1. Do you expect a robust toy line for "The Mandalorian & Grogu" movie in May? With a little over 3 months away and nothing "officially" revealed, do you think the majority will come at Toy Fair or do you think it is being held back to announce even closer. I was truly disappointed with the "trailer" from the Super Bowl, as it showed really nothing "new" for toy purposes.

Also, do you think there will be a "hard reset" of the toy line look for "StarFighter" in 2027 or do you think it will all just wrap into the Vintage Collection? As this movie is truly set outside the Skywalker timeline, I feel it would make sense for a "new look" package wise; then again, Disney keeps slapping re-issues and re-packs on vintage card back and us sucker collectors keep buying them at $19.99 a figure
--Jeremiah

I would lower your expectations, as 1999 or 2015 won't be happening again. I doubt you're going to see anything significantly different from what's on-shelf and being revealed right now.* Having seen Obi-Wan Kenobi and Skeleton Crew come and go with surprisingly small offerings, Disney's approach to Star Wars has looked a lot more like Marvel super heroes (make the main guy in a bunch of sizes.) I don't know that we've seen significant reason to expect much else. If Maul's show product offering is three times as good as The Bad Batch, it's still going to be a small line.

I expect there will be some stuff on-shelf for the movie - mostly because you've seen some of it. There's a kid line, but it is not huge. There's certainly no attempt to capitalize on roughly six and a half years of memes and recognition, and we haven't really seen any licensed property hit retail with a spectacular offering since the decline of Toys "R" Us. (The Rise of Skywalker and Triple Force Friday stuff was at least partially conceived of before Geoffrey's body was cold.) I feel like the biggest winner in recent years has been Deadpool & Wolverine, given the variety and weirdness post-movie.

Since 2019, we've seen Hasbro and Lucasfilm partner together with smaller lines. A lot of Star Wars succeeding, in my opinion, is going out with a strong product offering ahead of the movie (or TV show) and fans will just go nuts speculating. The product is the marketing, if done correctly. We haven't seen them take that approach in about seven years, even when there's low-hanging fruit (make new season 1 stuff for season 2 of The Mandalorian or have any classic Boba Fett on-shelf for The Book of Boba Fett, for example.)

The really big question about Starfighter is how they will position it against the 50th anniversary of Star Wars? How much stuff will Hasbro make? Will there be a huge line celebrating 50 years and a new movie? Probably not. We've seen little in the way of vehicles from Hasbro, so I'm honestly wondering if Starfighter will have any 3 3/4-inch Starfighter toys, or if this will be Jazwares' time to shine with Micro Galaxy Squadron. Perhaps Hasbro will come up with a new scale for vehicles, but I doubt that. I'm not even sure how things will go for that new ActionVerse scale, because its slow-as-slow-gets roll-out makes me think there's not much of a future. Epic Hero Series launched with six basic and two deluxe figures and I thought that was pretty minimal. ActionVerse launched with two. I can't imagine a lot of collectors or kids see a new size launching with two figures and going "this is where I'm going to get excited." The new movie stuff looked fine but was also sparse.

It would be my hope that everybody gets together and goes whoop hog wild for the 50th and just keep a steady flow of new stuff every six or so weeks in 2027, but I think that's unlikely.

* - I write this with absolutely zero insight into any plans for 2027 beyond "there's a big anniversary" and "there's a new movie." I do not know a single product coming out.

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2. it appears that Disney seems to really embrace making obscure droid figures to sell via a Disney sources like their website and galaxy edge. Can you Disney making human or alien figures from their park or the now defunct Halycon ship?
--David

I do not expect any additional Halcyon-based figures or characters as Disney likely speeds away from ever referencing it in a product again. It would be fun to see other park-specific characters made as toys, but there's a catch. It may make for a great souvenir, but outside the big guns that you interact with on rides, would we find them exciting beyond "here is another figure to buy?" Maybe, maybe not. My 2000s Star Tours guys are neat but I admit not beloved collectibles in my toy box.

I'm unsure how or why Disney got to do droids. Disney's Droid figure program used to include Hasbro molds, and then slowly morphed into Hasbro-compatible droid molds that are increasingly duplicating what Hasbro is making. (For example, Huyang, Chopper, etc.) I bring this up because logic would make me think Disney wouldn't want to upset its partner by making competing and in some cases nearly identical product, but we've seen them do this many times with their droids. R2-D2 frequently exists as a Hasbro build-a-droid figure, and Disney's is quite similar.

So the short answer? I wouldn't hold your breath for any 3 3/4-inch or 6-inch scale non-droid human/alien/trooper figures. We did get die-cast metal 6-inch figures but those didn't seem to go over so well. There is little reason to assume Disney has a reason to swoop in and fill in the gaps Hasbro left, even if it would be a sensible thing for Disney to make their own Lukes, Vaders, Reys, and Mandos to keep on-pegs at theme parks at all times.

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FIN

We are out of questions for next week. Send 'em if you got 'em!

I've noticed that I seem to get some sort of sense of ennui after a big new movie Star Wars reveal, usually because they've been increasingly lacking in new faces. The Force Awakens was a good mix of greatest hits, refreshes, and newness, and then by the time we got to The Last Jedi I was feeling that this maybe wasn't a great figure line, and The Rise of Skywalker was sort of a bust. (For the record, I liked what we got for Rogue One and Solo quite a bit.)

With the new reveals for The Mandalorian and Grogu and Maul: Shadow Lord, it's feeling a lot more like a greatest hits collection - even if a design is updated, or a new size. I don't throw a lot of shade on the prequels, because wave 1 from most movies had new and interesting looks and characters. Revenge of the Sith was a little duller, mostly due to fewer new characters up front. But not none - just not many.

For the new movie, we're mostly getting troopers and Mando and one star. Noting is bad but it's interesting that the entire new line seems to lean into being "thing you know, but changed a bit." Sigourney Weaver X-Wing Pilot is technically new, but we have a lot of pilots. We've got Mando, we've got Grogu. We've got a lot of Imperial troopers that are very similar. If you never collected before it's a good jumping-on point, but I would be surprised if lifers shrugged a bit. This is going to be the first time Mando has new figures available to buy before his adventures begin since 2019, so it will be interesting to see if we get new people jumping on board with this slate.

--Adam Pawlus

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