1. Are the upcoming 6 inch shirtless Darth Maul pictures the final product? Because the hands on the figure are completely red and should have the black markings and designs on them all the way down to the fingertips.
--B

Generally speaking, by the time you see an item it's probably very close to final. Mistakes and running changes can and do happen (see The Vintage Collection 2021 Boba Fett's chest marks,) and sometimes things are caught from the early samples and fixed before the final product ships to stores (Transformers Universe Cyclonus comes to mind), but those are the exceptions rather than the rules. Also Darth Maul's various paint jobs aren't consistent from figure to figure as it is, so something not being exactly as it was in the movie - or other sources - tends to be how these things go.

A good thing to keep in mind is that if a figure is under three months away from being delivered, there's about zero chance Hasbro could change it. It takes about 4-6 weeks to get to the USA on the boat from China, maybe a month or more to manufacture, and it takes time to set up all the tools and equipment needed to make the figure. The Kir Kanos/Carnor Jax situation is a pretty good thing to keep in mind as well - this is an easy and necessary change, but will we see an update despite fans pointing it out immediately? Probably not any time soon.

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2. I got my new Boba Fett Deluxe ROTJ Black Series figure this week. It looks like that all we got for an extra $10 is a grappling hook, some flames, and a cut in half blaster. $30

The new Jar Jar Black Series figure has a shield, spear, and booma thrower. It was $30, but now it's down to $20.

In contrast, the Best Buy 50th Anniversary version just has the spear, and it's $30.

Will this be the new norm? Add a couple accessories, and charge an extra $10 for it?
--Chris

There are lots of reasons the way things are they way they are, but the big one is more weird SKUs - or assortments - let Hasbro get more product to shelf with more price points. If the only thing they made was a single figure assortment, it wouldn't give them an excuse to crank out bigger, better, or weirder items. Having a $30 figure makes a lot of people (who aren't fans) happy.

Hasbro wants different price points, and with Jar Jar they may have done OK - consider we're getting a price increase on regular figures this year. From $23 to $30, I can squint and see more value on Boba Fett in the sense he has a lot more paint. Look at Crosshair - there's a lot of missing paint applications there, for example, the namesake crosshair on his helmet as well as his battle damage. Boba Fett's extra deco - there are paint applications on the blaster, and armor - cost more money. The kneepads are separate pieces, the body has an extra piece over the armor, there's a lot of paint on the backpack which also has a removable rocket, and so on. Is it worth $30? Probably not - but I assume Hasbro wanted to ship solid cases of just Boba Fett, and instead of cutting features, opted to add stuff in there and hopefully make it good enough for stores to order it. My guess is we're not going to see him sit around on shelf very much at $30.

Jar Jar dipping in price... I mean, it's Jar Jar. If Hasbro did a fancy Qui-Gon with extra gear and ponchos and a Jedi robe and all the trimmings, it might have sold. Maul did pretty amazing for what you got for $20. But Jar Jar is Jar Jar.

I expect you will see some "deluxe" guys every year until these stop doing well. Last year we had the Luke/Yoda 2-pack (which I feel was at least $5-$10 too expensive), the Probe Droid (which was right on the money and could not possibly have worked in a normal box,) and of course the continued run of the Heavy Infantry Mandalorian which is doing well but doesn't feel too meaty. Later this year, we'll be getting Wrecker.

As the year goes on you will be seeing $22.99 "basic" figures as the norm. We'll continue only to see a handful of $30 figures, but those should be things that (for budget, or physical reasons) do not fit in the standard assortment's boxes.

3. Question: If you had complete control over the vintage collection, what direction would you take it?
Question: What chain of stores would you try to sell It in?
Question: Can you name one 3 3/4" concept you've seen that never made it into production, that you thought would be great?
Question: If retro did a vehicle offering, what would you want?
--shawn

People talk a big game about disruption, but disruption sucks. Toys R Us, Walmart, and Amazon influenced the toy business in significant (and not always positive) ways. Toys R Us steamrolled regional toy stores and mom & pops, but as a result we saw more weird toys, more exclusives, and a standardized national distribution system for small plastic men. Walmart refined it, but was pickier, demanding smaller casepacks, more things in waves, and lower price points. And Amazon is Amazon.

For the lives of most old-school Star Wars fans, things were pretty constant - you could count on the stores of the 1970s and 1980s largely (but not completely) sticking around in the 1990s and to some extent the 2000s to be there to sell you stuff. Today, you don't have that many options - Kay-Bee, Kmart, Sears, and Montgomery Ward were titans of retail (and toys) that are all dead, never to come back. I would bet you five bucks that Toys R Us is also on that list, I don't think the current company - a trademark holder - is likely to develop its own retail business, and the brand name isn't what it was.

Similarly it doesn't seem like The Vintage Collection is either - it's a weird mishmash that isn't terribly accessible to new fans. We're in the post-Episode I era, where fans started to treat the line less as "collect them all" and more as "souvenirs." That's the current fan market - "collector" is out of date. "Fan" is in, and "fan" basically is any customer outside the ages of 4-11 - so someone who's unlikely to follow a traditional play pattern. Given who gets released, and in the groupings, it's unlikely we'll ever see a great opportunity to buy into an entire scene with multiple figures for a vehicle or playset from a single movie any time soon. (The Barge being a rare exception - Hasbro's post-game on that one was solid, using the Skiff as a bonus to sell those figures and playset.)

I think reruns are great - but I'd group them by movie, or scene if possible. Endor waves, Hoth waves, Arvala-7 waves, you get the idea. Right now no aspect of Star Wars (or the collector lines for Power Rangers, Batman, etc.) are a bunch of guys that play well together. It would be nice to see that change.

There really aren't many chains of stores left. How Hasbro does things now makes sense - Amazon, Best Buy, BBTS, EE, GameStop, Target, Walmart, and anywhere that would like them should sell them. I don't like the idea of limited editions, so whatever it takes to keep figures flowing is a good thing.

If you're fishing for unannounced concepts, I can't speak to those - but my holy grails have always been the year two figures from Ewoks and Droids. Really, anything that would make sense in a post-ROTJ toy world - so the Endor movies, or The Mandalorian, those later Marvel comics with the Tofs, Nagai, Hiromi, and Kiro, a Gorax, those are the things that would interest me. But I think there's probably more money in appealing to The Clone Wars kids. It's easy to forget the show debuted in 2008 - that's 13 years ago. In the timeline of classic 1977 Star Wars, that's 1990 - right before the really big revival took place. If Lucasfilm just mined its nostalgia for a few more years they could probably make great money and sell a ton of toys, too. (I don't want more new films, is where I'm going with this.)

My top vehicle choices for a hypothetical retro Kenner-style thing would be actual vintage concepts, The White Witch from Droids is a top pick, as is the Return of the Jedi-era 3 3/4-inch Blockade Runner. I'm also fond of the SRV-1 concept, but admittedly it looks a lot like a G.I. Joe toy.

The line probably won't do well if it followed that direction completely. Tying in to a current project - a revived streaming thing, or a big marketing push - could be successful. If Hasbro wanted to do well, I would probably say they should ignore collectors completely and try some sort of 3 3/4-inch figure/vehicle line that focuses on "action feature" Mando figures with less articulation, some made-up action accessories, literally every vehicle from the show they can afford to do, and scores and scores of aliens. I'd probably also suggest they do everything as 2-packs so they can reduce their shipping/packaging costs (shades of Comic Packs) and also force people to buy something weird with every Mando figure. You want Beskar Mando? Fine, you gotta buy The Client. You want Greef Karga? Well, he's going to come with some henchmen. And so on, and so forth.

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FIN

Be sure you send in your questions for next time. The mailbag is out of on-topic questions, so if you got some, send some in.

I got my The Retro Collection wave for The Mandalorian - and it's largely good! They're getting prepped for FOTD with some nice comparison shots. For ten bucks a whack they're arguably all worth it, but what's telling is that despite some good improvements, the old Kenner figures are often largely better. IG-88 has some teeny-tiny joints sculpted on his claw hands from 40 years ago, but IG-11 smoothed them over. Also IG-88 seems better at holding the guns than IG-11. There are a lot of little things that I can't quite figure out how they would be better on a decades-old figure (just because of age/wear/tear) than on a fresh new release, but I assume copies of copies can't help. Still, there's no reason they couldn't add some more detail in IG-11 - they did retool the torso at the very least, and the arms are a lot less smooth to move around, and the joints overall aren't quite as perfect as the originals. But they are still neat, and I still want more of them.

Kuiil seems to take cues from the old Cantina Aliens in that he's wrong and more colorful, Mando looks about right, Cara Dune is arguably the best of the bunch in terms of articulation and accessories, Greef Karga ain't half bad (despite being season 2 for some reason), I can't complain about Moff Gideon either. The latter two have vinyl capes for good reason - it looks better. Mando's, well, not so much - I think they would've been better served by cloth or (as a nod to the original Boba Fett) no cape at all. The Child isn't bad either, and once more shows just how much they can give you for ten bucks. In many respects it's only barely better than the cheapo $5 Walmart figure, as the figure's construction and deco is pretty much the same. The pram adds a base and a pole, but is otherwise also pretty much the same. And they will sell every last unit at ten bucks.

If you see the case, buy it. If you don't... consider getting them if you see them, they'll go great with the Droids figures you forgot to buy at Kay-Bee when they were a buck 34 years ago.

ASWN #2 is expected to be complete this week. Click here for ASWN #1. There's no email list version yet.

--Adam Pawlus

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