1. Do you think Morgan Elsbeth has any chance of joining Rose Tico, Zuvio, and Snoke on the Mt Rushmore of pet warmers?
--Derek

We've had precious few lady villains in these lines, and those we've had tended to do pretty well. Asajj Ventress figures ain't cheap. I doubt they're going to give Morgan thrilling setpieces and awesome duels in Ahsoka (a shame given her debut in The Mandalorian was pretty awesome), but we can hope! At this point I do have some concern that Ahsoka product might not be super popular outside the kid stuff, in part because it's not already on shelf, and also because Ahsoka herself looks like many of the items are similar/identical to previous releases.

Given product availability and current pegwarmers, I wonder if she'll be in stores so she can sit. I don't know how fans are going to react to the character when it's all said and done yet, but she currently seems to occupy a place where there's not a lot about her that's specifically amazing, but also, there's nothing really off-putting about her either. As to the figures, a lack of accessories or a cloak/cape/something could be detrimental to the sales of three versions of the figure dropping in the coming months - the competing formats seem like overkill, especially given what sometimes happens when you have a character in every scale all at the same time. "Collect them all" is not necessarily scale agnostic, especially given higher prices and less completism.

I think Rose Tico was an especially special case having also been released in three flavors all at once, Zuvio was done no favors by his "appearance" in the movie, and Snoke sadly suffered from being available multiple ways all at once. His 6-inch figure was an individual release, and a GameStop exclusive release with a throne, plus there were no fewer than 3 distinct 3 3/4-inch releases I can name from 2017-2018.

It might be beneficial for Hasbro to pick a scale (or two) and stick with them, but that seems unlikely to happen. When you have unknown variables in three or more sizes all at once, it amplifies the risk in an era with kid-unfriendly products and increasingly cynical adult fans/collectors and no backing of a "Force Friday" hype machine to drive people to line up for this stuff.

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2. Do you think Hasbro's purposefully keeping old-timers "on the hook" by delaying or outright not releasing C-3PO and Hammerhead on ANH cards [in The Vintage Collection]? Same with "Completing the 96?"
--Allen

At this point my hunch is there's been enough generation loss that there's minimal consideration to this, or it was decided that it's not a priority. I mean, there's no vintage Imperial Dignitary, there hasn't been an EV-9D9 since 1998, we're missing some Ewoks... there are a lot of places to poke Hasbro for not finishing the original line yet, but I am unsure if doing them all as packaging variants is now or has been a priority.

It's possible they're dragging things out, but historically some toy lines have hit a wall when they turn 40. Star Trek and 12-inch G.I. Joe did not have particularly fruitful 40th anniversaries... and I'd say Star Wars (as a retro brand) had a pretty rotten 2017 with the remains of The Force Awakens and Rogue One competing with The Last Jedi for oxygen. And G.I. Joe 3 3/4-inch wasn't exactly the belle of the ball when it turned 40 in 2022. Masters of the Universe, on the other hand, seems to be doing just fine and that surprises the heck out of me.

I assume they'll get to Hammerhead and C-3PO eventually. But there's the reality of age, and any 5-year-old from 1977 is now 51. I don't know how much consideration is given to the old guard as the passage of time robs them of their ability - or interest - to continue small plastic men. I think there's a lot of enthusiasm to be had but it would be nice to see something done to re-engage fans without forcing them into a new format or a total reboot between now and the time everybody loses interest. I assume there's a time limit on these things, just looking at other collectibles from the 1980s and 1990s that failed to keep (and grow) their original audience. The prices of old Hallmark Christmas ornaments (pre-licensing bonanza) went from "wow some of these are really expensive" to "wow these things got cheap" and I don't know how much gas is left in the tank for an increasingly splintered toy line.

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FIN

I assume you're either caught up on Ahsoka, or that you're going to stop reading right now. As the show basically has just now got us to the point where the big reveal in the trailer was actually shown, I don't even know that if I told you every plot point if you'd miss much. But stop reading here if you don't want to know about character appearances.

This week they jumped to another galaxy, with a whole new planet, and nobody seems particularly in awe of this. When they get there, they see yet another sad beige world that looks a lot like the other sad beige worlds you're used to seeing on Disney+. They could jump to a city, or some freaky crystal place where physical laws don't apply, or something truly bizarre. But no. They are somehow able to jump trillions of light years like it's no big deal, and somehow wind up on the exact same planet where all the characters we want to see are located. It's kind of ridiculous - if I want to get apple-filled croissants and an apple fritter, I gotta make two stops. If I want to buy two Star Wars figures from a new wave, the odds of me finding them both on-shelf at once in the same store are pretty gosh darn low. It just defies probability, is what I'm saying. Maybe it makes sense next week, but such is the problem of an eight-part movie where you have to stop for a weeklong intermission every 45 minutes. You're literally asking your fans to like/subscribe/comment/etc. between them, but hey, that's not what I promised to talk about.

We finally get to see a breathing, walking around Grand Admiral Thrawn. He's a little paunchy, he's got a dirty uniform, and he keeps some wayward company. For an art fan military commander super genius, the Smurf Elon Musk's first appearance is shockingly low-key. There's much pomp and chanting when he first appears and then it's all kind of... nothing. For a character who fans have been asking to see on the big screen since 1991, it really just drag you back down to earth real quick and reminds you that you're watching a Disney+ show. This isn't to say it wasn't an entertaining episode with lots of cool new things to point to and demand toys of, particularly after five episodes that didn't give us much to look at after the two-part debut.

It wasn't boring and it was jam-packed with creature work, which was nice. The Stormtroopers got a new iteration, with much speculation as to any supernatural power behind them. One thing is sure: soap does not exist in the Mandoverse. I assume you could wipe down a lot of the mud on the Remnant armor, or paint over the scuffs, but does anybody do that? No. But they do go full-blow kintsugi on the army, which I bet could result in amazing toys and the 501st keeping busy for years.

I am somewhat curious what it must have been like to encounter the original trilogy, as an adult, for the first time. Would we hate on Return of the Jedi if we watched the Sail Barge blow up, and wait a week to see the Emperor arrive, Yoda die, and a Rebel TED Talk before yet another break? On one hand it seems absurd but on another, those movies did lend themselves to episodic reinterpretation.

The biggest complaint I have about most of these shows is that, aside from the cartoons and The Mandalorian, you're never quite sure if it's good or not. The exposition is entertaining, but it can last for half a season (or more) as opposed to giving you a story with a beginning, middle, end, and hooks for future episodes. The idea of a streaming series is still a relatively new thing, but a serialized season still tends to need to hold itself together both as a whole and as individual, entertaining episodes. Anime has been doing it for decades with great success, and I hope Disney+ considers making its episodes a little more episodic in coming years. But I'll give them all the points for the wolf-horse howler thing and the urchin people and the fancy damaged troopers. And the intergalactic witches. I could keep going, the design team absolutely floored me this week.

What's new this week? Well, we just had PulseCon. Toy Fair is coming up. There might be a surprise tomorrow that could interest many of you a great, great deal.

--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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