1. Are the new Star Wars figures getting washed in hot water? They are tiny! The pegs are usually bare by the time I hit the stores. I finally saw a Vintage Koska Reeves. I literally thought someone swapped a Mission Fleet figure for her. I went to a LCS and saw a few more Vintage figures. Definitely on the small side. Can we even call this the 3 3/4 scale anymore? Surely current figures look out of place next to POTJ and prequel figures?
--Patrick

This is one of those situations where you can't please everybody. Hasbro has been trying to get "scale" right for years, and generally they get a lot of complaints. The original Kenner line was off a lot, but that was the "correct" perceptions with a lot of fans - so 1995 R2-D2 was too big, 2010 R2-D2 was too small, and so on and so forth.

I assume what we're getting now are closer to "real scale" but I don't know how tall these people are up close. Vader and Chewie should be huge, Luke should be around 3 3/4-inches, and everything should be scaled relative to Mark Hamill. A lot of the actresses they hire tend to be on the shorter side - so the figures could also be similarly not tall. They could fudge the scale like Kenner, but people complained about that once they noticed, too. Personally I think the old Kenner scale had a lot of benefits in that figures could sit and fit in most of the ships, but some people prefer true height.

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2. Holly Bossk-Man when will Hasbro run out of ways to change the color/make a variant of Boba Fett? Where is black-n-white comic accurate Boba Fett? Revenge of the Jedi card variant (please no) Boba Fett? Deluxe Boba Fett with Bacta tank? 1/2 retro 1/2 Vintage Boba Fett? Anywho... With 2023 being a ROTJ/Solo/Clone Wars anniversary year (if my math is right), how looks your crystal ball / wishful dreams (for all things Hasbro Star Wars)?
--Dan

I feel like we're now getting the toy line we should've had a year ago. I assume Hasbro is making up for The Book of Boba Fett and probably started to develop all of these figures when it kicked off in late 2021, rather than when it was announced at the end of The Mandalorian season two. Today premium-priced Boba Fett figures don't make a lot of sense, but the weeks before the show kicked off, they could've probably sold a ton of them. I assume package variants aren't far off, and even a joke idea like Boba Fett with Bacta Tank might actually sell. You could throw in Thundercat and Timothy Olyphant and other characters for a bigger gift set - but odds are Hasbro would not invest any real money in tooling all-new figures solely for a gift set these days. I'm mostly angry about the pricing for the new repaints - there's no reason to charge that much for old tooling other than "because we can, and because you'll pay it."

So what's coming for 2023? My guess is Hasbro is being stymied by Disney who's probably keeping their mouths shut and not letting people actually develop product lines that can launch day and date with the shows, in part because Disney+ has no idea when they're going to be streaming most of these shows. They're not keeping dates secret because it's fun - they're doing it because they haven't decided on them yet. Back when movies happened, you picked a date a year (or more) in advance and you cold rally your marketing and toys around that. I really think they should consider going back to that, even if it means disrupting the TV show schedule. For example, let's say The Mandalorian Season 1 had a target date of March 1 - but the show didn't get completed. So what do you do? You get episode 1 of the season done, you release it, and you pull the "come back in 2/3/whatever weeks for the next installment" thing we sometimes saw with TV shows in the 1990s. People are still interested, your TV show gets to remain relevant and part of the conversation even longer, and you've got more time to sell more toys. What Disney is doing now to its licensees is really very silly and costing them a lot of money and probably has made a lot of fans just not care to wait 12-18 months for figures.

My hopes for what's coming in 2023?

A new 3 3/4-inch HasLab Vehicle. Next year is the 10th anniversary of Star Wars Rebels and this summer is the alleged debut of Ahsoka. I'd like to see the item be the Ghost vehicle in the $300-$350 range. (If it's $400, my interest will plummet unless it comes with a full suite of new action figures to drive it.)

The Black Series. Personally I kind of hope it ends - but it sells well, some people love it, and the repaints are just dreadful. We'll see stuff for the new shows, but seeing how blah Return of the Jedi: 40th Anniversary figures have been? I don't have high hopes that I'm going to be delighted. Where's my Nikto? Where's a Klaatu? Can I get one lousy stinking new alien from Jabba's Palace that isn't a repack? Or, if we keep pulling at this string, a third non-human alien from the Cantina? This is probably the year I give up on 6-inch entirely (again, personally) because there's not enough of a cohesive brand statement. "Troopers and repaints" is a turn-off.

A cohesive brand statement. I am tired of them splitting the line in two - or 12. Even if it means no more "classic" stuff, I'd rather see Hasbro put their eggs in fewer basket. A basket with one or two eggs is a crappy basket. Last year we got 6 (or fewer) figures per scale for most of the movies/shows other than The Mandalorian. I can't pretend I give a rip about collecting toys from Obi-Wan Kenobi if the extent of that effort is a couple of Inquisitors, Darth Vader, rando fascist guys, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. I need aliens, I need background robots, I need to care about something. If Hasbro said I had to pick between toys from 1-2 shows I may not even personally like, and the shallow spread we're getting? I'd rather the line grow story-specific segments and be something special and complete (and maybe even not for me) than trying to be all things to all fans of all ages, and you can't please all of the people all of the time.

The Retro Collection being an exception. The six-figure lines of The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi last year hit the mark - I just wish they did a second wave of each. "Here are all the main guys at once, in one wave, enjoy" is exactly how I feel Star Wars should go. My fear is they'll end the line after the previous two waves both got marked down, but we know Star Wars and Return of the Jedi reissue waves are coming. That's good! I hope they make a lot. In my dreams we'd get waves for The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and The Mandalorian season two/three... in roughly that order. I'd love "Kenner" live-action Rebels, a Fennec Shand, a Cobb Vanth, and so on and so forth. And if there's budget, Andor would be nice too. But, again, I assume the line could end pretty quickly due to enthusiasm for the segment certainly seeming low with low dollars due to their price points. It's a good value.

A 3 3/4-inch kid's line would be great. My dream would be to see something closer to the Spin Master Batman line, but on black and silver (but not specifically "Vintage") cardbacks, covering kid stuff, collector stuff, and everything. Rest Vintage for a few years in favor of a $9.99 or $10.99 almost-but-not-super-articulated line jam-packed with stuff for casual fans and maybe 1-2 weirdos per wave, with new waves 6-7 times a year. It's worth a try - we had two poor "kid line" efforts of repacks before they declared the format dead. That's not the market speaking, that's an assassination with Celebrate the Saga and before it, the clear canned Galaxy of Adventures figure-with-comic sets at $10. While it's true the numbers near the end were bad, reissuing the same product in new packaging at a higher price will do that.

The Vintage Collection has been kind of a drag - mostly because you see Hasbro is a brilliant genius when it comes to making brand-new figures, and then gives us a ton of reissues. Reva, Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Fennec Shand, Bo-Katan Kryze, and so many other figures are some of the best things we've ever seen at this size. But they're far and few between, and hard to find, and Hasbro makes a lot more money just putting the same old figures out in newish packaging. I hope they put an emphasis on more new stuff in 2023. There's more profit in reissues, but if you have decades-long fans kind of shrugging about buying those things again, it's just not a good thing for anybody.

Mission Fleet will probably toddle along and die in 2024. Is my guess.

Young Jedi Adventures supposedly has a new toy line coming which I assume will come and go within two years. Why? PJ Masks came and went under Hasbro pretty quickly and I haven't seen a preschool line hit big and last well at Hasbro outside the venerable Transformers Rescue Bots which has been doing extremely well. Most other lines change scale or change format - if it's not a runaway hit with a vocal (angry) collector base, Hasbro tends to mix things up. It's possible Young Jedi Adventures could be a phenomenon, but I assume it'll serve as a gateway to parents just showing their kids the movies, and then the parents will get angry when kids end up loving the existing TV shows and cartoons instead. But I could be wrong - Spidey and His Amazing Friends (the new show, not the 1980s one) has been doing really well as a toy line.

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FIN

Why yes I do need new questions!

I'm sure I come off as cranky this week, but it's hard to get excited about a line when everything gets dumped all at once, and a lot of it is reruns, and store shelves are clogged with some older stuff nobody wants. We've been through this exact thing before many times, and the line is still going. I remember in 1995 when all you saw were R2-D2, Chewbacca, Han Solo, and Darth Vader. Or in 1996 when it started to be Hoth Han and Dagobah Luke. And in 1998 and 1999 when stores had dozens if not hundreds of unsold 1997 figures. It's happening again right now with some figures hitting clearance rather quickly, in part because it's hard for stores to know what fans want due to missed demand and Hasbro is probably trying to make sure everybody is happy, when a slightly-hungry marketplace is your safest bet. But people are still hungry now for the good stuff, so all I can say is Hasbro: thank you for making things available, and I don't envy you trying to predict what it is we as customers actually want. I've heard the things we tell you. It's tough.

Right now we're at a weird place, because Andor has hardcore fans who think it's the best thing ever as well as people who tuned out. The Mandalorian is coming, and odds are Disney is keeping a lot of it under wraps and I can't imagine we'll see a lot on-shelf for the show, from the show. Back in 1978 this sort of thing was acceptable, but in 2023 it's downright confusing that you would make fans wait up to an entire year for main characters from some of your shows. But that's the perceived value of secrecy, I guess, nobody wants to step on the toes of the process that begat Baby Yoda even though we probably won't see that sort of cultural touchstone in Star Wars again between now and whenever it is I retire/die.

New York Toy Fair! Is in September, so in February we probably won't see much more than our regularly scheduled sporadic drops. And I'm OK with that.

So right now, I don't have a lot of Star Wars to excite you about, but I may have some 3 3/4-inch tangents to entertain and amuse.

	My pal Seth Longmire of Orbitdyne is making a 3-D printed Cantina playset for 3 3/4-inch figures. It's very good, I've seen it up close and personal. It has lights, it holds figures, and while I am normally biased against 3-D printing the texture actually works well for it. It's not for sale yet but I encourage you to stalk him on Instagram and his other platforms for updates on this some excellent Sofubi figures which he hand-paints and were molded here in the USA, or so I'm told. I have one of his HEAP figures that hangs out with me in my photo studio, and it's a big fellow.
	Complete stranger Healey Made released a Trooper (Bulloch) figure that I am told was sculpted by an ex-Kenner sculptor... and I believe it. The $25 3 3/4-inch figure sold out but is oodles of fun and has painted gold buttons and all sorts of little details. You should also stalk him on Instagram for updates, and I recommend this one. I got mine and love it.
	People who I have met and enjoy their company Mel Birnkrant and Gary Schaeffer put out new The Outer Space Men figures. These 3 3/4-inch figures are inspired by 1960s bendable pre-Moon-landing toys, but are in new colors, and two of them are 21st-century new characters. They look like background extras in the old Marvel Star Wars comics and fit right in with your giant 3-D printed Cantina playsets. They're not cheap, but they showed up and I really love them too. I recommend checking them out. The new Luna Eclipse is like a black light poster in the plastic flesh with proportions you don't normally see without the use of Photoshop or many liters of saline.

--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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