star wars "saga"

[Ran]

I guess I'll swing by Walmart. Already grabbed a MARS set, but maybe I'll grab a 2nd.

[anarky]

Senor L linked to a picture elsewhere that indicated I must have found a Lando with a poorly-painted head. Comparison pics point to a much nicer figure than the previous one. I'm not 100% sure he's $9 better than the previous one, but I'll keep my eyes open for another.

[jjreason]

I have Weequay weapons here if you're worried about missing it, Chux. I bought one off ebay & when he showed up, it snapped in half at the waist. Fucking bullshit. Anyhow, I have weapons. ><

Oh, and the Target 3 packs showed up here by the metric tonne - if anyone needs/wants any, please post & I'll grab what I can. No way in fuck are they going to sell through up here, not in those numbers.

[anarky]

Saw a second Lando, and it is definitely a major improvement. Not sure how that other one slipped past quality control. I still couldn't quite pull the trigger at $9. Which is stupid, since I know I'll wind up finding Weequay again with Lando and get Lando just because.

[jjreason]

I'm trolling ebay for waves 5 & 6 which sucks, but we are confirmed to NOT be getting them in Canada. Thanks, Hasbro.

[anarky]

I'm lost. Which waves are those?

[Senor JabbaJohnL]

Wave 5 is the ANH/ROTS wave (with kind-of-medal-ceremony Han, Death Star Escape Luke, and so on) and wave 6 is the Lando/Weequay wave. Unless it's different in Canada, which it shouldn't be.

[jjreason]

Those are the waves. Luckily tonight I found one ebay seller that had everything I needed for close enough to the right price - I'm paying $12 per figure delivered to my mailbox which I can live with. The only one I'll be without that I want is Luke Dagobah.

[anarky]

I know JJL will disagree with me here, but that's okay. It's a free country. You're free to be wrong.

One thing that has frustrated me for a long time with Star Wars, and only seems to be getting worse, is the constant insistence by fans that pretty much any figure you can think of needs to be re-done. Yes, some figures absolutely need to be re-done; any figure from before 1999 is probably inadequate now, but they're more than a decade old. Yes, most re-done figures do improve upon the previous version(s). But it gets ridiculous. How many Dengars or Momaw Nadons do we need? How many Greedos? Tatooine Lukes?

And Hasbro keeps churning out slightly improved versions of old figures because they know fans will bite. "This Commander Cody is different from the last two; his head is a bit smaller and he has his belt facing the right way!" They'll complain afterward, but they'll bite. And, no, I'm not saying every re-released figure is only a slight improvement.

The new General Lando might be really nice. But is he really more necessary than a resculpted ROTJ Mon Mothma? (Joke if you wish; history shows that any Lando figure sells as well as any Mon Mothma figure.) Or a Tey How or any of a dozen or so other often-requested TPM characters. The movie's only 12 years old. How many different Dengars did we get in that same time period? FU importance aside, Dengar stands there in two really short scenes.

It's frustrating. I'm not asking them to release Jocasta Nu to retail, but it really would be nice if it was possible (or looked to ever be possible) that one could have a figure of at least every figure with a speaking (or otherwise important) role.

[Ran]

I'm not crazy about the rescuplting figures that don't really need it (Lando General, Tattoine Luke, Vader, and even R2-D2 to and extent). Another thing I don't like is the need for them to put out every costume variation for each character (Ceremonial Han, Dagobah X-Wing Luke). I started skipping those things around the time of the Bespin Torture Han, Endor R2, and Lando in Han's clothes came out. I would have liked the torture thing from Han and the net from R2, but didn't want the figures.

Taking what I've learned from Star Wars, I've applied to GI Joe. I don't have the army of Snake Eyes like I do of Vaders.

[anarky]

At least with Snake Eyes (and other Joes), I can rationalize it two ways: 1) Snake Eyes actually has worn quite a few different costumes, and 2) unlike Star Wars, where there are relatively few costume changes, the Joes (and Cobras) are supposedly realistic forces, and specialized gear for different missions is understandable... plus, we're to expect the members of both sides have had a lot of adventures not seen in the comic (cartoon, movie, whatever). When the Star Wars characters in EU have worn other outfits, and on the rare occasion those have been made as figures, they don't seem to sell very well, sadly.

The thing I find funny is that there are Snake Eyes costumes from the original comic and cartoon that still remain unmade. I find it mind-boggling that there's never been an unmasked Snake Eyes. Or that, in the race to make as many Snake Eyes as possible since 2006, they haven't gotten around to vintage Snake Eyes #4 or #5. (Okay, #5 sucks, but it #4 would be an easy kitbash from City Strike Snake Eyes and a few others. Come to think of it, #5 would only really require a new head, and there's probably an existing Cobra head that's really close to it.)

[Senor JabbaJohnL]

I know JJL will disagree with me here, but that's okay. It's a free country. You're free to be wrong.

One thing that has frustrated me for a long time with Star Wars, and only seems to be getting worse, is the constant insistence by fans that pretty much any figure you can think of needs to be re-done. Yes, some figures absolutely need to be re-done; any figure from before 1999 is probably inadequate now, but they're more than a decade old. Yes, most re-done figures do improve upon the previous version(s). But it gets ridiculous. How many Dengars or Momaw Nadons do we need? How many Greedos? Tatooine Lukes?

And Hasbro keeps churning out slightly improved versions of old figures because they know fans will bite. "This Commander Cody is different from the last two; his head is a bit smaller and he has his belt facing the right way!" They'll complain afterward, but they'll bite. And, no, I'm not saying every re-released figure is only a slight improvement.

The new General Lando might be really nice. But is he really more necessary than a resculpted ROTJ Mon Mothma? (Joke if you wish; history shows that any Lando figure sells as well as any Mon Mothma figure.) Or a Tey How or any of a dozen or so other often-requested TPM characters. The movie's only 12 years old. How many different Dengars did we get in that same time period? FU importance aside, Dengar stands there in two really short scenes.

It's frustrating. I'm not asking them to release Jocasta Nu to retail, but it really would be nice if it was possible (or looked to ever be possible) that one could have a figure of at least every figure with a speaking (or otherwise important) role.

It IS a free country, meaning you're free to blow me.

I don't disagree completely. The Vintage Collection does seem to feature quite a lot of redone characters that don't necessarily improve a whole lot on the last attempt. Fi-Ek Sirch is a cool figure, but he's barely in the background of the film for a fraction of a second, maybe (and it could just be some other guy in a light robe). It seems nonessential.

You know for a fact that the new Dengar blows the older ones out of the water. But the fact that he's still pegwarming at basically every Target nearly 10 months after he came out probably means that people were fine with the last one. While some characters do need upgrades, the same isn't true for each and every one.

On General Lando, while the 2004 one was good, it's nice to now have one that actually looks like the character and, perhaps more importantly, can actually sit in the Falcon. The 1997 one has the super-wide stance, and the 2004 one looks like a giraffe when his cape is off. On things like those, I'm glad when they do the update, even if it is the third go-round. (Now we need a better Nien Nunb, though.)

I know you were just picking random figures, but we haven't seen a Momaw Nadon or Greedo since 2006, so I don't know what your point is there. (And we've gone over these many times; there are only two separate Momaw Nadon sculpts and the repainted/slightly retooled one from the cantina bar set. There are only three Greedo sculpts. Despite not having much screen time, characters like these are instantly recognizable, iconic, and full of nostalgia for many longtime fans.)

The "holy cow look at all these Tatooine Lukes!" thing was a bigger issue around 1998 or so, when they cranked out several variations of the blast shield helmet mold in different sets or with vehicles. Looking back, though . . . The tiny 2004 vintage one sucked dick; the 2006 one was a shitty old body with a new head; the 2007 one looked like Phil Collins; so he definitely needed a good upgrade, which we got in the 2009 battle pack. The current Death Star Escape one is based on that, but the first version with a stormtrooper belt on a single card (and the first one that doesn't suck). Luke is the main hero of the OT, so he's always going to be in the line, plain and simple.

With some of the figures in TVC, like Commander Cody, as you cited, Hasbro wanted to take the opportunity to correct the previous mistake. The belt's not too huge of an issue, but it shows that they wanted to correct it from before, which in my book is better than just ignoring it and doing nothing, which would piss off even more people. Again, there's only two major releases of this guy; the first one was pretty weak by the standards of other clone figures, and the Vintage one is only a slight retool of the Legacy one (with the proper belt). I got one to keep carded since it looked bitchin', which is presumably why he was released in Vintage in the first place (and to attract casual fans who didn't get him the other times). I actually did get another to open when they were on sale for $6 just to have the "best" version, but I probably wouldn't have for $9. But he's a popular character and a good seller, so yes, Hasbro knew people would "bite" (which is a somewhat negative characterization of them; they are a business who has to sell toys, you know).

Plain and simple, most of the older fans don't like TPM. The stores over-ordered everything in 1999, which is probably why we haven't really seen much stuff from that film since then. (They also covered it pretty well within the first year, actually.) But Neimoidians have never, ever sold well in the history of the line. Both the 2005 Neimoidian Warrior and 2006 Lushros Dofine were some of the biggest pegwarmers this side of Yarna. I'm not saying they won't ever do Tey How (since they could easily reuse the Lushros Dofine body, and the 3D release is coming soon), but you have to understand why it's not at the top of their list. The same goes for other TPM figures, to a lesser extent.

Hasbro has to keep the core characters in the line; people complain when there are new versions, and they complain when there are straight re-releases, but the characters need to be in there to engage fans - particularly new ones. You've got to see it from the perspective of Hasbro looking at them. Not everyone has been here for as long as we have. Think of it from the perspective of a kid or a casual fan - do you honestly believe they'd rather have Tey How over Lando? And yes, Hasbro could re-release an inferior figure, which they've done in the past (hell, look at the giant 2-1B in the Hoth pack). But they're going to make the update where they think it needs to happen, and simply re-releasing a shitty figure from 10 years ago just because it exists doesn't always look good.

Simply put, there really aren't that many exciting, 100% new figures to make at this point. The last few times I've watched the films, it's become clear how thoroughly they've mined these films for figures; there's not really a whole lot that jumps out and says "I need to be a toy!" And no, Jocasta Nu doesn't do that. They're a business who needs to make money, and Darth Vader will always outsell Ben Quadinaros no matter how many times he's already been done.

[Ran]

I saw the new Lando yesterday. Not a bad looking figure except for that elastic band that goes across his cape. You would think they could find a better way to attach the cape. Didn't see anything else new, but I've been seeing parts of the ROTJ wave showing up recently.

[Ran]

Found pictures of a new Y-Wing. http://www.sandtroopers.com/sandwatch/hasbro/20110606/

It says it is going to be a TRU exclusive. I would like to get it, but when you see "TRU Exclusive" on something, you know it is going to be overpriced. Might have to wait for a sale or use a $10 off $50 coupon.

[jjreason]

I'm done with Y-wings until they change the scale, so no real temptation for me there even though it looks pretty nice.

Still looking for Dagobah Luke & the repainted 41 Stormtrooper (which apparently only Target is getting down there in good numbers). No rush, getting the bunch from the seller got me caught up fairly nicely, and we're supposed to be getting the Bom Vimdim/Logray batch up here in decent numbers within the next few weeks. Time will tell.