1. Adam, when you meet toy company reps today, versus 20 years ago, what are the differences in terms of their attitude towards the product?

Personally, I think there’s no true passion for their IPs that they are selling. I doubt that anyone on the Star Wars team would know their trivia, and likely couldn’t even name all the films.

Am I hitting the mark, or way off?
--Derek

I choose to disagree with the premise of this question.   People do jobs that aren't their #1 choice all the time.  As a kid, I was really taken by a show called Taxi, which I only saw in reruns.   In it, the character of Alex described his taxi driver coworkers thusly: "You see that guy over there? He's an actor. The guy on the phone, he's a prize fighter. This lady over here, she's a beautician. The man behind her, he's a writer. Me? I'm a cab driver. I'm the only cab driver in this place."   But they all did their jobs, and arguably did them well.

If a day comes where I have to get a job as a taxi driver or sportsball toy maker, I certainly hope trivia is not part of the job interview. If someone makes toys for an all-new IP movie or comic, by definition, they can't be fans yet. I would say in the 1990s people were more likely to roll their eyes at you if they didn't care about the brand all that much, but they were still amazing at their jobs and were kind enough to answer my stupid questions. Jurassic Park toys were cool and were made before anyone saw the actual movie.   Today everybody has to say they're a giant fan (to the press, and sometimes, within the text of the movie/TV show's new installment), as some (not all) fans seem to engage in gatekeeping. (Confidential to everyone: it's OK if you have no idea what I'm talking about and it's easier to discuss things if I know that you don't so I can better explain it.) I may be full of myself here but I'd like to think I'm good at my job, and I'm a nut for trivia. One thing helps the other, but is not required for success.  

If someone at a toy company can look at Chopper or Hera or Dr. Zaius or Spider-Man and say "I can make a good toy out of that," we don't need them to care about the IP. I just want someone to do the job who is capable of doing the job well.  People at toy companies get shuffled from brand to brand, from department to department, and for some people "Toys!" isn't a calling. It's a job that they do well, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm sure some people make baseball cards who would rather be designing posters. Maybe there are people working at Ford who would rather be working at GM, or NASA.  To give you an example from my own life, during peak My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic I had people asking me questions about those toys because I worked at a store that sells them. I had no idea what they were talking about, and they seemed disappointed in me. Nobody in any job is going to know every aspect of every single thing going on in their department. These companies make a lot of stuff that you as a collector don't even know you're ignoring, too. That's how much you're ignoring it, even though you're a big fan I doubt you're super interested in everything BanDai is doing at 1:12 scale or the nascent "bootleg Kenner" markets.

I don't think trivia knowledge is necessary to work on a toy line, especially with so many books, web sites, and search engines (and easy-to-find fan consultants.) I would not expect the same level of expertise and trivia to people who work with Godzilla or James Bond. Or Doctor Who or Star Trek. The former have dozens of movies (and comics, and cartoons) and the latter have almost 1,000 installments each.  I don't imagine someone working on a Star Trek toy ship really needs to put "love" in every inch of the Enterprise if they can make it look cool. The original Kenner toys were loads of fun - and off-model - but were made by people who only just saw the then-new movie and did their best to adapt what scrap they had as reference. And we liked it so much, we're talking about them 45 years later.

Some toymakers really know the stuff, but does it matter to actual fan consumers? When Derryl DePriest was running Hasbro's Star Wars business, the man had already literally written the book on G.I. Joe and was a collector who put in the miles on a number of toy lines in his own life. He had the cred, and that was rare. Did fans complain like crazy because he did things they didn't want? Yes. And now we're working with younger people - Hasbro hires a lot of young people so if you're an 80s kid, it's increasingly likely that you're dealing with 90s kids (or '00s kids) at any job out in the world. That's life. People get old, retire, die, move to new industries. Lifers are rare in any business.    If you want a kid that got a Darth Vader for Christmas in 1978 running the show, that kid would be at least 50 now - he might be on to bigger and better positions.

Some toy lines get better when their creators respect - but do not bow down to - what came before. Transformers Armada in 2002 had a cartoon that wasn't great, but the toys were fun and good for the money. Ten bucks got you two colorful robots and a sticker with decent (but rarely collector-approved) articulation. Those designers would nod to classics but were also trying to do a lot of new things, giving us the likes of the giant robot Tidal Wave, or the turncoat Wheeljack, or the surprisingly versatile Demolishor with Blackout. If we had people that pushed for 1984-1986 Transformers remakes forever it probably wouldn't be exciting for that generation of kids, nor would they be able to sell "classic" versions of 2002 toys in 2023 and 2024. Did they know who Unicron was? Yes, and we got the first-ever transforming Unicron toy under their watch - but they were also trying to make something new, too. They weren't bogged down on G1 Marvel vs. Sunbow continuity.  Sometimes you need a fresh eye, but also, a fresh focus.   Star Wars empircally lacks focus now.

To get back to your question, the most important thing to me if you have a job in the toy/collectible/fan industry is if you can answer the basic questions like "When is it coming out?" and "what will it cost?" I ask fan questions when there are things I think the end user might ask, and I'm very concerned about long-term durability, making products for a new generation of fans (if it exists), and delivering the goods. But I don't need to know if the Hasbro team loved or merely adored The Book of Boba Fett, as long as I got some tip-top (and clever!) Retro Kenner figures I'm a happy camper. I can't remember the name of the mod gang kids on the show since there's no reference guide and few to no collectibles, and in recent years I've found my knowledge about the Disney-era stuff to be middling for that reason. I don't think the current world of consumer products is set up to training fans to lean the names of the likes of Elom, Gargan, and Oola on Dixie cups before school like I did.

Sometimes you want someone who can make a good consumer product over anything.  I pulled out my old Kenner The Empire Strikes Back Rebel Transport - which I got as a kid, after the line was dead for a few years - because I remember putting Yak Face in the gunner's seat the day I got him back in 1990.  And I wanted to put my new Yak Face in it.  The other Retro guys fit well in there, and that toy was great because they made it fun.  A fan might make it too close to what we saw in the movie, but instead they made something with a pop-off lid, removable gunner station, storage bins, slots to store dozens of figures, and an escape hatch.  Because they deviated from making something as close to a perfect 1:1 model, we got a much better toy that was also a carry case.  You can hate the move and hate my guts if you make something I want to buy.  Unless you put "Adam sucks" in Aurebesh in the toy somewhere... in which case I will buy two.

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2. You're short on questions, so do some filler. How would you say 2023 went?
--Me

2023 in Star Wars is an inkblot test. In terms of stuff to watch, it had two full seasons of live-action shows, a kid show, a full animated season, an animated anthology show, and announcements of upcoming movies that we're all going to pretend are coming out in the next few years. Any new installment of the saga seems to be polarizing because the bulk of us watching it (and writing about it) aren't little kids, which shakes out in interesting ways. We're seeing a lot more shows going out of their way to try to please people to varying degrees of success, with The Mandalorian casting Jack Black, Lizzo, Christopher Lloyd, Tim Meadows, and some returning character actors. If anything, that's the best metaphor for the franchise now - there's something for everybody, but odds are you're not going to like 100% of the choices being made.

As far as this site's focus goes, The Bad Batch continued delivering pretty good stories that have (if you ask me) continued to do what The Clone Wars and Rebels did well - punch the comic and publishing business and steal their lunch money. They're fun stories that build on what we've seen without stepping on any toes. The third and final season will kick off in a few months, and depending on where you shop exclusive 6-inch season two figures may still be sitting (or not yet placed on-shelf.) I love that we get a good number of episodes, ongoing stories, stand-alone adventures, and so on, but it also feels like someone made a toy commercial without the toys. That's not unusual, as 80s kids will sing you the song of Dinosaucers. It was a cartoon that would have had figures from Galoob but they never made it out in the USA - but like a certain other figure, toys did come out from Glasslite. In Brazil. But I digress.

I didn't watch Young Jedi Adventures but I might. There are a lot of merch-driving cartoons from the last few years that I haven't seen, and odds are, neither have you. I peaced out on the LEGO shows, and didn't watch Roll Out and only caught some of Forces of Destiny (which I should probably finish, I liked what I saw.) If anyone tells me it's great, I'll watch it - I didn't turn my nose up at Ewoks stuff as a kid, but I was also a kid. I have no idea if it's doing well or not, it's a pretty robust line of toys that seem to be findable with minimal work. You know, what a toy line should be.

Visions season two - I admit I didn't really love either season of the show, mostly because really short things that riff on the themes and conflicts of the films - gorgeous as they may look - feel like we're not taking anything particularly interesting forward. Still, worth seeing if you need something to watch, but I wasn't left wanting more after the first season. It would be fascinating to see something like Visions riff on animating one of the movies, sort of like the Simpsons Steamed Hams but There's a Different Animator Every 13 Seconds. Or you know, in the 1990s or early 2000s, but that's just me being selfish because I had a better grasp on what was going on in anime due to a friend. (I miss ya, Zac.)

The Mandalorian season 3 came and went without much of a blip on the pop culture radar, which is unfortunate. The story focused on what I expected to be the Mandoverse movie - taking back Mandalore and dealing with the ruler/holder of the Darksaber - and despite a fun cast, didn't drop any interesting new memes or themes or schemes into the pop culture pond. I didn't dislike it, but it just felt like it put a bow on some of what we saw on the previous seasons, put some table dressing for the future out, and didn't leave us with a big question like the sudden appearance of the Darksaber, or Grogu going to school. It just ended. At least it was mostly pretty fun, and we got to see Grogu get a mobility aid.

Ahsoka season one was fan service incarnate. While The Mandalorian takes bizarre chances, like "let's follow around Dr. Pershing for an hour," fans of Rebels got to see most of the cast in live action this year between this show and The Mandalorian. We also got Thrawn, new Stormtroopers, and witches - but, sadly, no fog. (I was expecting witches and fog.) I don't think it will spoil much to say that the show did a great job moving pieces around on a table, making some giant leaps that felt like tiny steps. Intergalactic travel is a mind-bending thing that's usually presented as almost beyond the realm of comprehension - see Star Trek - and all we see is another sad dingy brown planet with simple villagers. Oh, and space whales. Those are cool. And the new Stormtroopers would have made great toys, but only Funko and Hot Toys seemed up to the challenge (or were granted early assets.) I'm very fond of the Hasbro figures we got from the show, though, but I can't help but think this would have been better as a Shadows of the Empire-style multimedia project with comics, books, toys, and a video game instead of a TV show.

The Black Series gave us a 40th anniversary subline of Return of the Jedi which was heavy on repacks and variations on existing characters, but not much new. We got a Wicket, and I like that. Over three waves, only one figure was new-to-the-size and Wicket was also sold boxed - and so was Chewie's dungeon disguise. There were a generous amount of characters from Ahsoka and Andor, plus exclusives from The Bad Batch but relatively little specific to The Mandalorian's new season. I do appreciate the themed waves, but I can't say the offerings had me too excited. Quite the opposite - I stopped pre-ordering basic figures this year and skipped exclusives from previous years I was planning to buy on clearance. (This is in no way a critique of the quality of the goods, just "$100 for 3-4 figures is not bringing me the joy I got from POTF2.") On the whole they seem to sell at mass retailers, but more slowly than in the past. The Andor guys sat around at Walmart around here for weeks, for example.

The Vintage Collection is in a similar place to the 6-inch line - lots of familiar faces, a few reruns, and both are turning up at Ross and deep discounters. The deluxe figure segment needs to be given the axe given how it's piling up at Target and on sale online, and without a steady stream of vehicles or playsets it's hard to get excited. We got a great N-1 Starfighter for Mando, but it's more of a high-end collectible than a fun toy. The two Speeder Bikes were about $50 each, and neither of which was novel enough to be exciting nor a good enough value to recommend despite the cool packaging. Looking ahead to 2024, I'm excited to see Count Dooku come back but am quietly wincing at Finn and Cassian Andor reruns occupying the supposedly precious slots in the assortment that could be filled by characters with high secondary market prices and real demand behind them, like The Last Jedi Luke Skywalker or the very expensive Rey from The Rise of Skywalker. On the bright side, they're seemingly selling when they show up at big box - carded basic figures for Vintage vanish relatively quickly, although we are starting to see some dumped at Ross for a few bucks.

It will not surprise you to hear I was very happy with The Retro Collection, mostly because as long as we get 12 figures a year, I'm pretty happy. Most of them weren't sharp crisp sculpts like the originals, and most were posed the same way - unlike the originals - but we got 12 figures from Return of the Jedi (1 grail, 1 new), 7 figures from Ahsoka (1 rerun with a new hat, 6 new), 8 figures from The Book of Boba Fett (4 repaints/new accessory figures, 4 new), the back 6 of the original 12, and the last 2 bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back. And a prototype Mando. That's 36 retro figures in a single year - that's about as good as it ever got. Sadly no vehicles, and I'm not hopeful about the line's future, but I hope Hasbro realizes original trilogy stuff will sell if you ship it to stores and get it in front of the right audience. Heck, I've seen a slow trickle of Ahsoka at Target (including 2 more just this weekend) and they seem to vanish in days. People do want to buy these things and the only one I see on pegs at Target is last year's Reva. Still. And she scans at "item not found" - I'd buy another if she were on clearance.

Mission Fleet seems to be on the way out, most likely as Epic Hero 4-inch figures return. That new scale is going to need vehicles to survive, mostly because the character selection in the basic figures is similar to the cheapo 6- and 9-inch figures at Five Below and Walgreens and the grocery store - added leg articulation may not be enough to justify the higher price to a mass audience, but I hope it connects. I just wish it was released in conjunction with a new show (or a Force Friday) so people would give them a look as a new product as part of a big campaign. (Forces of Destiny dolls also showed up out-of-season.)

What's my takeaway from all of this? Hasbro should make less stuff. I am over the moon happy that we got so many figures in each scale, but it adds up. At $12-$14 a piece on average before shipping, Retro alone would probably set you back over $400 for this year alone. A wave of 8 new The Black Series figures is $200, and 8 new The Vintage Collection figures is $136. There were many, many waves this year and that adds up. Cutting the line back to something easier to track - I don't think most fans watch all the streams and certainly can't keep track of what is out without maintaining personal checklists or email alerts - would be good. Also to bring up an example from my own life, I'd be all-in if there was one format, one scale, and that was it. By giving me options, there are things fans may not buy - look at Transformers. Do you need to buy Legacy, and Studio Series 86, and Studio Series Live-action, and Studio Series Gamer, and Earthspark Deluxe (collector), and the Earthspark kid line's many scales, and Masterpiece, and Missing Link, and everything else? Probably not - it's all very good, but eventually you just take a step back and have to say "I need to specialize a bit." If Earthspark was the only thing they made, that's what I would be buying. I bet Star Wars would be in a similar boat - The Black Series isn't my favorite, but there are just so many great options to buy and I don't want to spend thousands of dollars on a bigger scale that takes up more space and has no ships with it. But that's me. I assume the LEGO fans are probably happiest if that's the pony they picked.

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FIN

Happy New Year! Because there's no chance in heck a new Star Wars movie will hit theaters in 2024, I think we can safely say we're looking at five years without a Force Friday or a new film. At this rate I find myself hoping they wait another few years to do a movie - there were 7 years between The Clone Wars and The Force Awakens, and we still haven't purged the old toys from town. I can still find Solo, The Force Awakens, and Rogue One stuff at some local 99 Cents Only and Walgreens stores.

Looking over the post-Triple Force Friday game, what with COVID and a period of time we weren't sure if the license was to be renewed at Hasbro or not, we saw some really amazing things. We are in a period with a lot of repaints, retools, and incredibly high priced (and seemingly slow selling) Deluxe Vintage figures... but the good stuff is genuinely good. I don't begrudge Hasbro experimenting with new ways to use existing tooling (repacks, Carbonized figures, etc.) but for completists, that kind of product makes it easier for people to look at a Hasbro livestream, total up the pre-order prices, and become more selective. Do I want to buy the same product again, but shiny? Not really, but if you can manage the edition size versus the market desire, you can make it work. All you have to do is run an item low enough that it says to fans "you can't have it" to make us go "...but I want it!" when we'd otherwise tell them where to stick it. It's a delicate balance, and given how few new Jabba aliens - I mean genuinely new ones, not an old one reissued or a new sculpt - or Cantina aliens or Ewoks or robots - it can be hard to get the slightest bit excited about reruns of this stuff in the main line assortment SKU at big box stores.

We - certainly I - got tired of midnight launches and events that went from pretty impressive to "was that it?" over five years. But now I really do wish we had such events for new seasons of The Mandalorian, since that could be a launchpad for real success. People like the shows. They want to buy stuff. But you never really see a "statement" being made in the stores. I also would say we've proven - with the prequels, and the sequels - that a lot of these toys and ships are super fun when you can make up your own backstory and buy them before you see the movie. I'm one of those freaks who actually likes the Constable Zuvio figure, and if Hasbro ever made The Retro Collection Kenner Zuvio I'd be first in line to buy it. I want weird nonsense that has no reason to exist... but when we get a new Ahsoka figure for the new Ahsoka show, and in three scales it's the same mold of a previously released figure in a new box? You can't get mad at the fans for folding their arms and rolling their eyes.

This year, we are expecting The Bad Batch season 3, Andor season 2, The Acolyte season 1, and who the heck knows if Skeleton Crew will make it out (or if a new movie begins shooting.) Since Disney doesn't make these a big event with a release date set in stone and countdown clocks, I don't think people can muster excitement. Many of the previous movies had a date locked in stone months, sometimes years, with an occasional delay. The streaming series tend to show up whenever, without the kind of fanfare worthy of a Star Wars, and boy howdy I would just love it if they could nail it down again. The fact that there are at least three or four shows next year and none of us know what day they'll start makes it easy to just put it in the back of their minds along with everything else coming up, as opposed to knowing and planning a watch party months in advance. It's important to remember that with the prequels people actually lined up for days, weeks, or months for these things. It was important. The flexible permissiveness and meandering nature of streaming with no real launch date just doesn't carry the same weight as something like a Super Bowl or Episode I or the Lord of the Rings movies. You gotta make it an event or (as we have seen) people may not make as big of a deal about it. It's not unique to Star Wars or Disney, either. In the past few years, release dates for a lot of tentpoles just seem to move on a dime - or maybe they just are more widely reported.

Anyway, here's to 2024. May it have less stuff to juggle, may it be better stuff, and may Hasbro's lines (or prices) all shrink about 20% so our wallets stop giving us the stink eye.

--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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