1. I've been a long, long time reader. I used to print out Q&A and bring it to college to read between classes. I'm one of those “aging out” collectors. I turned 8 in 1977, so I was ripe for the picking for this franchise. After selling off the toys at garage sales as a teenager, I found myself hunting them down as a young adult. Then POTF2 came along, and it has been pretty crazy ever since. I have fallen out of love with the vintage collection due to scarcity at retail and lack of characters I haven't already owned. The Retro line has been my new fav, and I've decided the cantina and expansions will be populated with the vintage kenner figures getting to know the new retro figures for one last goodbye bash.
With so many options, I found myself really enjoying the Kubrick Star Wars line when it was new. They did a super job with some kenner tributes and even nods to the knock offs like blue snowtrooper. Their Sandtrooper looks so good with the vintage dewback, it might be my favorite combo in my collection. I think I remember about 14 series of release during the early to late 2000s. Then, other than a couple of convention exclusives, they just went away. I always wondered if the timing coincided with Lego getting the license as they were a similar size. But they also did figures on cardbacks that I thought might have upset the Hasbro machine. Any knowledge or thoughts on the line and its demise?
As you've mentioned, the sheer amount of product out there is incredible. I had no idea about fantasy flight games, but found myself buying a local guys collection of ships. While they aren't toys per se, It was such a cool line and a small scale that I could display that I began hunting most of them down to make a nice set of imperial and rebel fleets. They have transitioned to a card type game, so those little ships aren't something you can find at retail. I'm sad to say I will likely be letting go of my large AT-AT, Falcon, and Razorcrest just due to not having the space to display them. It's a weird thing, but I have to think about how much crud the kids will have to go through someday. I'm trying to limit what I keep to what I can display in 3 fairly large display cases. I figure if I have to dig it out of a box in a closet to look at it, I probably don't need to own it. Are others writing in with what “limits” they set for themselves?
--Dan

I wish I knew what happened with Kubrick figures! I admired that line from afar and only picked up a few. They did so much great stuff for Star Wars and other lines - their Planet of the Apes offerings are incredible. It's possible LEGO picked up some international rights to its license that it didn't have, or that Medicom didn't see the return on investment for that license. They still make Be@rbrick figures, but the Kubrick figures we used to get seem to be in very short supply. A quick glance at HobbyLink Japan shows some of the last Star Wars sets might have been in 2019, and it's possible whatever their contract dried up. Or maybe they just decided it was too low-dollar to be worthwhile, which has been happening a lot in this world of collectibles.

Collectors are all over the place when it comes with what they keep and dump. A lot of non-Star Wars fans self-impose rules, like "I can only have one version of each character" or "one in, one out" to keep things from going crazy. As someone who has picked up a lot of stuff, I'm certainly looking at some lines with "gee, that was a mistake" in my head. No shade to The Black Series - it's good stuff - I just don't ever do anything with it, whereas anything that looks and feels like a toy gets more attention. I still haven't completely built my HasLab Cantina - shelf space is an issue, and other stuff's gotta go. I already kind of regret caving on the Gunship and I am not sure I'll be supporting another non-trilogy crowdfund should one come to pass.

I do know a lot of fans who have told tales of storage units, massive rubbermaid tubs of stuff, and in some cases not even knowing what they have - which I assume happens to everybody once or twice.

I'm not here to tell anyone what to do with their stuff, but it's probably good to rehome it if you don't expect to enjoy it between now and when whoever has to decide what happens to your stuff gets their hands on it. I have heard a few collectors make massive cuts - in some cases, literally everything - in a divorce, or after they lost a job, just to get a fresh start without the literal baggage. Some return to collecting toys, and some don't. I think going small is the right idea - the miniature games are a spectacular way to pick things up without filling a whole house. I've certainly become more interested with Retro because the modern realistic 3 3/4-inch figure lines from 1995-present do feel a little suffocating. Love 'em or hate 'em, it's a lot to keep track of compared to the entirety of 50 years of Kenner-style figures and toys. And, as you say, it's probably the best way for a lot of kids from that era to enjoy collecting these characters one last time. Unless you're building some sort of 1:6 museum, in which case, bully for you.

My hunch is the abundance of product has resulted in a lot of fans not even knowing what they don't know. As you've seen, there are entire product lines the toy sites don't cover and a lot of fans won't know about unless they stumble on it in a store. There are so many similar figures that people don't know what they may have skipped. Better versions seem to be on the horizon all the time... except for Retro which you do once, you do awkwardly, and we all call it a day.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy dropped two episodes last week and I don't have much to complain about. Yeah, it's kids. Yeah, the second episode was all on Earth. But they managed to zip through a story in each single episode fairly well, which other franchises should really consider doing more of. (One ongoing story is good, one story that wraps each week is also quite nice.) Make me think I got something more than someone stretching out one episode of story across ten episodes of set budget. Obviously any long-running franchise is going to have entries that aren't for everybody, but this is one of those things I'd probably have eaten up as a kid. Also bonus points for some of the alien/creature/animal choices.

If you enjoy reading this site, I'd love it if you could kick in $1 to the GalacticHunter.com Patreon. This year, I'm trying to post 5 reviews per week at 16bit.com, 2 reviews per week at GalacticHunter.com, and this weekly Q&A - plus other news as it seems interesting. If you like the sites, a buck to help pay for hosting would be most welcome.

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2. What is the likelihood that EE will pick up the Arleil/Chalmun four pack set? I have a preference which vendor I would buy from.
--Ben

I believe Hasbro announced this item as a Hasbro Pulse / Disney Store exclusive, so Entertainment Earth will not be selling it at launch. If given the chance, I'm sure they will. Entertainment Earth sometimes gets offered Pulse exclusives after the fact but a) not everything and b) not necessarily quickly. Me, I'm buying this when it goes up. It's not what I feel is in the spirit of what was expected, but it's also bugnuts weird enough that I'm going to want it. I assumed we'd never see a Chalmun figure at this rate. (So what's keeping Vlix or a similarly scaled Jaxxon?)

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FIN

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

Kathleen Kennedy left Lucasfilm. While unpopular as an opinion, I'm not a hater. I generally liked four out of the five movies, and all of the TV shows had things I loved and things I could've done without. Given hundreds of episodes of TV were made, I don't expect a perfect track record. When we got a half dozen Star Wars comics per month, they weren't all amazing. Star Trek is eyeballing 1,000 episodes, and different things appeal to different people. Star Wars' biggest problem is that their bad stuff is simply mediocre. Star Trek circles around back to "legendary" with human salamanders, ghost sex, and Allamaraine. If Deep Space Nine's crew could survive that and become a beloved institution, we can probably deal with "the power of many."

But I digress.

This week's new Hasbro action figure reveals are pretty good - it's rare that I can look at a suite of new toys and say "I don't have that!" Disney showed us DD-BD, one of many awesome droids yet unmade from Solo: A Star Wars Story. I'm pretty much good with any "Empire era" design they want to throw at me, and this is indeed new. On the same day, Hasbro announced a bunch of stuff. The Black Series Watto, Taun We, Lord Starkiller, and Geonosian Warrior all exist as 3 3/4-inch guys, but now you can get them bigger. They do look quite good, with lots of bits and pieces to make the $27.99 (and higher) prices work.

The Vintage Collection delivered on the letter if not the spirit of a new Cantina 4-pack with Labria (last made in 2007), Garindan (not a Cantina patron but last made in 2006), Arleil Schous (never-before-made and saved from the Cantina project), and Chalmun (an Expanded Universe Wookiee bartender from a 1990s pop-up book.) It's a useful slate of figures - nobody in it has been made in at least 20 years, and all remakes have significant updates to deco or costume. But I wouldn't have bet Chalmun would be made before an actual movie character, nor would I have expected Garindan this year in this set. Since Labria has actual knee joints, he's a lock for anybody's Cantina diorama. The last one in The Saga Collection was Walmart-exclusive repaint line filler of a POTF2 Cinemascene sculpt. Garindan's corrected outfit should also be of interest to any new or older collector. He was also last in The Saga Collection. If we got this set last year with the bar, I would've been a lot less whiny. It wasn't at all what I had in mind, but it does deliver something fresh. A Wookiee with pants? Sure, sign me up.

Rounding out the set is The Retro Collection Princess Leia in Yavin dress. I'm not going to poo-poo a new costume for a main character. I'm looking forward to seeing how the cape element turns out in person, because it looks like it could be cloth or even maybe vinyl - we'll have to see. On the other hand, I'm finding my interest in figures explodes when it can be placed in an existing playset or vehicle... and there's not much call for Leia in awards show wear. There are some good Yavin cardboard dioramas from fans, but nothing official yet. It's still interesting, and it's probably the kind of thing that'll sell sets to the people not obsessed with aliens and droids. Me, I'm happy to get the set because there's enough interesting even if one of the six winds up being a reissue of some sort.

No matter which scale you get, there's actual newness on the horizon and that's great to see. I am a little less interested in Battle Droid repaints or anything that takes movie molds and slaps video game colors or gear, but there's always an exception. You can't make a new droid or alien too obscure for my liking, so this is shaping up to be a decent year.

I know, I know, some people come for the complaints but this seems to be a really good week for this stuff. Also Disney is putting more classic into Galaxy's Edge and I have to say this is both the kind of thing I expected and also I have zero skin in the game. I'm not a theme park person. Living in neither California nor Florida, theme park stuff may as well be on Mars. I'm not going to go there, sometimes it's interesting, but it's probably not going to impact anything I'm doing. I always thought it was pretty short-sighted to hitch one's star to the sequel trilogy, because even if fans latched onto it and it became its own phenomenon I would expect there to be a lull in interest around the 10 year mark, sort of like we saw in the old days. (So in other words, right now.) Maybe it'll come roaring back as the kids get older, but I'm not anticipating it. If it just fans the flames of interest in the era of the Empire vs. Rebels stuff, maybe it'll be good for toys. But also, I don't know what influence Theme Park Stuff really exerts into Everything Else.

--Adam Pawlus

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