1. Usually this time of year we are hunting at Walgreens for a Black Series exclusive. I'm pretty on top of things I thought, is there something slated for a Walgreens exclusive this year? How about Amazon.com?
--Frank

This was written before the answer came up on Friday - so Frank knows, and you do too, that Walgreens will soon have The Black Series Clone Trooper Lieutenant. That's the blue-stripe Attack of the Clones trooper, which more or less rounds out the Episode II Clone army. Unless, of course, Hasbro wants to do "toy color" bright green, or bring on the battle damage.

 

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2. Do you know if the "Galaxy of Adventures" 5-inch line is dead? Hasbro announced future figures, but is there any chance they actually make it out? I really like the Boba Fett and the Ahsoka figures, and would also likely get the Yoda one.
--Greg

At Toy Fair I asked several people at both the Hasbro media day and also the Hasbro day I went to for other reasons about these figures. I asked "So these guys are going to be Europe-only things not distributed to the US, right?" and was told "No, these are coming here." I haven't seen any evidence of them coming to the USA so I assume they may have been in error - but that was and is the only official answer I keep getting, so maybe they'll show up somewhere, somehow, at some price. I would encourage you to import them if you're concerned as they're starting to trickle out internationally, which is usually bad for US distribution hopes.

3. Last year at SDCC it was rumored that Galactic Trading Post (GTP) was entering a licensing agreement with LFL/Disney and it would seem that nothing ever came of it. Now that Hasbro is making more dioramas such as the Carbon-Freezing Chamber and Tantive IV in addition to the successful Jabba's Palace environment do you think GTP will be kicked to the curb?
--Eric

I have never heard anything about an official license - just a couple people wrote in to this column asking if there was one. (For all I know it was to get on the radar of some people.) Based on conversations I've had with Hasbro relating sub-licensing this kind of thing over the years, my guess was always that such a thing was unlikely - Hasbro does not want to sub-contract any of its toy stuff out, or lose out on a price point to a competitor.

It would also not entirely surprise me if the sudden arrival of playset/dioramas could have been a result of discussions with a company like that - Disney, Marvel, and Lucasfilm have been known to slice off a chunk of a license if it isn't being used. Sometimes the restrictions are by scale, by price point, by what kind of retailers distribute them, and so on. I don't believe it's a coincidence Hasbro got a $79.99 collector figure out on the market shortly after Funko stopped doing their $79.99 Marvel and Star Wars Hikari figures - which were $30 more than the other licenses and, as far as I can tell, probably driven by maintaining hold on a $80 price point chunk of a license. (Similarly Mezco has done some fantastic Marvel, DC, Fox, Universal, and other characters in its One:12 scale line-up.)

Given the high cost of royalties to do a Star Wars product - especially if there's a double-license involved - it would not surprise me if pursuit of the license proved unfruitful. The prices were already high as it was.

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FIN

So! We finally got a Tantive IV after 43 years, and it's... fine! It's a big hallway and you can connect multiple units together. Hasbro has been taking this approach to its playsets, coming up with some creative ideas like the Bespin Freeze Chamber giving you the option of a "small" or "XL" playset. The Jabba's Palace one in and of itself isn't terribly exciting - but if they build it out, it's going to be something you're glad you bought. The jury is still out. I don't know how many Tantive IV sets I'll be buying - maybe two? - but it's nothing if not interesting.

There's not a lot of meat on that bone, but including a trooper in them was absolutely the right move. It probably defrays the cost of buying them individually a bit. Collectors can sell off the figure (or playset) if they're army-building one or the other. And it will hopefully lead to more ambitious projects.

Like most of you, I've been hoarding figures for years in hopes that we'd get a Death Star of some substance. And we didn't. Between Rogue One and the 40th anniversary of the original film I assumed that would have been in the cards a few years ago, but now we've got the fifth anniversary of Rogue One coming up and goodness knows if and when it will make a good fit for HasLab. I'd be happy to see some stackable, piecemeal sets released over the years but that's probably a ways off.

--Adam Pawlus

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