1. With the monumental flop of The Acolyte, I am surprised to still see products announced & revealed for 2025; it is not in Hasbro's interest to just shelve these products and release something else, i.e. re-pack that may do better?

Also, why does it seem The Black Series 6" will get a new or "newish" figure before the Vintage 3 & 3/4" does? Is this done because 6" outsells the Vintage line?
--Jeremiah

I don't know which figure format sells better for Hasbro, but math tells us all things being equal a $25 figure brings in more money than $17. I think that's the part a lot of fans may not fully appreciate, which means Hasbro likes all the monies but fans like not re-buying thousands of figures.

It is very, very rare that Hasbro can turn the ship this late in the game. The just-revealed (Jeremiah wrote in on 10/28) Yord Fandar figure in The Vintage Collection probably took about 18 months to get to market - it's expected in-hand no later than May 2025, so it started its life (most likely) around November 2023. The tooling probably isn't finished, but I have little doubt they're starting on it very soon, with all the approvals already signed-off before anybody knew that fan reaction to the show would be "no, thanks."

I assume it's too late to kill the figure at this point at Hasbro, as ramping up production on other figures in the wave would be the best/only way to go - and that happened before in 2010/2011 with the delay of Wedge in The Vintage Collection. Multiple assortment variants were made, each adding +1 to other characters to make up for the missing Wedge. Weird, eh? I assume doubling-up on Obi-Wan Kenobi would have been a good move, but if they already paid for the molds and product development it might cost more to change direction. But hey, look at it this way - if you don't like The Acolyte, it's still a pretty good Charlie Barnett figure and he was great on Russian Doll. I'm excited for the figure for that reason, sort of like the Marvel Legends Owen Wilson figure or Playmobil Bill Murray. If anyone could recommend a good Natasha Lyonne figure, I'm all ears. (Crossing fingers for Poker Face.)

On the other hand, Super7 did kill the Willow (streaming series) ReAction Figures after the show came out and failed to click - which is kind of a pity, I liked the show a lot for what it was (and am not invested emotionally with the original beyond "hey, that was a movie.") It's also possible Disney could step in and say "don't do this," but will they? Whoever is handling consumer products does not seem to be particularly engaged on course corrections right now.

It seems Hasbro is giving priority to not only The Black Series but also The Retro Collection in spots, as many figures were announced for The Acolyte and Obi-Wan Kenobi (and a few others) before The Vintage Collection. Granted, there are also hundreds (thousands) of figures in 3 3/4-inch that will never be made for The Black Series. I don't necessarily have a problem with this if it means Hasbro can make the figures more accurate, but it looks like Cobb Vanth is missing some key paint apps as a 3 3/4-inch figure... but also has a much better face than the 6-inch figure. Can't win 'em all, having competing formats means one of them is going to be the loser.

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2. Pre-orders. Am I crazy for thinking that they are a major reason that the line can't make it into retail and why there is a general malaise about the TVC line currently? I find it incredibly boring to click and wait 6 months and since I can't get the figures I want in a store, I don't really have a choice. Also, with nothing in the stores, there aren't any impulse buys or the ability to even see the product in hand before you've already put your money out there. Unless you go looking, you wouldn't even know half this stuff even exists.

I may be fighting a losing battle here, but I find the price inhibitive and they've lost a lot of my dollars. I know I'm not alone. I've bought almost everything I've seen in hand, but cancelled a number of things I decided I didn't need that were pre ordered. Bad business.
--Kevin

I was going to end on this note, but instead let's start with it - do you remember the last Vintage figure that you really were excited to get? Not one that was impressive, or was hard to find, but one that made you feel like you finally plugged a hole in a sub-collection or was something you wanted for years and years? Other than the recent Blurrg, I'm not sure that I do. Not for Vintage, at least. There's very little coming to market that feels like an amazing new thing, and while Hasbro's current all-new $17 figures with separately molded hair and amazing face paint are impressive feats, but aren't necessarily satisfying. We're getting some new figures for the Cantina next year but exactly zero of these were fan requests - we have these guys. We can get versions of them on eBay, or our own homes may have several. Why can't we get a new guy? Why are we seeing resources spent on the same characters remade, again? And on top of that, we probably won't even see them in stores to determine if they're really better or just a slight upgrade - we have to preorder and hope for the best.

If Walmart or Target said to Hasbro "you fill our orders before online pre-orders," I bet they'd do it. There's a lot of inventory out there on some waves - too much, seemingly - and depending on where you shop you might see a lot of the Rex/Luke/Leia/R2 wave or the Acolyte/Dark Trooper/HK wave just sitting. There's so simple answer, other than pointing fingers when it comes to saying "yup, Hasbro made more than the market needed." And it's hard to guess the market need - even harder when you have a goal to meet this quarter, and the wave that is scheduled to hit isn't going to bring in the numbers. And that's where I think we are right now.

If I were deciding to buy The Vintage Collection figures as a brand-new collector, I wouldn't be buying the newest stuff. I wouldn't have to. I'd be buying collections on the cheap, I'd be buying half-price stuff at comic stores or 75% stuff at the closeout shops. And I'd be having a great time. A new collector is in a real buyer's market with an endless supply of cheap thrills. Why buy something at full price when last year's models are being blown out everywhere and may be just as fun? Hasbro can't compete with their own product at a massive discount. Would you buy a $16.99 rando pre-order with shipping when you can get a great Nikto for $3.99 at Ross? I'd start hoovering up all the clearance crap I could find, and I would have dozens of figures for a fraction of pre-ordering one or two waves. (See also, me at garage sales 1985-1992.) Older, cheaper figures Are actually available for an impulse buy, and it sets unreasonably low price expectations going forward. Until Hasbro trims their runs demand will be soft, clearance stuff will be around somewhere, and fans will be rewarded for their patience much of the time. There will be figures they'll miss - but there are thousands of figures to be bought.

A new collector can come in pretty much any toy line 2-3 years in and have a spectacular time. (As a late arrival to Masters of the Universe Origins and Hasbro's Kenner's Marvel Legends retro line, I can confirm this.) You can't get everything at a discount, but you can get the total price of the entire line on average down quite a bit. You might have to do some math and have some patience, but you can buy a few small collections, get some great stuff, and flip the duplicates/triplicates and make back some (and sometimes, all) of what you paid for the collection. If you're into that sort of thing.

Collecting "new" Star Wars in 2024 is a pretty hostile affair if you're not on board with the whole pre-order thing. The stuff in stores is kind of random and usually old - specifically, gaggles of Lando or D+ shows from 2 or more years ago - and stores aren't bringing in a ton of new stuff. Collectors have no real reason to hunt. Surprises are far and few between. There aren't any 3 3/4-inch "collector" exclusives in the big box shops anymore either - and without that, why go out? Just pre-order the main line online, and you're done.

I don't imagine any collector is participating a new 2024-2025 Hasbro pre-order as an impulse buy. Those are for lifers, long-haul collectors, and those who literally cannot quit. A year is too long to wait, older fans may be more patient but there aren't as many of them. What you want are hordes of fans descending on stores - and COVID-19 seems to have killed that if the 1990s speculator bubble crashing didn't do the job first. I think it would be best if the hobby started to get a cadence of more spread-out releases so fans are out hunting regularly, and if there weren't waves that were just old stuff with new packages or deco. Last week I got The Acolyte/I> Retro pack and the Vintage E-Wing. The AOTC/ROTS Retro pack is on the way, as is the Forge playset, and I believe The Ghost shall arrive shortly. And I got a couple of Vintage waves - it's a lot all at once, and the rest of the year we're checked out. A company can't just dump Santa's sack of toys on us once a year, and then expect us to remain engaged all year long.

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FIN

Andor Season 2 is now set for April 22. Toys are showing up before that, but there won't be many of them. Skeleton Crew is set for December 3 of this year, and hopefully it's going to be fantastic. (I haven't seen or heard much about it, so it's really anybody's guess. People like the pirate wolf man though!)

I have received a massive surge of new followers on my Bluesky account over the past few days at adam16bit.bsky.social. If you're on Facebook or Twitter and want to try something else, your parents probably aren't on Bluesky yet. I'm not saying it's the best thing ever, but it's something with a lot more pet photos and toy nonsense if you follow the right people.

It's the end of another election season so I know what you all want to talk about - more non-answers about politics and how it might impact toy prices. But most important of all, if you only take away one thing from this discussion, we have absolutely no idea how this is going to shake out, if it will impact any (or all) sectors of manufacturing, or even the future of the license. We do know Hasbro has plans for figures for 2025. We do not know how long the current license contract may last. And we especially do not know what the future holds for prices on import goods until something is signed.

I got a question about HasLab the other week. I poked a few companies about the price increase topic when we heard there was a possibility of a 60% tariff on Chinese goods and a 20% tariff on Vietnamese goods. So far nobody has said that they plan to change pricing, but that's because we don't know when (or if) this may be enacted. You won't want them to enact it - a 60% increase means if a company charges $10 for one unit of a toy to a store, the store's cost goes up to $16. Generally speaking when a store's cost goes up, the cost to the end user (specifically, you) goes up with it as stores will not eat a price increase. Should the increased prices result in products not selling, it's likely the products will need to change, or will no longer be stocked.

I wouldn't panic yet, and not all toys will feel a sting. I think new collector toys would be severely impacted were this to come to pass - a $25 toy made in China would probably be $40 real quick. On the other hand, Hot Wheels and Matchbox are made in Indonesia or Thailand much of the time, so those $1.25 toys would become $1.50 toys. On the low end, it's arguably inconsequential. If Hasbro continues to have $8-$10 action figures, those would also likely not see a nassive increase as those are made in Vietnam.

As of right now we have no idea if it's going to happen, when it would happen, or if any companies are seriously baking this in to future product pricing. (Well, at least I know of nobody doing it.) Will your outstanding HasLabs be impacted? Probably not in any way you will feel - if prices blow up to a level where Hasbro loses millions, maybe they'll refund and cancel, but that seems unlikely. (There is a precedent for some damaged goods in Taiwan for Transformers though. Hasbro refunded the customers and opted to not run additional units for its HasLab Victory Saber product.)

--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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