1. I was recently talking figures with a fellow l fan who said "I'll bet that Slave Leia would never get a figure today!" It got me wondering about what I consider to be an even more risqué figure: Darth Talon. Did you know of anyone in the toy business at the time of her release who ever said anything to the effect of "Seriously?!? Hasbro is going to sell a figure of a chick essentially wearing what could easily be called lingerie as a children's toy?"

Do you have any figures in your mind that you think would have no chance of being released today, for either moral or economic reasons? Oola, Willrow Hood, Gargan, and Elephant Mon come to my mind right off the top.
--Derek

When it comes to toys, I don't really think things like "taste" have any bounds. Venue for sale, on the other hand, yeah. Jocasta Nu wasn't sold as a mainline figure, and Gargan probably should have been an exclusive or part of a gift set. (Honestly, that would've been a better Barge pack-in than a main line release.) I also think we're probably long past these being children's toys - The Black Series and The Vintage Collection have tiny alternate hands and other gear that just plain aren't good for kid toys. If they put Slave Leia or Oola in Mission Fleet, I'd be confused. But we did get Galactic Heroes Slave Leia almost 15 years ago.

I don't think anyone had a problem with Slave Leia's outfit so much as the word "Slave." I got this question sent to me on Juneteenth - a recently added federal holiday and a day that never once came up in school growing up (thanks public school) - and if you keep tugging at that thread, it might be something Disney doesn't want you to explain. What exactly does Jabba want with Leia? That's a rough conversation. But they've done her in LEGO, they've done her as a doll, they've done her as action figures, and they've done her as a toddler toy. I think it's foolish to say "never again" because we live in a world where they have sold literal corpses and as far as I can tell this did nothing to contribute to the decline of the character of our children. That's what Instagram and Vtubers are for.

Before the figure first came out in 1997, I just happened to be in the orbit of a few Kenner people and one of the first production off the line for the first "Jabba's Prisoner" Princess Leia had an error - the area under her cloth/between her legs was flesh-color. The final release was fixed to be purple. It's a variant I don't think made it out to any stores since it was caught early enough, and was one of the few times I heard anybody say "we can't possibly release it like this."

As far as "no chance of being released today for economic issues," look at the line. Hasbro made it boring. How many weird droids do you see? None, they're almost all from Disney. How many Jabba's Palace or Cantina aliens are we getting? Virtually none - maybe one every few years. It's boring main human (or helmeted) characters all the way down, mold reuse galore. I can't imagine they'd do Darth Talon, Oola, Willrow Hood, Gargan, Ephant Mon, Amanaman, BoShek, or really anybody without a lot of lines thanks to the influence of the Mouse Consumer Products and the desire to seemingly sell only characters that can move massive numbers, instead of merely good numbers. It has nothing to do with morals, it has everything to do with bean counters and people making decisions who probably never actually played with Star Wars action figures as children. (Today's 30-year-old executive was born in 1993.) What may have been amazing for Kenner in the 1980s (and 1990s) is not going to cover the needs of Hasbro in 2023 - there are too many mouths to feed, employees and shareholders, for them to want to "waste a SKU" on something that's guaranteed to sell out if made in what would be a decent quantity. They need more recognition, so you'll get another Cassian Andor and not a comic-only de-canonized Sith lady unless there's existing tooling to reuse. And I suppose they could get a lot of mileage out of an Oola/Darth Talon body, were they so inclined.

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2. At the 2023 Dutch Comic Con they were selling Star Wars Vintage Collection Rancor Keeper from The Book of Boba Fett (with the actor's face of Danny Trejo) is this new version just a Custom or will it be sold by Hasbro?
--Eric

While I can't read the fine print, I can tell you it's a fan-made item. It looks a lot like this 3-D printed model, but most importantly, let's look at the big details. For starters, it appears to be a retro-style 5-points-of-articulation figure - and the cardback doesn't have the sticker, and it doesn't have faux weathering. The card art is an illustration rather than a photo. It doesn't appear to be super glossy. There's so sign of a tray to cradle the figure in the plastic bubble. I'm sure someone will say "no, it's real!" but this one is not.

If Hasbro has plans to do Danny Trejo, Rancor Keeper, I've not seen any mention of it yet. He's one of my top most-wanted humans from recent Star Wars projects and I'm not sure why he isn't coming out yet. You'd think he has a built-in audience of film buffs, but I guess not everybody ran out to buy their very own Werner Herzog toy last year either.

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Hey, a four day weekend? Or nine-day, at some companies. Or two, if your boss sucks. As of my writing this I haven't gone out to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny yet and I may just wait for streaming. I'm not getting the feeling that this is going to have legs, especially for toys, so get what you can while you can.

June was a bust for space toy news. May was pretty good, but given the fact we've had a couple of Star Wars series run their course in 2023 and had a 40th anniversary of Return of the Jedi, it's hard to square how we could be getting so much yet also seem so generally blah about it all. The endless spout of content from the Mouse competing for oxygen probably doesn't help the lack of anything feeling like a real event, mostly because what we were used to - a big movie (or TV show) event launching alongside a toy line that went for a few months to a year (or more) - is a thing of the distant past. There's more coming for The Mandalorian, but there would have to be. And since a toy line didn't launch with the series, fans of this kind of stuff will have seen Secret Invasion, Strange New Worlds, and many, many other competing-for-your-nerd-dollars projects before something cool like a Phase 3 Boba Concept-flavored Dark Trooper makes it out on shelves. (Just kidding. We all know we'll probably never see it on shelves.)

In just a few weeks we may have a more normal San Diego Comic-Con. Maybe. It was described to me as eerily quiet and at times, kind of dead last year. I may also be on a panel on Thursday July 20, which I believe is going to be great if you need a place to stretch out and take a nap.

As of right now, Hasbro hasn't announced any exclusives, Lucasfilm has reportedly pulled out of Hall H and possibly all sorts of panels, and Hasbro is expected to be there. These events are usually great for younger fans to celebrate their stuff too, and I can definitely tell you it's not all about my generation and being the weirdo that I am, I was mostly into the generation before me anyway. I assume at some point the eventually-diminishing toy presence should be gobbled up by things like more anime and video games, more streamers, or maybe more streamer gear, but who knows? BanDai has a massive presence this year spanning multiple booths, while Hasbro is still down to just one - there's no dedicated shop booth.

Word has it that some of the big toy companies are going to be a little quiet this week with the holiday and other happenings. I'm expecting awesome reveals from Super7 and Funko and Hasbro any minute now. With Star Wars Rebels turning 10 next year, I assume we'll probably get some 3 3/4-inch action there. (Or maybe for Ahsoka.) Hasbro already burned through photoreal reissues of The Black Series figures, so I assume anything we get will be live-action Ahsoka or perhaps newly sculpted alternate versions.

Also on the horizon are Acolyte, Skeleton Crew, and a bunch of other stuff that may have been quietly pushed out an airlock. I haven't heard anything about the Droids Disney+ movie or Lando streaming series in ages, but more Andor and The Bad Batch are coming. And games, and comics, and other stuff. It's a bounty of riches, to the point where I've long since given up trying to keep up with their various print publishing programs. Star Wars competing with Star Wars for fan dollars can add up quick, especially when something like Disney+ is equal to what fans used to pay for comics every month. Sure, you don't own anything, but it's a lot of stuff to watch and when you've got a lot of stuff to watch, you probably don't feel as much of a need to run out and buy a pack of trading cards, or a comic adaptation, or every last action figure.

So, maybe I'll see you there. Here's that link to the exhibit hall for 2023, and also keep in mind that New York Toy Fair is a mere 2 months after Comic-Con. I think most of us are in the "we've almost started" phase of event planning, so I am hoping the big guys have a good showing in the Big Apple come the end of September. I assume this is going to be a big put-up-or-shut-up year for the business, especially as we've seen the decline of E3 we may soon find out Toy Fair is superfluous. From an industry perspective we had three and a half years without a major in-person B2B event, so it will be nice to see everybody again, but I can't imagine there's going to be a whole heck of a lot left to show the general public come September/October for 2023. It's probably time to showcase 2024, and for Star Wars that has typically meant a coy shrug that translates to "wait and see!" and then you don't see much.

--Adam Pawlus

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