1. I've been a pretty big fan of Hasbro's Epic Hero Series figures, as something that's budget, but still good. What I find curious is that the range's Marvel offerings are all 9POA, with most of their joints being universal ones, giving them all a pretty big range of motion for the scale and price, while their Star Wars offerings are all traditional 5POA, despite being the same price. Any insight on the reasoning behind that choice? Is this a case of "we're going to do the Star Wars ones the traditional way, none of this high-falutin' modern universal jointage," something about the profit margins on the Star Wars ones being thinner, meaning they need to skimp on the joints/partscount, or something else?
--Anthony

Fun story, I thought the same thing, and I was wrong! I asked Hasbro about this last year and I was told "we're going to bring all of our Epic Hero figures in line with each other." Being a pessimist, I took this to mean "Marvel will have 5 joints." Nope! Instead, Hasbro gave Star Wars figures elbows and knees and fancy hips and shoulders! Isn't that exciting?

If you've picked up the new 2025 figures, the vehicle-with-figures (anything after the N-1) have the extra joints. Most new figures have extra joints - but some transitional figures are still coming out, like Captain Brutus (5 joints) and SM-33 (fancy elbows and telescoping forearms, but otherwise 5 joints.) The new molds for Vader, a mech pilot Stormtrooper, Mando, Dark Trooper, Obi-Wan Clone Armor, Pilot Luke, and so on have as many joints as possible. Even Yoda is as good as a Yoda of that size can be reasonably expected to be, with swivel feet and wrists plus bend-and-swivel elbows.

Hasbro would probably be well-served to put more focus into the newly-renamed Epic World of Action line, but 2024 product is also on sale at a lot of major US retailers (on clearance) right now. A small line with no momentum is a hard sell, but if they decided to make next year's The Mandalorian & Grogu movie line heavily focus on this format? I think fans of all ages will give it a look and should give it a try. They're very good action figures for the money, even if they aren't precisely 3 3/4-inch scale (they're a smidgen bigger at 4-inches.) Adjusted for inflation, they're priced similarly to the figures of the 1990s with more than twice as many moving parts. How Hasbro does it, I don't know. If you can get past the fact they aren't on vintage cardbacks they're excellent toys.

Obviously I don't expect collectors to embrace a new format when Hasbro has multiple concurrent alternatives, but it's a good segment for new fans or returning fans. Why? It covers the major ships and characters. It's cheap. It's about half the price of Vintage, the same price per figure as Retro, and there are a lot more parts and pieces. Yoda even comes with a tiny vehicle. I'm sad I'm not a small child, I would have adored that tiny starfighter in the 1980s.

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2. With the ongoing threat of tariffs, do you think this might cause Hasbro to postpone any announcement for a planned Star Wars HasLab this year?

If they do go ahead with some announcement, do you think the increased price will scare off any potential backers?
--Chris

A clarification: in case anyone is unaware, there is no threat of tariffs. There are tariffs. The United States has had a tariff schedule in place since February 4 for inbound shipments on the boats. Items coming in to the country are now subject to tariffs. Some items at some stores are seeing price increases already, and if you haven't seen them yet? It's coming, and some stores and companies ate it already.

To you, I throw this back: picture something you really want, and at a $500 price tag. Would you pay it? What if it had a 20% mark-up? How about 30%? Will anxiety cause you to reach for your wallet, like we saw during COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021? I do not know if this tariff situation is temporary. Is it temporary for a few weeks, for the duration of the administration, or could it even be permanent? For those reasons, I don't think any company will abandon plans because of a price increase. If Hasbro did the development for a product, they're going to want to see if they can make it work. There may be no benefit in waiting - price increases don't need government encouragement to happen. Hasbro does not own the Chinese factories it uses, and those prices can go up at pretty much any time.

My hunch is the high-end middle-aged customer for The Vintage Collection toys is insulated from this sort of thing, as long as Hasbro delivers compelling product. If Hasbro makes something you as a fan really want, and you're a collector, you will find money. You will sell something you no longer want, you will skip a fancy coffee, or maybe you'll give up a streaming service or two for a little while. None of this will bring manufacturing back to America, because very few action figures (or vehicles) were manufactured here. Going through all of my stuff a few years ago, I was surprised to find some 1980s Fisher-Price Adventure People vehicles were supposedly made in the USA, and were largely made without any paint. The figures were made in Hong Kong.

I do not know if collectors will eat the 20%+ price increase(s) for The Black Series, and I don't know if The Retro Collection base is big enough to support a HasLab yet. I assume the 6-inch line has to be given the right product, which HasLab has not yet offered. The latter might be an older and smaller audience, but my feeling is they're far more likely to buy two or three of a thing if it tickles their fancy. Would a 20% mark-up stop me from buying a $200-$300 HasLab with a legit Kenner Vlix in it? No, I'd probably still buy two. Would it stop fans from buying a giant 6-inch scale X-Wing? It might... we don't know just how big of an item that group might want to take yet.

Based on the news lately, there is no reason to expect a break from tariffs on Chinese goods. As such I assume we could see how HasLab campaigns are run - perhaps it will make more sense to tool the item and decrease the waiting period, if only because the cost of landed goods might be easier to figure out if it's "we can have these to you in six months" rather than trying to predict the economy if importing an item in 18 months.

Could Hasbro make things in America? Maybe, but look at what we do get and have gotten previously. Most toys that are made in America are printed paper goods - board games - sometimes with plastic/metal pieces produced overseas. Companies that actually manufacture things in America typically produce simpler, unpainted toys. It is my hunch that maybe Hasbro could produce unpainted toys with stickers - in other words, The Retro Collection ships and playsets like Kenner used to make - in a few years if they ramp up the facilities. Due to the intricate paint on HasLab The Vintage Collection items, I assume those will never be made anywhere with our cost of living until automation removes the human part of the manufacturing equation and the "where" of manufacturing (minus the supply chain) is rendered moot.

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FIN

Could I tug on your sleeve again this week? I hope you've been enjoying this site which will always be free to read. Having said that, I do have bills to pay and if you've got a dollar a month to kick in, would you consider Patreon? I'm not asking for $5 or $10 or anything you might miss - just $1 would be great, to help offset recent fees like replacing a broken camera, upgrading my 10-year-old iMac, paying to renew my domain names, and paying the monthly hosting bill. I'm not making any money off of all of this (I am not against it), so if you like the site enough to donate a dollar a month, I would appreciate it. And if you just want to keep reading it, thank you for continuing to read it.

One of the things that's bad about Star Wars' enduring popularity is we went from getting a new 2-hour movie every 3 years - plus or minus a decade - to getting 10-20 hours of new TV shows to watch per year. We're probably going to get another 10 hours with just Andor in the next two months, which I've found makes it really hard to find time to do what we did as kids - rewatch these things a million times. It's less fun being a casual fan of things, when what I want was to know every last alien creature's name and have photos to know who's who. I watched Star Wars a few weeks ago (still excellent) for the first time since - I think - maybe 2015. Last week I put in The Empire Strikes Back, which is still a lot of fun but there are things that seem a little goofy as I get older. This of course makes sense, as these movies were made for a much younger audience who generally turned their nose up at the original trilogy as they aged. (Kids who saw Return of the Jedi at a single-digit age seemed to like it a lot more than teenagers or 20somethings. Or has been my experience. Hey, I like Ewoks and my most-wanted figure is from a Saturday morning cartoon.)

As a movie, it's a fantastic one. Since I loved the movie as a kid, I have a hard time watching it with fresh eyes. I can tell the crowd scenes are smaller than we get in modern films, and that the ship battles are a little light on participants - but what's on camera generally looks good. As a toy line, it was also incredible if you were around in 1980-1983. Maybe you didn't get everything you wanted at the size you wanted it in, but Kenner absolutely knocked it out of the park with most of the major hero costume changes, a few new action features, and a lot of playsets. Sure, many were cardboard or in their Micro Collection, but they were all pretty great. Heck, the movie had some spectacular troopers, two Rebel medic droids, six bounty hunters, and some more vehicle pilots. And a lot of vehicles. When Star Wars figures came back in the 1990s, there weren't a lot left to ask to be made. Fans have been asking for Smuggler Vest Lando, sure. There were some Imperial officers and Rebel troopers, and a couple of pilots, yes. But we largely had a collection of figures and toys by 1983 that was "good enough" and it was great to finally get Bespin Escape Leia and Dagobah Luke, and then Smuggler Lando and Bespin Torture Han Solo. And then Sev and Dak and Snowspeeder Wedge and Luke and so on.

In light of The Retro Collection, The Empire Strike Back a movie where my "wish list" is limited mostly to the aforementioned weird characters. I'd be thrilled to pieces to see Hasbro crank out faux Kenner Dagobah Luke and Bespin Escape Leia... but also Wiorkettle and Treva Horme would be a lot of fun. (And sure, Bacta Luke would be a hoot.) Since The Retro Collection has run since 2019 with exactly 0 vehicles and carry cases, I'm not hopeful - but I would love to see Hasbro cash in on a round of remakes. Who wouldn't love another crack at the original AT-AT, AT-ST, Dagoah playset, or so on and so forth?

Kenner and later Hasbro really did a bang-up job making those toys, remaking those toys, and improving them to the point where I'm actually genuinely happy with what we already have. Maybe Hasbro could make younger fans' (or some older ones) days by bringing back each and every old toy for a limited run, because who couldn't use four Hoth playset remakes?

It'll never happen - perhaps it's too late - but I'd love to see Hasbro, Mattel, and anybody else still in business put together a toy aisle planogram that is effectively "here is a toy store in 1981" or another vintage year of their choosing. Obviously you can't make absolutely everything again - some brands just aren't worth the trouble - but it would be a great way to get people back into stores and maybe, just maybe, give someone a reason to build an actual toy store again.

--Adam Pawlus

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