1. The Star Tours StarSpeeder 1000 sold in the Disney parks and the Disney Store website is a rather large vehicle that includes 2 figures, lights, sounds and even a LCD screen showing video all for $350.00. It is a very impressive vehicle for a price much cheaper than vehicles comparable in size that Hasbro is offering with no where near the features. My question is what company is making this and if they can make quality ships at a cheaper price than Hasbro would you like to see them take a bigger share of the Star Wars vehicle market? Thank you.
--mark

The deco and complexity of the design - and size - aren't as bulky as some of Hasbro's bigger ships, but the real answer probably boils down to money. Specifically, if Disney is manufacturing an item for Disney, they may not have to pay a licensing fee on it. If you look at Nacelle's action figure brands, they make some surprisingly good stuff for the money and in some cases, I think their owning the IP helps a bunch. Turning back the clock a little bit, you may recall there was a time when Marvel (yes, that Marvel) was bought by licensing parter Toy Biz and they cranked out absolutely ground-breaking Spider-Man Classics and Marvel Legends figures for $5-$6 a pop. With a comic. And a stand. And more articulation than anything else on the market. Having heard what the licensing fee is for a Disney item, I think that's probably at the root of what you get and what it costs. When you cut out more people to pay, for example a separate toy manufacturer or a government charging you a tariff, you can really get costs down to something more reasonable.

Disney's figure tooling costs were no doubt subsidized by dozens of other protocol droid figures and hundreds of astromechs. They're paid for. This is just profit. I don't have both Starspeeders (I had to say "no" eventually) but I would expect they share a lot of parts too, helping keep prices down.

A Millennium Falcon or a The Ghost likely have more parts, and definitely have more detailed elements with more paint. Paint applications cost a lot of money - so if you're willing to forego weathering, or perhaps accept user-applied stickers on bare plastic, Hasbro could get costs down a lot. You can find all sorts of places to save money and still include something cool (like electronics), but Hasbro HasLab has prioritized carded figures, display stands, tons of deco, unnecessary hands for said figures, and other things that fans complain like crazy if Hasbro leaves out. For whatever reason, people don't complain about Disney droid molds not always having wrist joints or rocker ankles or accessories. Hasbro is not afforded that luxury. Also Hasbro has to give Disney a slice of all the money, which we pay, just for the right to make this stuff.

It's arguably an argument for more vertical integration, or perhaps the proliferation of brands to companies who aren't Disney. If you look at Playmates' kiddo line for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they've emphasized the $10 price point and put out genuinely impressive figures. You might not get ankle tilts, but I'll do without. Mattel emphasizes $1.25 retail on its die-cast car product lines, and makes it stick. You may also remember Jakks Pacific delivering huge 31- and 20-inch figures for $20-$50 regularly, trading articulation and some deco for size. If fans demand prop replica-level deco on vehicles, it's going to cost us some money. If we can let that slide, maybe we can get something closer to Disney's Starspeeders.

Further, Hasbro does that now with its Titan Hero Series 12-inch figures. I have no doubt that they can do it, but if fans want detail it costs money. Jazwares has incredibly detailed paint jobs on some of its pricier ships. Hasbro has proven they can make a $20 speeder bike with a figure, or a $30 X-Wing with a pilot, but fans need to meet them in the middle and accept a little less in the way of factory labor (or sometimes bells/whistles) in the process. I don't know that the bulk of recent HasLabs would necessarily benefit from lights and sounds other than to make the end user feel like they "got something" out of it. (I would've liked a few lights and some music in the Cantina, though. I paid $500 for it and Wuher's second hand is unnecessary, as were the hundredish of glasses we don't need and aren't free.)

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2. would think the Epic world of Star Wars would be ripe for mini rigs. The mission fleet line had several things that would fall into that category. It would seem like a no brained for creative toy makers to try their hand in fun, off screen vehicles and accessories that shoot something
--DD

Well, I have good news and bad news - you're right, and we got several. Epic got us a ton of vehicles in short order, but the "tech" enhanced bikes never made it into mass market shops. Also, there were several mech suits, only three of which hit stores while the rest were Amazon exclusives. While I would have loved little enclosed one-person starfighters, we did indeed get little vehicles designed with low price points in mind. Also Yoda's tiny clear green ship. Stores by and large didn't carry them - I won't blame fans or kids for not being interested, this one's on the mass retailers and/or the marketing departments. I don't think anyone was really behind the brand, despite the product being genuinely good for the price (particularly in this economy.)

Given that you can still find last year's exclusives on clearance at some Walmarts, I am not hopeful this line has much of a future. It's a pity, it's a genuinely well-made line but it needs to be an impulse buy. Without support from Walmart for any of the 2025 product (and very little at Target) I would suggest trying out the mechs and hopefully you can enjoy them for what they are - a little goofy, but original toys meant for play.

I think we're at a point where a lot of voices are chiming in on the line - I mean, there are some crazy toy buyers in this business - in addition to multiple levels of Disney and Lucasfilm people adding to the challenge of putting out a toy line. Hasbro (and Kenner) had a bit more autonomy, but now you've got layers and layers of people getting involved with the creative process and "make the funnest toy for $15-$20" is generally not a consideration in this space. Having said that, Epic got us at least five mechs, five bikes, a tiny Yoda fighter, and two decently sized Starfighters. Yes, there were a lot of repaints, and yes, it was a very small and unfocused offering. But it was neat, creative stuff and I can't complain about the pricing of any of it relative to other items in the marketplace.

If you want a wacky plays-with vehicle, allow me to highlight an oft-ignored choice - Hasbro's Young Jedi Adventures. Their little starfighters and giant Crimson Firehawk were cleared out cheap and the figures are roughly 4-inch scale with big ol' feet. Your collector/vintage/kiddo figures will fit, and they're really well made. I personally think I would be a much happier collector if Hasbro just sorta torpedoed Vintage $60-$100 ships and made kid stuff sized for 3 3/4-inch figures. Do I like the dirty deco? Sure. But a $30 X-Wing is pretty good, and a $130 X-Wing doesn't give me $100 more joy.

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I'm low on questions!  Anyway.

Late last year I got super interested in Mattel's Hot Wheels RacerVerse line. The gimmick is this: what if Mario Kart, but other licenses? They made Gizmo, Captain Kirk, Scrooge McDuck, Minecraft, Disney Princesses, and of course Star Wars. Funny thing is that most of the waves never hit shelves anywhere in big box stores around me (or judging by eBay, almost anywhere.) Last week I stumbled on new-to-me R2-D2 in X-Wing Fighter and a gold chase Grogu. There are still many, many others I've never seen, like C-3PO in the Landspeeder, which I gotta have. So far the line hasn't had a Han Solo, and I'm sure someone, somewhere will be mad at me for observing some of the Disney girls in the mixed-brand assortments are slow sellers while others tend to do pretty well. (You don't see a lot of unsold Darth Vader or Spider-Gwen or these days, Elsa. But Rey sits.) It's an interesting gambit - Hot Wheels with characters for the pink aisle, on the wheels aisle - and some sell and some don't. People can be slow to pick up on these, and I'd nudge you to give these guys a look. Supplies have been so tight I assume they're going to get dumped somewhere in the coming 1-2 years for cheap, and I'd generally recommend them to people who miss toy vehicles.

Not to poo-poo Hasbro too much but kid vehicles are in super short supply. Epic World of Action managed to crank out a pretty healthy six this year, two of which were repaints of two others, and most of which were really hard to find for Star Wars fans. The Vintage Collection now sees former Pulse exclusive E-Wings showing up at Walmart, but let's be honest - now is the wrong time for that. Maybe with Ahsoka season two, but it's hard to convince anyone, ever, to drop $100 on a vehicle when a "kid vehicle" like the Epic X-Wing is excellent at a mere $30. Is it a toy with a paint job of prop replica quality? No, and you didn't have those as a kid either.

The toy space is increasingly hostile to kids and newbies, with Transformers continuing to opt out of kid-friendly prices in favor of changing the brand from "toddler" to "fan collector" pretty quickly. There's a pretty neat Cyberworld line in between the two, but stores are - oddly - not stocking most of it. (I've only just see it make appearances at Walmart this month.) Give 'em a look. Sky-Byte has wheels now.

While it's a message I may not always follow, take it easy and try to have a good time. The golden age of figures with vehicles and especially playsets is long over unless someone can concoct something with kid appeal... and I haven't seen that in a while. I know there's really not much coming up that I know of that's knocking my socks off, but I've had fun picking up a lot of odds and ends while reminding people of the good stuff that's out there, or being reissued, all the time. The O-Ring style Ghostbusters set turned out great, and cheap. Retro Yak Face is back around for another go, and again, fantastic. I'm still fond of toys that are toys, mostly because trying to innovate and make the uppermost-end high-end collectible is an expensive, never-ending proposition and my $10 Kenner-style figures look precisely how they should with little reason to update them.

With the year almost over and the holidays bringing fun to kids and maybe even a few cranky adults, I hope you get what you want under the tree or in the stores. This year at work I got to re-reissue my most-wanted dream present that I got back in 1990, so if you want to do me a solid while helping yourself? Get yourself a Yak Face or two. While I have tons and tons of figures, nothing feels quite as decadent as having an open Yak Face on my desk to play with, another one in a cabinet with my other Retro dudes, and my original one with my original figures. Sure I've got new figures to open but... Yak Face. Maybe you just had to be a certain fan in the 1990s to be excited for this kind of thing, and I sincerely hope that some cranky old dad gets one, finally, for the holidays.

--Adam Pawlus

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