1. What mainline release surprised you most in that "never thought they'd make that" way? I'm thinking of regular releases, not Haslab, exclusives or the like. For me, it was the Republic Attack Shuttle from Clone Wars. I recall its dual ship/base mode gimmick ended up not being for everyone, and it went on clearance pretty early around here, but I always liked the design in the show, and it kind of reminded me of the old Kenner M.A.S.K. franchise.
--Tim

There are two characters I assumed I'd never get a Hasbro figure for - Vlix, and Jaxxon. And now I've got a Jaxxon, which is still mind-blowing to me. (It's not what I pictured - I was hoping for an off-model Walrus Man-esque retro figure, but I'm still very happy with two Lukes bashed together with a bunny head.) The Retro Collection similarly amazed with Tarkin and a whole Mando wave - I assumed if we got out of the prequels without them, we'd never see the format revisited.

The Republic Attack Shuttle was an amazing toy, which reminded me a lot of the old Battle Beasts bases in how it unfolded and had a lot of fun play features. It probably helped that Hasbro was riding high on $100+ vehicles and wanted to keep the price point in circulation, resulting in oddities like the MTT too. One of the things I genuinely miss that seems to have been drummed out by fan barking is play features on vehicles and, on the whole, any of the scales I collect. I know Nerf darts weren't for everybody, but as great as the Barge and Razor Crest are, we're essentially buying doll houses for our action figures now. You can't pick them up and "whoosh" around with them easily, they don't make noises or fire things, but your figures can look great standing or sitting in them. Provided the figures have cloth capes and sufficient articulation, of course.

At this point I'd say anything can happen as long as a market exists for it. Namco released a port of Pac-Man Championship Edition that's designed to run on Famicom and NES hardware (but only released it for Switch, but... there are ways to get it running on original hardware.) A label out of Brooklyn put out a double live LP for the Canadian outfit UJ3RK5 a couple of years ago. They brought back Crystal Pepsi and Jolt briefly. At some point Hasbro will undoubtedly make a 1980s-style Transformers toy. Everybody is an aging consumer and companies tend to find a way to get our money somehow - pushing the nostalgia buttons can be an easy way to make your quarterly goals.

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2. So do you think it confuses hasbro that people will buy retro 5 POA figures but always moan and complaint about 5POA movie figures? If anything the last few years of 5POA figures were pretty detailed! So are the collectors themselves to be blamed for zero figure line for ROTS? Mandalorian?
--Colin

Not without a staff change. Or possibly new forms of production to bring costs down.

Hasbro raises and lowers prices all the time, sometimes giving us more articulation, or less. Sometimes giving us more gear, or less. Some lines it seems got more expensive because it was likely the market would accept it (G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra and The Phantom Menace 3 3/4-inch figure lines were cited on earnings calls as being situations where there was expressed regret over doing that, too.) Our last "kid" line was marked up $2 and the voice chips were removed with the terrible reissue line Galaxy of Adventures, where we got about three waves where I could only argue one of the figures may be new enough to be interesting - and it was just a Stormtrooper with a missing pauldron.

At this time Hasbro isn't even thinking about 6-inch or 3 3/4-inch figures as a platform for kids for the near future. There's a 6-inch kid line but it's being given minimal support. Mission Fleet is the current kid range and it seems to be doing OK, more or less. I don't know if it's making good money or just meeting expectations, but there are absolutely no plans for another kid line.

Now when it comes to the autopsy over the 3 3/4-inch line, usually you can point to "some executive didn't want to do it" but there's also a trail of unmet expectations. This isn't the same as a failure - having unsold overstock is bad. And there was unsold overstock sold for the first four new movie lines, and I just saw some more The Last Jedi stuff rotting at a 99 Cents Only store in June. I don't think the lines got better as time went on - Rogue One was a pretty great mix of new guys with few returning favorites. The Force Awakens was packed with good figures, albeit not in the order I would have released them (Stormtrooper Finn and Old Man Han should've been Force Friday releases.) The Last Jedi kicked off with more of the same, plus Paige Tico (why) and Rose Tico not coming off as terribly exciting aliens or droids or troopers. By the time we got to Solo, wave 1 - or 2 - didn't even have Han in it. It also had a grab bag of older movie figures that fans could buy on clearance. The whole thing was a planning mess, and it probably had more than a little to do with Disney dictating which characters could get figures and when. I can't imagine Hasbro wouldn't have insisted on Han in wave one of The Force Awakens or especially Solo, so by the time we got to The Mandalorian nobody wanted to do a 3 3/4-inch line - even though it would've been a slam-dunk. They don't think in micro terms (i.e., Boba Fett sells), they just see "big picture" things (this size has been doing bad, nobody stops to ask what it might be that caused it to flop.)

Retro Kenner figures are a separate beast. If Hasbro put out Mando with 5 joints on a Kenner cardback, they wouldn't be able to keep them in stock anywhere. But all they did were 70s style, and you can't find that anywhere anyway, so yeah. That's life.

I don't think you'll ever see a 3 3/4-inch kid line again. I'm a little annoyed that we're not seeing TVC waves of just The Mandalorian figures - complete with reships of Mando himself to Targets and Walmarts. But I don't run toy lines. I'm just the guy who buys things.

3. Does the clone 4 pack from the Bad Batch basically serve as a defacto unofficial announcement that Wrecker, Hunter, Tech, Echo, and Crosshair will receive the 3.75” treatment? How can you have clones with Bad Batch card backs but no Bad Batch?
--Derek

As of my writing this, the main group hasn't been announced yet - and I'd say nothing is guaranteed. I would expect them in the near future, but it's not like Hasbro went out of their way to make Mando easy to get. A bunch of repaints (and retools) they could crank out in a jiffy make for a good exclusive, but anything could happen. Hasbro could axe The Vintage Collection if they wanted (don't panic, the line is planned to last for a while) but it's not like there isn't precedent for this kind of thing. The old Ewoks cartoon line had 2 Ewoks, 4 Duloks, and lacked most of the main characters. It took the Solo line four waves before they put Han Solo in it.

All I'm saying is there's no limit to what may seem like an obvious move not being the obvious movie.

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FIN

So! this week we got a look at the PulseCon exclusives, and it's certainly interesting to see what constitutes a (would-be) convention exclusive these days. A Kenner-style Black Series-sized Cantina Showdown Cinema Scene with Dr. Evazan, Ponda Baba, and Obi-Wan Kenobi is a neat idea - as is the bar sections, which will no doubt be infuriating to obtain. A 6-inch Trapper Wolf is also exciting, but it surprises me more that he isn't a figure for Celebration next year. Rounding out the herd is a The Vintage Collection Emperor Palpatine with Throne, which is also pretty great. Convention items seems to be veering away from oddball releases, and are more mainstream characters or plussed-up first-to-market opportunities for Star Wars. But which is which? We'll find out soon, I hope. Hasbro never delivered on its single-carded Triple Zero or BT-1 figures.

Since Star Wars and Transformers (and records and retro video games and... everything) are slow these days, I've been digging into my Playmobil stash. It's good. If you haven't been paying attention, we're selling A-Team, Star Trek, and James Bond sets at work to go with the existing Ghostbusters, Dreamworks Dragons, and Back to the Future sets. (The Heidi sets seem to be remaining exclusive to Germany... and I am a little irate I missed out on South Korea's exclusive Starbucks Playmobil premiums.)

LEGO and Playmobil are probably the two best toy lines, because at their core, they're always toy lines. The Playmobil figures today are largely compatible (and scale with) everything since 1974, and LEGO figures are largely the same build since their debut in 1978. I've picked up a lot of ends over the years, often because they were strange, or fun, or on levels of clearance hitherto unimagined by man. They used to be so unpopular that the clearance sets at Ross could be items that retailed for $40-$50, and they're just sitting at $6.99. I tell you, some people have no taste. These things are great. Right now I've got a cartoon-style Peter Venkman sitting in a space vehicle I got on clearance at Target for four bucks in the late 1990s.

Playmobil very rarely has recognizable or named characters, so their transition into entertainment and sports licenses has been a gradual one. With all the villas, ghost pirate ships, cowboy sets, and so forth, it's not a stretch to have the Ecto-1 pull up to a hotel and pretend it's haunted, or to have the DeLorean wind up in the old west. Now there's a $500 Enterprise, which could also presumably beam down to the midcentury Rome TV studio or any number of playsets resembling a studio backlot. It's got a lot of potential.

My guess is we'll never see Star Wars in this line, but I've always been fond of it because functionally, they're a lot like the old Kenner figures. They stand and sit well, and their fists are always capable of grasping accessories. They're a little generic in spots, and frequently light on facial detail, but if we ever did see Star Wars in it, at least we wouldn't have to gripe about how yet another company failed to capture Harrison Ford's likeness.

Toys that are meant to be played with, and ongoing toy lines, are two of my favorite things. The only thing that pushed me out of LEGO was the fact it got too big (and too promo-intensive) to keep up with, but everything's fantastic. Since I never once thought about being a Playmobil completist, it continues to be a lot of fun. If I see a $3 bag of orangutans at Tuesday Morning, I'll buy it. If I miss a promo set for a German museum, it's not the end of the world. Unlike Star Wars, where missing a figure I want always feels like some sort of moral failing on my part that I can't get over.

Toy hunting can be a hassle, but the last year has been particularly harsh with restrictions on stores, shortages on shipments, and a seemingly rabid-er than ever appetite for toys. I'm hoping we're in a 1990s style bubble where a bunch of things will get dumped cheap later - and I can catch up on some stuff - but that may not happen. Well, at least I got a weird retro robot with a glider for six bucks the other week. I'm having fun, and I hope you still are too.

--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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