Q&A For April 21, 2005

1. I have some kind of problem here. I just bought a couple of loose figures and when I was putting them up in my collection I noticed that they have this nasty cigarette odor on them. (How can people do this to their collection?!) Have you, or a reader, got any ideas how to get rid of this smell?
--Kevin

Well, this is one issue some collectors take issue with me... with. Smoking is bad for your toys. I won't get on either side of what you do to yourself, but I know for a fact that it's something that turns your X-wings yellow.

So what can you, the collector, do? Well, you can use any of a number of products to air out a room, and unfortunately I'd say that's about all the best you can do. I got some Fisher Price prototypes a few years back and after having them in a smoke-free environment, they smell a lot better. As such, I would say let them breathe, and be prepared to have to wait for a while for the air to help clean them.

2. Have you seen (or heard of) a definitive list of Gentle Giant mini bust releases due for ¹05? I know Boushh Leia is planned, as well as Vader. Yoda, ANH Han, and the three versions of the Sandtrooper, but one would think that in a new movie (the movie) we would see some ROTS items.
--Jill

Right now there is not a complete definitive list because Gentle Giant has a weird thing about not showing off items that are more or less done-- as such, we have to wait and see what they're going to show at Celebration III for a more definitive look for 2005. I'll be sure to compile a list of everything I see, as last I heard there were a few items on tap to tie in to Revenge of the Sith.

3. I remember when ROTJ came out my dad went out to the local JC Penney¹s and got my brother and I a bunch of SW shirts, ranging from Ewoks to Biker Scouts. Any news on ROTS shirts and where I can pick them up? I would love to get some for my son and maybe just one for myselfŠ
--J-A

I've seen these at Wal-Mart and I think Kohl's, but places like Mervyn's, Target, and their ilk should also be selling them-- for kids. Most of the adult shirts I've seen from Sith have been at the malls at stores like Suncoast and I think there were a couple at Hot Topic, if you can stand to go there.

4. What happened to the Ultra line? It looks like the brought back the less appealing deluxe line. The deluxe emperor is a piece of crap.
--barbara

One thing Hasbro has to do is have products for every price point, and depending on the year, they'll gear their offerings to a certain demographic-- for Ultra, it was us. For Revenge of the Sith, it's mostly kids. Hasbro is extending an olive branch with some great items like Stass Allie on her bike, or the new clone three-pack, but it's primarily a way to really sell action feature friendly items to kids.

Ultra still has a lot of potential and hopefully Hasbro will bring it back-- I mean, who wouldn't like an Emperor with a cloth cloak and a throne he can sit in? Or perhaps a C-3PO as he appeared on Endor, able to sit on his throne with a couple of generic Ewoks tossed in for good measure? With the exception of General Rieekan, the Ultra line provided a tremendous value to collectors and some great, larger items at a very fair price.

The rumblings of 2006 could mean a return to this great series, as there seems to be speculation that focusing the line in a pattern similar to the Original Trilogy Collection is a very real possibility. Frankly, I'd rather have a line more like Power of the Jedi in OTC packaging, with Ultras, but I ain't runnin' the show yet.

5. A few questions:

1. Where's Boba Fett for Episode 3? No action figure and no hint of him in the movie as far as I've heard. It would be kinda cool to see a young 20 something Fett causing destruction.

2. What causes the "yellowing" effect for blisters on cards as time goes on? Some have none and others as recent as episode 1 figures are starting to show this discoloration. I've had several in humidity, high heat, and room temperature climate of which none have displayed this.

3. I was interested in starting a collection of vintage figures. Do you think this would be wise considering their age. The ones I collected have held up well. Is careful selection the key? Most sites do not show the actual figure being sold. Can the C-9 description be trusted?And what sites would be the best places to buy?

4. Why are some sites charging so much for the lava vader. I'm like you, is so stupid, ugly, and muscular it's a must have. This wasn't very hard to get. By the way, I'm a little disappointed with the 3 exclusives. They all are great, but I wished they would have stuck to only selling them at the stores at the midnight madness and 48 hours of the force events instead of selling online also and having the available at the stores and internet later.

5. Of the figures from Ep. 3, the clone troopers are the ones I'm very interested in but cannot find. Hopefully several will surface soon. I know internet stores what to make money, but it's a little disappointing to see them charging as much as $20.00 for these figures as well as the royal guard. Is the reason because hasbro will make fewer of these or is it simple greed?

thanks for your time
--J P

So many questions! In exchange, here are so many answers.

1. The rumor mill seems to indicate that Boba's role in Revenge of the Sith is pretty much not there. The only piece of Boba Fett merchandise related to Revenge of the Sith was a miniatures figure in the new WotC miniatures game. Everything else seems to indicate you will not see the junior Fett, who is probably about 15 as of this movie.

2. Yellowing is caused by age, sun, and poor materials. For example, there are a lot of crystal clear bubbles from 1978, but carded figures from Return of the Jedi through the original Power of the Force tend to yellow just by looking at them funny. I haven't seen a yellowed blister on any modern figure yet, myself, but am considering attempting an experiment by having a figure out in the sun for a while to see what happens. It seems it's more likely that the yellow ink will fade out of the cardboard before the clear bubble will turn yellow these days.

3. Buy in person or from a dealer you've had good experiences with, and odds are you'll be fine-- just remember that these are toys, not meant to hold up to age, and it's possible that simply by existing, they will degrade over time. Some figures become oily and greasy, and others can grow a strange fuzz on their heads while still in the package. It's up to you to decide if it's worth the possible heartbreak of seeing a $200 carded figure turn into something much less cool just because it, like you, will age and eventually start to rot.

4. I liked the three exclusives for different reasons-- but as there were many more exclusives, well, it's hard to fault them for offering so much to us all at once. Although some things could be a little better, surely.

5. I'm not convinced Hasbro made fewer of these. For example, I go to a local Kohl's and they had 20+ white Clone Troopers, and I went to more Kohl's and found the same thing. I even saw dozens at Wal-Marts... this is not a figure that, if you're a fan of going to to stores, will be hard to get. The guards seem to be slightly tougher to find, and while I have not had the chance to buy red ones in the stores yet, I have seen them there. I've had no problems finding the blue ones.

6. In your opinion, are the Unleashed figures really worth it?
--BountyHunter139

They're basically the poor man's minibust, or the replacement of the 12" figure line. I like them for what they are, but I think it's a line more suited to "buy your favorites" than "collect them all." I think the prices people are paying on eBay border on insane for some of these, but for $15, I think they're a neat product, comparable to a McFarlane figure but larger and with a license that I might give a crap about. (Although Todd just got Napoleon Dynamite, and I'll probably need one or two of those.)

7. I placed a special order through my local comic book shop (who go through Diamond Distribution) for the previous Unleashed wave -Aurra Sing, IG-88 and Stormtrooper. Lo and behold, the Manager of my shop apologizes and says that Diamond canceled all orders for this set. Now, I am left high and dry, searching department stores for this set and coming up empty-handed. Now that the Episode 3 line is out, will I have to resort to... Ebay??
--Joe

One thing we always forget as a group is that Hasbro has to make a very large minimum run of any non-exclusive figure. You haven't seen these yet, but they were made, and they're somewhere-- but where? Hasbro keeps shipping older cases of Unleashed, TransFormers Universe, and other toys sometimes almost six months to a year after everybody assumed they all dried up. Stores like Target, Suncoast, Toys "R" Us, and online retailers pay attention to this and sometimes get more new shipments of older cases, the 2004 Saga line being a prime example.

If you want them now, go to eBay and see if you can get a good deal on them with buy-it-now. Seriously. $60 is not a bad deal for three Unleashed figures, that's about what Kay-Bee or Suncoast would charge you. I don't believe you've seen the last of these figures, but you might have to be patient until they come out again, so buy with your gut feeling and ask yourself how upset you would be if you didn't get them right now. If this is it, these are going to be very expensive figures-- but this can't be it, as most stores got a case, if that, and that's way below Hasbro's usual run. Watch online stores and store reports for more.

8. R2-d2 has been part of the line forever through many incarnations.They've made versions that make noise and light up but the light is always red.I'm sure I've seen it turn blue in the movies.I know it's a minor thing but with all the crazy gimmicks hasbro has come up with to make R2 different, do you think it's remotely possible that they might one day create an R2 whose light goes from red to blue.Also why not make a C-3PO with light up eyes.I know the ROTS version's eyes are painted and it looks good, but I think it would be even better if they lit up.
--John

While there are some press images and cards showing the R2-D2 prop with a lit up red eye, it never, not once, appears red in any of the five movies (presumably six). Kenner and Hasbro have had a weird knack for doing R2-D2 wrong even though he's a pretty easy guy to get right, and my guess what you're seeing here is Hasbro trying to make him interesting cheaply. Red LEDs are the cheapest, and having the big eye light up-- which it never actually does-- is visually more interesting than having the little tiny light be illuminated, as they did with Queen Amidala's Royal Starship's red R2 unit. While it would be nice to see a figure with that light go from red to blue, correctly, I wouldn't hold my breath. Hasbro seems bent on making the big one light up and it doesn't make sense why.

C-3PO with a light-up head? The closest we've gotten so far was the damaged C-3PO packed with the 2002 Chewbacca figure, and it's a very safe bet that Hasbro will be exploring this concept in the 3 3/4" line soon. The 12" line got a light-up C-3PO in 1998 as a Toys "R" Us exclusive, paired with a light-up R2-D2 figure.

9. How many of the new ROTS figures are old sculpts?Are the battle droids the same as we've seen before or are there new paint ops or molds to distinguish them from the saga versions?Are Chewbacca, Yoda and R2-D2 new versions?
--J

The only figures out today that are definitely old sculpts, or heavily inspired by old sculpts, are the Super Battle Droid, the Battle Droid, and as far as I can tell, that's it. The upcoming Destroyer Droid is, in photos, similar to a 2002 figure, but for the time being Chewie, Vader, Yoda, and all the rest are brand new sculpts. This will most likely change as the line goes on, but for now, Hasbro isn't recycling too many sculpts. Some of the parts of the Clone Trooper and Clone Trooper Commander look like they could be taken from the 2003 Super Posable Clone Wars Clone Trooper, but enough changes have been made where it's obviously not just a simple head swap.

10. I have a question about the Star Wars Vehicles. I know that the Star Wars figures are the bread and butter for Hasbro and the toy line, but are the larger vehicles (ARC-170 and Gunship) going to be in short supply in the ROTS line? They are big ships at a good price, and they are hard to find right now so is this just beginning of the line stuff or is Hasbro pulling back on these to avoid clearance woes later?
--Christen

Big ticket items aren't huge sellers for Hasbro, usually. They're playing it a little conservatively, but there's also an issue of these things being big and taking up lots of shelf space. Real estate has value, if it's a plot of land or a few feet on a shelf at Target. If you have smaller items, they're more likely to sell and be replenished, selling yet again and creating a cycle of space that has value. Big vehicles do sell, but they don't sell as quickly and as such, less space is devoted to them. Stores will order less of them because even at the very fair price of $29.99, they're not cheap like the smaller vehicles or the nifty Boga.

These vehicles will be available somewhere for the next few months but I'd buy them now if you want them. You have to remember that while clearance is a friend to some of us, especially some army builders, it's a terrible foe to collectors as a whole. If Hasbro sees an assortment sell badly, it often assumes incorrectly that this assortment isn't worth revisiting-- Hasbro often cited the 1998 Expanded Universe assortments as poor sellers, not realizing that their shelf life was about five minutes. These large vehicles don't stick around forever, but it's obvious Hasbro's being conservative with them, hence why one of them is a repaint.

There are still other ways to paint the Gunship, and there's even another way to paint the Millennium Falcon from an image I saw on my free Hyperspace trial the other day, so I'd say that for people that can stomach repaints, there are lots of ways you can get more new, or "new," vehicles. It's no secret anymore that the Tantive IV will make an appearance in this movie, so fans like me are crossing our fingers that Hasbro's booth at Celebration III today will have this or some other big, new item that's going to make us drool with glee.

When we were growing up, we didn't get the big vehicles we wanted because our parents told us they couldn't afford it or there wasn't enough space to have them-- and now that we can afford them, Hasbro found a way to make them special by making very few of them.

FIN

Well, I'm at Celebration III now and I got into Indianapolis yesterday. I assume. I wrote all this over the weekend. I'm probably somewhere in the convention center now, most likely going up to Hasbro and going "so, Blockade Runner, eh? Eh???"

For next week, just email me with your question and I'll put it in queue. (If you do not put "Q&A" in the subject line I cannot guarantee it will get through due to the high volume of spam these accounts get.)

Click here to read the previous installment of Galactic Hunter Q&A!