1. Your last Q&A seemed to have been begging for this question: what did you expect from the cantina 4-pack?

For what it's worth, the thing I really hadn't expected was new tooling for all of the figures. My projected 4-pack had included a pair of repaints, a partially newly tooled Jawa, and re-purposing the Rebel Pilots Duro head for an otherwise new Banniss Keeg. I'm fairly happy with the offering, even though I only get to add one figure to my cantina diorama. Chalmun will join my other McQuarrie concept figures. No idea what I'm going to do with the third copies of Labria and Garindan.
--Doug

I'd be lying if I said that this wasn't a good set. Heck, if we got it last year with the Cantina I'd even go as far as to say that the whole "Return to Tatooine" program was a big winner since it does indeed have something new that fans have been demanding, something weird no fan seemed to be asking for, and some remakes of figures that anybody under 25 probably never had a crack at buying in a store. Last year's line - outside the Tonnikas - felt like one long (but well-executed) rerun. This set feels pretty good.

Based on Hasbro comments, I assumed that the set would be four Cantina denizens from the movie with mostly (or entirely) new tooling. My unrealistic hope was it would be all-new guys, and I thought I saw a comment to that effect from Hasbro but it's not like I bookmark their social posts. Arleil Schous was my top hope - and we got it! Garindan was a character I expected to be coming, but as he isn't of the Cantina, so he was a surprise. Chalmun I wouldn't have guessed until I exhausted literally every last human extra, mostly because he hasn't been requested much (at all? ever?) over the past 30 years that I recall here. Labria I wouldn't have guessed, but it's been over 25 years since the last sculpt and 19 years since the repaint. So it's not a bad choice.

I don't mind the result - two of the four haven't been made before, and the other two haven't been given an update in nearly 20 years. But also, it's surprising to see a Cantina set with figures that either weren't in the Cantina, or weren't in the movie. Heck, Garindan seemed like a better lock for the 50th, but I'm not complaining since he was one of those figures that seemed "missing" in the old Kenner line.

Tzizvvt was a long shot hope, but otherwise? It's a good set of picks that I hope make people pretty happy. I'm unusual in that I'm pretty pleased with most of my 1990s and 2000s figures, so I'm not necessarily dying for updates. (Quite the opposite, I'll show up with money for Kennerized de-makes.)

I assume a lot of people are grousing about Chalmun, but I love the idea of new Wookiees. I'm just surprised to see a figure from a pop-up book in the 1990s (an era when most collectors probably weren't buying pop-up books) here, now.

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2. Do you think there will ever be a pricepoint (if we haven't already reached it) where most collectors will say, "That's too expensive for one figure or a repop of a vehicle. I'm out" and just give up? Basic figures are now $20, with vehicles surpassing $100. Personally, I stopped a few years ago, and get only what I absolutely have to have.
--Chris

No action figure scale has ran at more or less one size consistently for more or less 48 years (with a decade pause in there, but props to Transformers for being sold somewhere on Earth since 1984.) We grew up, and as a community so have our demands. I like toys, that's why I'm here. Some fans demand 30 points of articulation in their carded figure collection, because I think it's some sort of financial domination thing for them. Some openers will use those joints, and a lot of people just want to pay for them just in case. I want my pilots, passengers, and bar flies to sit. Ditto for anybody who'll need to attend a meeting. But I loves me some FX-7 and Power Droid figures, and they're fine. It is a waste of our money to get knees and ankles when Mon Mothma has a plastic dress. But fans demand it, so enjoy your higher prices. My complaining about it means nothing if fans cry loudly when a toy figure isn't state-of-the-art.

As long as stuff keeps selling at $19.99, my feelings on price don't matter. It has to actually stop selling first, and even when it does get dumped at Ross it shockingly hasn't drastically changed how the line is done. Most action figure brands don't last as long as Star Wars, making it an outlier in toy spaces. We've been having nonstop figures from the Hasbro Toy Group (of which Kenner was a part) since 1995. If you don't count that as all one big line, The Vintage Collection has been going nonstop since 2018 (8 years) while The Black Series has been going since 2013 (13 years.) People love to predict things coming to an end. The world and its longest-running space toy line are still going.

I don't have full visibility of who's still here from the 1990s (or 1970s) and who quit. A lot of older fans have expressed that they don't like a lot of the Disney shows, or the prequels, and just want to focus on the first three films. I've had people writing in since 1998 telling me the prices were too high, and that's when they jumped from $4.99 to %5.99 (which, admittedly, was more expensive than competitor products.)

It's also easy to forget that Star Wars is an line with ridiculous fans. Can you name another humanoid non-brick, non-transforming figure line for boys with dedicated customers that ran for 31 years, since 1995, more or less unbroken? I can't. How about fans that may have been buying these things off and on since 1978? Even I expected Star Wars to be on the decline around 2008, and instead it rebounded strong and more or less kept going.

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We have openings for questions in February. Send 'em if you got 'em!

The franchise continues with Maul: Shadow Lord in April. What a strange place to be - it's a sequel to his adventures in The Phantom Menace and The Clone Wars, and a prequel to Solo: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: Rebels. He's a bankable character with - as far as I know - no major kiddo line on the way and probably minimal marketing support in the shadow of this year's new movie. (We also have another season of Ahsoka supposedly coming in 2026.) It's amazing to see another story have a continuity with this much stuff for this long, but I also don't have high hopes that it can bring more to the table given we already saw his story end. And also, The Bad Batch went from lots of fun adventures to chasing its own tail in that final season.

I wasn't here for the dawn of most of the big franchises. Star Wars in 1977, Star Trek in 1966, Doctor Who in 1963, Spider-Man in 1962, Batman in 1939, Superman in 1938, The Hobbit in 1937, Mickey Mouse in 1930, and lots of others I'll skip for the sake of space. I was around for most of the video games, so it's kind of fun to try to put myself in the mindset of long-time fans and try to see how they feel about some of these things. And, in some cases, how they (or we) are wrong. Not a whole heck of a lot survives forever, as fans of Beany and Cecil or Dick Tracy might tell you. As new technologies emerge alongside changing social norms, what might have been cool or shocking becomes old-hat or boring. Star Wars has had a lot of help being on the bleeding edge of technology, but that feels like it's over. We're not seeing new ground being broken in sound, effects, or much of anything other than ways to make stuff a little faster and a little cheaper, with occasional tweaks to the story formula. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

What is really amazing is that all of these things are, on some level, still alive and kicking. Mickey Mouse has been more of a mascot than a culturally relevant figure for much of my time on this planet - if not all of it. The Lord of the Rings is beloved, but new chapters are met with eye-rolls. I don't know if Dick Tracy or Beany and Cecil will ever make a return. But somehow, we've got a second season of Ahsoka and a new The Mandalorian and Grogu movie this year. And new toys, admittedly all for adults, with action figures that share little with their 1970s and 1980s ancestors beyond size. It hadn't really hit me that modern figures share no points of articulation with Kenner figures - swivels are gone and stability is not a guarantee, nor is "can sit." It's still kicking and that's pretty notable when so many once-viable kid or family fare has since burned out its cultural fuel.

I know everything isn't going to be for everybody, as you'll notice fans don't bring up Young Jedi Adventures or Star Trek Scouts because somehow, for once, adults just ignored the stuff they didn't like and/or wasn't for them. That's kind of miraculous. If future entries can find success with one group but not another and people just shrug off some aspects, that might be kind of great. This isn't to say these things aren't without their charms. I assume. I, too, haven't actually watched more than a brief short of either of those yet.

Here's hoping the new show is good. I get the whole binge model, but to dump an entire series in one or two months' subscription seems silly.

--Adam Pawlus

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