1. Recently, several collecting sites and the Vintage Collection Facebook page teamed up to hold a March Madness bracket to determine the most requested next figure to include in the Vintage Collection. It was all in good fun and I think most of the participants were happy with how it all turned out.

Count Dooku won. More than half of the requests in the brackets were to upgrade existing figures. Farmboy Luke was in the final four.

I am so disinterested in a result like this. Am I that out of touch with what collectors want? If it is packaged collectors, then I understand Dooku, but Luke was one of the original figures to get a modern upgrade on a Vintage card. Why is he so desired again?

Like you, I have been collecting these toys since 1978, and I open and play with them. Am I just jaded because I had access to every one of these figures when they originally came out? Granted, some took a lot of work to obtain, but that's part of the joy of being a collector - the thrill of the hunt. Am I inadvertently gatekeeping someone else's hobby just because I already got one of everyone?

Maybe I'm just not picky enough. If I have a character/outfit in retro style, then I am still of the opinion that I have that character represented, so I am not particularly interested in a TVC upgrade to the Fifth Brother, either.

I want to vote with my dollars, but if I am so far in the minority, will it even make an impact regarding which figures I buy vs. which I don't?
--Ben

The really short answer to your question might be Amazon. When I go to Amazon the cheapest Count Dooku figure is around $30, and there hasn't been a Count Dooku in The Vintage Collection yet. Death Star Escape Luke sells for about $200 on eBay. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a new 3 3/4-inch Count Dooku figure since 2010 and Luke was from just about the same time. In terms of time, that would be like if they made a C-3PO when POTF2 kicked off in 1995 but not again until 2008. Depending on your age, that's an eternity. When I was a kid - I was born after 1978 - my Farmboy Luke came from the JC Penny Catalog because that was the only place you could get him when Return of the Jedi was a thing.

I'm sure Marvel fans are sick of Spider-Man toys, but he sells. If you're a new fan you probably want Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, and the like first. He Who Remains or the Eternals are not going to cut it as a first toy purchase. Star Wars hasn't kept Darth Vader, Luke, Boba Fett, Dooku, Grievous, and their ilk around to buy so new fans can join our plastic hoarding lifestyle.

If you take a bird's eye view of the modern line, it's pretty off-putting. You might get above-the-title figures from last year's TV show with a mix of troopers from games you don't play that exist just because the molds are handy. If you just want R2-D2 and C-3PO, you're out of luck. If you just want a Luke, you're probably not going to find him.

A few years ago there was a Fan's Choice where Darth Maul won, which is kind of amazing and kind of not. In terms of math, people may participate in these campaigns who aren't collectors - so they just write their favorite figure, or one they wanted to get at the store and couldn't find. In this very column I used to get a lot of reissue requests and many of them were for relatively then-recent figures that you could buy on eBay for $10-$15 delivered.

I'd love to know more about the voters, but it says something about where we are as a group and have been for quite a while. A few years ago Jaina Solo infamously won a The Black Series Fan's Choice after a group of fans of the books stuffed the ballot box to support the de-canonized Expanded Universe book. Coordination matters, and if you can get a bunch of fans on the same page you can achieve some pretty good results. But today, you can't - a lot of small groups want one guy and not everybody is a fan of the same parts of Star Wars.

If there really hasn't been a Count Dooku since 2010, that was The Clone Wars season 3 - so a whole generation of kids grew up without ever having a crack at a new Count Dooku. If you're 14 or 15 today, you were probably too young to ever see one. On top of that, I assume collectors getting older and voting in brackets like these are diminishing (I didn't bother), so it's possible that younger fans who aren't going to eBay or Amazon or your local collector toy shop or show are just saying "make us the main guys."

If I'm right, this highlights the issue that Star Wars is pretty unaccessible if you're a new fan. If you start collecting today, you can't easily buy many (or any) of the original trilogy, prequel trilogy, or sequel trilogy heroes or villains unless you want a Lando. Hasbro has a 20th Anniversary Clone Wars branding thing on some figures, but they're not making anybody but clone repaints as far as I know right now. There was a "Tales of the Jedi" short cartoon series last year, but there weren't new action figures for it. If Hasbro made a figure line that focused on a specific movie for a year (or a single wave) they might be able to gradually deliver new fans stuff we have and take for granted.

Also keep in mind the last new 3 3/4-inch Jango Fett was 2012, the last new Qui-Gon Jinn was 2018, the last Greedo reissue was around 2010, and so on and so forth. There's not a good "classic track" to onboard new fans - at one point, The Black Series was pretty effective at that. If Hasbro trots out a new format, they could probably treat it as a reboot, or a new #1, but that probably won't happen unless it's a new kid line.

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2. I am 3 3/4 collector, I know you have talked about your Plano storage containers for open figures. I use and have a ton of them. They work great. My question is what do you do with carded figures? I am looking for the best way to store them. I usually purchase two of each, one to open and one to keep on the card. I use comic boxes right now, but they seem to really be taking up a lot of space.
--Matt

I've been doing this for so long that I have a lot of cardboard shipping cartons. The cases of 12 (or 8, or 16, or whatever) that were sent to the store? I got tons of those, because I got a lot of cases of figures over the years and they fit like a glove. That's my preference. I know a lot of people who use Star Cases (expensive) but people with tons of stuff also are fond of using archival comic book long boxes. They're about the right size, and while they do take a lot of space there aren't many better options. You could also store them flat (and staggered) in those under-the-bed storage boxes, overlapping some if you like.

I have a lot of packaged guys but it's not my focus - as I get my display cases up I'll probably be selling off a lot of them as those were the back-ups if I ever lost parts. There's no great solution that's going to keep everything perfect forever and take up very little space, but comic boxes are, sadly, probably your best bet. Unfortunately, the line is too big to really get a handle on anymore. Even if you had most of the major variants from Kenner in the old days (packaging and all) it'd still be peanuts compared to 1995-present at just one-of-everything, give or take a few variants of importance.

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FIN

Amazon's The Retro Collection 4-LOM and Zuckuss shipped a couple of weeks ago, and that's good. Weirdly, one of my friends had his pre-order canceled, and mine was set to be delivered on April 4. On April 3, I got a notice that it was delivered and when I looked at the photo to prove it, it wasn't at my residence. I didn't recognize the tiles either. I walked around my neighborhood and probably scared a few people (and dogs) but I couldn't find a matching set of tiles. Amazon's customer service doesn't have a "the box was delivered but that is not my house" option, so it's a fun, short trip to crazytown trying to navigate those menus only to find it won't let you talk to someone "this soon" nor can you select an option like "you delivered it to a house, but not my house" either. This should be fun to work out... but it's also funny because I own the originals yet am wasting vast amounts of time on this. If you saw a crazy man walking around in a blue robe after 10 PM with a UV flashlight, my apologies to you.

Speaking of Retro, Hasbro's last Kenner wave of Marvel super heroes are shipping now. Doctor Doom, Spider-Woman, and Luke Cage are joined by newly-repackaged Spider-Man, Hulk, and Wolverine... and that is, in theory, the end of the line. As far as I can tell any future output is scrapped, but previous waves are showing up at Ollie's for $4.99. (I am many many many hours drive away from an Ollie's, so good luck to you.) In terms of packaging quality and style, I highly recommend the entire line. The figures are very good, but they're not very Kenner-y but feel a lot like if someone applied Kenner thinking to Medicom's Kubrick or Be@rbick offerings. Also at $5 a hit, I'd say collect them all - weirdly they put me off buying 6-inch Marvel, possibly ever again. It's a great little set and since it's over, you don't need to worry about future stress/storage plans.

I've also been slowly picking up some Super7 ReAction Figures I've skipped. The Metropolis Maria is still one of the best things I've ever bought, but I've also been picking up the 2018-and-later Universal Monsters and Planet of the Apes figures bit by bit. We may have some Ape bundles at work on the cheap, you should check. They're really excellent - and weird - figures I'm trying to space out opening because Disney owns Fox and Disney pulled the license, so I assume we may never see Super7 ReAction Figures of Aliens or Apes again. They're very good in their Kenner-ness, and it's neat to see some figures like Nova who give another idea of what a Slave Leia may have looked like. Also Cornelius and Dr. Zaius look a lot like they could be hanging out in the Cantina or Jabba's Palace. I'm also incredibly fond of the Metaluna Mutant. I'm working on reviews of a lot of this stuff for 16bit.com.

With Marvel closing the Kenner doors, I don't know if we can expect a lot more retro fun from the big toy companies. Super7 has some really neat figures already on the market, and a lot on the way that sounds promising. (Devo? Svengoolie? Werewolf of London? Here's hoping they're awesome.) I assume my ever-dwindling readership here probably got their start in 1970s, 1980s, or maybe even 1990s Star Wars, so there's certainly a lot of love and admiration for the older style of action figure who can, quite often, stand up without a fight. Are they perfect? No. But they don't ask from me, and also, they made Armus. That's gotta be worth something.

I also forgot to mention the Playmobil Manatees showed up and if "Playmobil Manatee" has you frantically hunting for your credit car, I'd say it's worth the asking price. It's expensive for what it is - $45 for a boat, 2 figures, and 3 manatees (plus superfluous accessories) - but there are some toys that tend to be desirable beyond logic or reason, and this is one of them. If you already have a Playmobil collection, specifically one with sharks or dolphins, the manatees also have a little hole in their bellies so you can put them on those coral pieces so it looks like they're swimming around in your rivers or shipwrecks. Manatees and Ghostbusters were basically my "dream toys" of Playmobil as a kid, so short of Star Wars or some equally bananas licensing, it's weird to think that I may have actually bought enough stuff to not necessarily need to scratch that itch anymore. I've got a mummy, I've got vampires, I've got ghosts, I've got an ogre, I've even finally got a GE5P droid. And yes there are thousands of other sets, but once you have what you want, why buy more?

Oh and let's also complain some more. The Vintage Collection Cassian Andor (Aldahani Mission) arrived, and it's insultingly undercooked. They just slapped a new skirt and head on the Morak Migs/Din bodies, which means he has the old legs that are not good and incorrect boots. He's also missing the blaster and strap they made a fuss of on the show. If this were a half-baked last-minute retool wave in 2005-2008, I'd begrudingly pay my $7 and call it a day - but at $17 we deserve a lot better. I'd rather they just skip a figure (or make us wait a few years) than put out something that is, for all intents and purposes, a bad fan-made custom. Review's coming up May 9 in Figure of the Day, so it's that, but longer.

--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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