1.So what is the likelihood of ever seeing Nute Gunray in TVC? I’m personally vouching for his Ep. 3 appearance the most since we never received that iteration. He made the bracket in last year’s March Madness, and hopefully he does again this year as well, so there’s a glimmer of hope. Since we received updates to other prequel villains, such as Dooku and Jango Fett, do you think it would be incumbent on Hasbro to address another major prequel villain, and especially one who appeared in all three prequel films?
--David

Dooku was a major player from a beloved actor who had been in multiple franchises, plus appeared in some cartoons. Fans love him. Jango Fett is a Fett - fans love him, and his figures were getting pretty expensive, so a new version made sense. I can get both Nute Gunrays sealed in packaging with two other figures for about $30 delivered to my door, so is a redder robe and a bigger hat worth Hasbro spending a slot and you spending $16.99 before tax and shipping? I'd buy anything, so yes - but I can't say I can name a lot of people I know who would agree with me on that. After all, Skeleton Crew has come and gone and we don't have any of the show's titular characters in this format.

If "March Madness 2024" had about 1,500 voters and Nute didn't get 1,500 votes, I don't see that as a mandate. If anything, these polls might backfire by showing Hasbro how much fans don't want something if it doesn't get votes in what is probably an easy-to-hack vote.

As the line goes on I know I see each year has fewer and fewer all-new "legacy" figures in it. More characters are competing for those slots. If this is indeed your top choice, the figure that would make you happy, or indeed the kind of thing that you might get and say "hey, I'm happy now" - you should absolutely pursue it with all of your heart. I think he's not significantly different enough to warrant an all-new figure, and at best we'd get something like 2023 Tessek. Without massive fan support, even a partial retool is a stretch, and him losing a low-turnout fan poll probably means you won't see him. Given how many (and there were many) encore waves of Revenge of the Sith figures featuring Anakin, Obi-Wan, and a smattering of new and updated guys, and Nute was never in them, nor was he seemingly requested very much back then other than the unproduced Holo Nute Gunray... I don't think you're ever going to get this one. Sorry man.

And if you're sitting there thinking that it'll just happen if you wait long enough, I saw Vlix in September of 1985 on a cartoon, have been trying to get a licensed figure of him in my collection since hearing he might exist in a poorly written price guide, and have been semi-acively-pursuing him since finding out he allegedly came out in Brazil when I saw him on a cardback in 1989... we don't always get what we want, even if we're in a position to elbow people with influence, and even if that figure is worth $10,000+.

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2. Are there any videos you can suggest we watch to learn how action figures are painted? I'm fascinated that figures, like Boba Fett, can have the same constant color scheme, down to the armor rubs, across multiple figures. Are some of these machine-painted with masks or templates?
--Chris

Short answer is "no."

Hasbro hasn't been very transparent about showing us charts or pictures of how a concept becomes a figure in quite some time. I'm thinking it might have been 2004 or 2005 when I last saw some sort of graphical chart, but I might be misremembering - and the technology has come a long way since then. I fund it unlikely they're going to show off much in case it inspires a competitor. Obviously nobody else can make a licensed Star Wars action figure like Hasbro does, but if they have some edge in making a better product, surely another company can adapt the technique to improve shareholder value for Batman.

Different factories have changed painting at different times, but as far as I know Hasbro/Kenner have never been very up-front about it. I do remember times where Kenner (1990s) alluded to hand-painted eyes, but I don't know how accurate that is. Onell Design posted about paint masks - which I can't find now - which basically cover a toy, and you paint the elements exposed to the air. It's like a 3D stencil. My understanding is that a lot of elements are painting a 2D image on a 3D surface, particularly faces on high-end figures and chests on some low-end figures at both Mattel and Hasbro. You can tell because of the tiny little dots, they're like pixels on the faces you might be able to see if your eyesight is still pretty good. Some things may be painted by pad printing, but I believe the damage on armor on most figures is that 2D printing on a 3D surface. If you get really close with a good macro lens, you can see tiny dots like an inkjet printer.

I'd love to have Hasbro show us how it's done, but trade secrets are usually secret for a reason and I doubt there's much marketing benefit to doing this. Unless they show it off on an item that needs to move more units, in which case, hey, maybe!

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FIN

I'm in New York for Toy Fair, and wrote this before the trip. So let's talk about cartoons!

For those of you who have been reading my Q&A - or other Star Wars newsletters or web writings since 1995 - you know I like Droids a lot. The 1985 cartoon was something I really dug as a kid, but only had a few episodes taped off Saturday morning TV. I just rewatched the whole series over a couple of weeks, and it was fun to see the two I had - "Escape Into Terror" and "Coby and the Starhunters." I also rewatched the tonally different "The Great Heep," which I think I may have only seen once before streaming.

If you didn't like Rebels, you're not going to like Droids very much. It's a kid show, from a time when "kid show" meant "no really, this isn't meant for teens or adults." Compared to Ewoks it is a much more Star Wars-y show, and I admit I've had a harder time sitting through the Endor cartoon compared to when I was a kid. Both are still well-animated shows with lots of creatures and big ideas, and I have a hard time poo-pooing the whole Ewok thing. If you were a kid in the 1980s, Luke got 3 movies, and Wicket also got 3 movies - and two seasons of a TV show. Endor would be fleshed out as more than just "forest planet," with deserts and multiple tribes of sentient beings along with all kinds of creatures, monsters, witches, giants, and invaders from space! Taken as a mini-franchise, were it detached from Star Wars, I think the entirety of Ewoks would be a pretty dang big deal. But it isn't, and I digress.

Re-watching the show with older eyes, it's still pretty gorgeous to look at. Both cartoons struggle under the weight of demands for non-violent programming with minimal guns or weapons, so while your ships can have cannons, your Stormtroopers have laser-shooting wands. Mungo Baobab gets a gun, but it's a seed launcher. Given that competing shows of the era involved Snorks, Care Bears, The Get-Along-Gang, and other things that may well have been designed to be huggable and cute? It's a minor miracle that we got a show about alien teddy bears and magic paired up with a show about robot servants with three ongoing storylines that basically reboots itself every month. What's even more amazing is that those Droids episodes stand alone very well without recaps or feeling like you missed anything.

Watching Droids is kind of heartbreaking, mostly because it was more or less the last gasp of mainstream Star Wars. We never got that second wave of figures with Vlix, Mungo, or Jessica Meade. RPG books, Marvel and Blackthorne's comics were somewhat obscure after 1985, and Star Tours was locked behind a paywall. You can see a lot of thought went into the show. It's peppered with mini-rigs and vehicles that may well have been concepts for mini-rigs. The stories largely feature original characters, but Return of the Jedi toys appear or are name-dropped. You can see Stormtroopers, B-Wings, and A-Wings as well as the Max Rebo Band. Jabba the Hutt and The Emperor get name-dropped a few times. Heck, Boba Fett and IG-88 show up. It's not "adult" but it's pretty much the kind of thing fans always ask for - new stories, during the Empire, with alien worlds. If you can meet it on its own level, it's pretty good. I should say the same about Ewoks. Not every episode is good or bad, but you get some amazing wizard battles and what may well be the very best cartoon to be based on the premise of "magic soap."

I bring this up, of course, because it's the 40th anniversary. It's my unrealistic dream that Hasbro will realize that both cartoons are valuable and make a few more toys. The 1985 line went to clearance and eventually, the toys got really expensive. Nobody realized Sise Fromm was "rare" for quite a while. Wicket and Logray were the lone Ewoks on the show - we never got cartoon figures for Kneesaa, Latara, Teebo, Chirpa, Paploo, and so on. Droids famously has an entire second series of characters like Vlix, Mungo Baobab, Admiral Screed, Jessica Meade, and others that exist as bootlegs and prototypes. I haven't seen a legit Vlix on eBay for a while, but he's in the thousands of dollars. A Sise Fromm might set you back a thousand bucks with Tig at $600. Like Yak Face, it would be nice to do remakes (or first editions) of these scarce figures for hardcore collectors before we age out permanently. If they're waiting for a rainy day, this seems like a good time to make it happen as anyone who watched these cartoons are likely 45-50 and not getting any younger. Here's hoping there's a good business cast to do it.

After all, wouldn't a HasLab of 20 Droids figures, 12 Ewoks figures, and a stretch goal for a redeco cartoon Boba Fett? If they want to make Kneesaa Kaink, Latara, and Teebo, I'd probably stop writing about toys on the internet and weep, for I would have no new toy worlds to conquer. But not until after I bought two or three sets for whatever they deemed a worthwhile price for let's say 25ish produced an unproduced Kenner figures.

--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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