures on the market each year - so now we're seeing things slow down. We're seeing the Chinese minimum wage quintuple over a decade ago. We're seeing fewer engaged collectors, increased competition in the figure space (Sideshow, Hot Toys, etc.), and unlike 1995 where the toys tended to be for kids and pull double-duty as interesting to collectors, most of the action figure lines are collector-only with fewer outlets to go find them. Who knows what things may be like in a year, and who will still be involved?

3. I have three questions.

First, can you provide any information regarding the difference between the new R2-D2 & C-3PO Mission Series set and the previous "Tantive IV" Mission Series set that also contained R2-D2 & C-3PO? Does the new set contain new sculpts?

Second, when is R5-G19 (Black Series) supposed to be released?

Third, if a collector wanted to just get one action figure for each of the main crew of Rebels (Chopper, Kanan, Ezra, Zeb, Hera, Sabine & the Inquisitor), what products are we looking for? Single carded figures, all mission series 2-packs, something else? Any clarification along with dates when we should be looking (in 2014?) would be appreciated.
--David

Question #1 - The new R2-D2 and C-3PO are, seemingly, new sculpts. If you get it in red lava Mission Series packaging, they're based on the original Star Wars movie sculpts. If you get it in the white and orange packaging, they're a little more smooth and stylized - C-3PO's head and chest are the most obvious changes, while R2-D2's changes are more subtle. What's more, a cartoon Obi-Wan Kenobi was leaked on an early line plan at a Disney event a few months ago as a single figure, so I would expect seeing him 1 or 2 waves down the road. He was not announced at Comic-Con, my guess is they were trying to keep it a surprise despite announcing it in (if memory serves) around May.

Question #2 - At the earliest, I expect R5-G19 in October. Hasbro has been good about getting figures out in a timely manner lately, which makes me nervous - I'd say November is more likely given the holiday and "priority" the line seems to have these days.

Question #3 - I'm not sure yet. Right now we just discovered Toys R Us has a previously unannounced exclusive 3-pack of Ezra, Kanan, and a holographic Obi-Wan Kenobi. As such I would suggest getting that over a) the single Saga Legends figures, or b) the Target pack-in vehicle/figure sets. The girls Sabine and Hera are each in Mission Series 2-packs with Stormtroopers of various strains, which is interesting because I think I wrote a letter to them when I was a wee lad nearly 19 years ago suggesting something similar. (Pack a trooper with everybody! We'll buy it!) Right now Zeb is seemingly only in a 2-pack with a Stormtrooper. Chopper is only as a single that I know of, but the Inquisitor seems to be a single or packaged at Target with his vehicle. I'd say go for whatever floats your boat. As there is no "street date" these could be in stores any time between now and the end of the year, and given the uptick in non-Hasbro Rebels sightings I would gamble on their showing up this month (early).

One last caveat - we don't know if the exclusive versions are going to have some weird exclusive deco change like we saw during The Clone Wars. For example, the Toys R Us V-Wing Fighter with figure had a barely different cleaned-up paint job. It was the very definition of "just different enough to make you mad," but since Hasbro's "let's reduce our SKU count and strangle all variety and interest in going to the toy store more often than twice a year" it seems they tried their damnedest to engineer out any variants in the process.

 

4. Man o man. People complain about 5 poa and only want a collector focus line. But 18" figures seem to get them excited at the same time. Isn't it just the same figure, just bigger? Obviously not the same characters but its the same style figure on a different scale. Your thoughts? Also related to a recent question and answer, the amount of characters seem to be growing. How many more do you think might be in the pipeline? Also, the Rebels figures had Disney logos, others did not.
--Rottenthan

One thing to remember - that I have problems remembering - is that Star Wars collecting is a big tent. There are kids, and collectors. There are first generation fans from the 1970s, VHS-era fans of the 1980s and 1990s, plus we now have prequel kids as adults - if you saw The Phantom Menace when you were 10, you're old enough to have graduated college by now. Since "master toy license" has changed to "slicensing," where every license is whittled down to a specific size or feature to allow Lucasfilm and Disney more companies to work with rather than one who just makes a few items (Hasbro), we're going to see more options and more people trying more things.

With Hasbro fans, especially the hardcore ones, we've had an evolution as to what a "good figure" is. The people who have been collecting since 1995 (or earlier) saw the figures go from 6 (or 5) joints to 14 joints with few price increases over the last 19 years - they may expect the best Hasbro can possibly do at the lowest price. 6-inch figures are seen by some of as an abomination, and anything with under 10 joints is a waste of plastic. I don't necessarily agree with that view (unless they're expensive) but the thing to remember is that the dyed-in-the-wool 3 3/4-inch figure fan wants more joints. Oddly no faction seems to be screaming "I want new characters and outfits" and all groups seem pretty content buying and re-buying the same characters year after year or at the very least, this isn't the issue they decided to take up.

When it comes to 20-inch figures, Jakks Pacific realized a few years ago that there was big money in big figures. Prior to the current era of 31-inch figures, we saw giant oversized Spider-Man roughly 10 years ago and I believe there was a matching Superman for the previous reboot a while back as well. Because 31-inch figures (and 20-inch figures) are new, fans have few expectations for them. $20, giant figure - it looks like a bargain. When you get right down to it, they're probably going to get the same amount of play from a collector as a Black Series figure so there are people who will embrace them as display pieces while others just ignore them completely. The value proposition is really the main thing, and because there's no other way it has ever been done, people generally agree that this is the right way to do it. With 3 3/4-inch figures, you can do modern sculpts with 1980s articulation. Or modern sculpts with modern articulation, 14+ points. Or retro 1980s sculpts with retro articulation. Or even modern sculpts with as-needed articulation - some have ankles and knees, and some won't. 20-inch toy figures only exist in one format and seem to be selling very, very well with kids and collectors. For this reason, the schisms in 3 3/4-inch will probably keep cutting up the pie of potential sales and there will probably always be a strain of 3 3/4-inch figures that someone out there doesn't like. Me, I just want something new - I'm thrilled we got Brock Starsher (Doallyn) but it doesn't matter to me if he has 5 joints or 14 - I'm just happy to have a new guy. Similarly, the upcoming Saga Legends Jedi Temple Guard for $6 sounds like a winner - I just want something new that I don't already have. Is that so wrong?

...on that note, the first Toys R Us-exclusive Rebels boxed set is out for $20. Go get it! It's new!

 

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FIN

Toys R Us is resetting, again. Just a few weeks ago we saw the aisles shift to give Star Wars some different real estate, but now the chain is revamping the whole deal - and I think they're doing a good job. The space is more open and inclusive - LEGO product is being brought in to the action figure section, so there's a big aisle packed with Marvel and Star Wars, as the ancient toy god Plasticilicus intended. Since the new Rebels 3-pack that Hasbro neglected to announce at Comic-Con is also showing up, it's probably a good time to waddle over to the store and see the new section.

I found the "Mission Series: The Ghost" set with Ezra, Kanan, and Obi-Wan Kenobi over the weekend. It's very interesting packaging - the front panel works really hard to preserve the mystery of the figure. The top panel has a blue silhouette of a robed man, presumably a Jedi. The back of the box flat-out says in the fine print "Includes: Kanan Jarrus, Ezra Bridger, & Obi-Wan Kenobi Secret Exclusive Figure." Hunh. Well, it's all in Figure of the Day this week, so come back for that. It's $20, and because I was jonesing for new toys I was happy to get it. I also had a coupon. I won't say it's worth $20 in a month, but since it's the first shot at these new figures it's absolutely worth $20 right now - especially as Ezra and Kanan are not "duplicates" at this point in history. Newness is important!

More this week in Figure of the Day, which I need to go set up for the week.

--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.