1. with the demise of the Master Replicas license and from what I've seen as an over-abundance of the MR lightsabers at 3 different local Toys R Us, is it conceivable to 'wait it out' and see if TRU drops the prices on these? or is TRU contractually obligated to sell thru what they have at the MSRP of $119.00 ? I have yet to obtain a MR saber and would like one, but the price point is still just way too high. Is there a point where stock sits too long and they unload it??? (I did however get the Naboo Starship for 39.99 at a TRU after pulling it off a top shelf and wiping the inch of dust of it 2 years after Phantom Menace came out!!)
--TB

It's my understanding that stores can, by and large, sell things for what they want. For all I know TRU got those sabers as an end-of-the-license closeout deal and they can sell them for eight bucks if they wanted to. Toys "R" Us does indeed have the ability to clearance things out, but it's complicated. Some clearances are chain-wide, so the corporate offices say "hey, everybody go ahead and mark this down, we're done with it." This can be done for any of many reasons. Also, some stores are supposedly given a clearance budget so if just one store is loaded down with something, they can elect to mark it down.

It's my understanding that these are doing pretty well, so it's possible it'll just sell through over time. Toys "R" Us usually takes a while to mark non-holiday merchandise down, so I wouldn't get your hopes up too high. Also, since Hasbro has announced their intention to do high-end lightsabers, it's likely that some people might want to get the originals from Master Replicas, especially if Hasbro's are significantly different. In short, it's too early to tell what the fate of these items will be, but I don't foresee clearance in the short future for these items.

2. Kudos to Hasbro. For years my biggest complaint as a collector was never finding Imperial Army builders, always fan favorites as many a poll has shown. During the 90's Stormtroopers were hard to come by and when the Clone wars line came out I never saw a SA Clone in the wild and was late for work more than once trying to track down those Clone Trooper 3 packs ( an awesome concept I wish Hasbro would revisit). But in recent years it seems Hasbro has fixed this problem by shipping Clones and other popular badies in waves almost throughout the year. My question is do you think Hasbro will continue this policy? I'm assuming the Gree and Elite trooper will ship in upcoming waves for some time. Do you think Force Unleashed figures like the Evo Trooper and Jump trooer will ship only in wave 2 or will they ship throughout the year allowing everyone a chance to get them?
--Barbara

Hasbro will indeed be sending out many of their clones in multiple cases through the course of the year. It seems around 2005, someone at Hasbro HQ finally said "hey, these trooper things are popular. Why aren't we cranking them out to an obscene degree?" Since then, we've had more clones than we can carry, and shortages for many of the figures tends to be a pretty uncommon thing. Right now, it looks like these Evo Trooper and Jumptrooper figures will be in slightly higher rotation than others in the Force Unleashed line, but keep in mind this is just Spring-- figures could hypothetically ship all year or get reissued down the road. I'm betting we're going to see a lot of these for a while, given how well things seem to have worked for most of the 2007 troopers thus far.

Hasbro wants your money. Thankfully, they're going to try and go after it more frequently than in the past.

3. Hey Adam, what do you think of this theory? Tsui Choi is actually an advance repaint of Ratts Tyerell, like what they did with the airborne trooper a year or so ago. Would it really make sense for a brand new sculpt of a minor character be made for a Target exclusive? I think a Pod racer 2 pack might be coming. It would make sense because re-using it right away would get back some money for tooling costs. It must cost Hasbro more to sculpt 2 small figures then 1 regular size figure. It's hard to see in the figure photo, but his sash looks wide, like Ratts Tyerell. Tsui Choi, from the bad reference I could see, has a narrower belt. If the figure has a bandolier, then it's definitely Ratts. But again you can't really see in the figure photo because its shadowy.
--Tom

Anything is possible, but you have to keep in mind that 2007 proved Hasbro actually will sculpt entirely new figures for an exclusive. Not only did Target get figures like Ilum Padme and the Chameleon Droids, but Entertainment Earth got those female Mandalorians too. There's a strong possibility that Master Choi was created specifically for this one exclusive-- after all, with so many repaints in last years' line, they probably had a little more budget to try some nice things like this. (If you haven't already guessed I'm totally sold on the 2008 Order 66 line-up. Except I'm not digging the blue ARC Trooper with the ill-fitting kama.)

Sev seems like a modified Kit Fisto too, so you never know-- Hasbro's pretty shrewd when it comes to getting the most out of their figure engineering.

4. So it sounds like we're getting a build-a-droid type thing in an upcoming assortment. I can't think of any oversized droids where this would make sense ala the Marvel "build a giant robot/world devourer/giant supervillian". So do you have any insights on how this will work? I think random droid parts that you can assemble into a Frankendroid would be pretty cool. Sort of like the old-school droid factory.
--John

While a "factory" concept might be a useful option for branding, random bits and pieces are a tough sell. That is, assuming of course that this is going to happen-- remember, nobody has confirmed anything yet. (Or denied it outright, so whatever, you know the drill.) If you picked up a figure and it had a burst on the box which reads "cobble a bunch of these pieces together to assemble your own crappy robot!" rather than "build your very own protocol droid!", well, the idea of a cohesive figure is a little more exciting. While the collecting hobby is often very much an aimless pursuit, the build-a-figure concept works because the figure being built is a desirable collectible. (And let's not kid ourselves-- this is the kind of thing collectors go for. Kids would rather just get the figure outright.)

Hasbro and other companies have proven the build-a-figure need not be a giant premium-sized item. Actually, for Star Wars, I sincerely doubt they would make a giant figure as a freebie when they could use that as a central focus point in a battle pack or other larger set. For Star Wars, it seems like it would be a big mistake to put any big-ticket character as a build-a-figure, but things like troopers and droids are pretty universal. I figure we'll likely only see standard sized figures if this comes to be. (I know we've all seen the spy reports but with budgeting the way it is, Hasbro might pull back just to keep prices down-- you never know. And neither do I.)

5. Looking at the recent stormtrooper/sandtroopers, and the upcoming ones with the technicolor paint schemes, don't you think it's about time for a new stormtrooper sculpt? At least for the helmet. I'm not sure if these are based on the vintage mold from a few years ago, but the sculpting is looking pretty soft compared to most of the great Ep. III style clones. Those helmet sculpts are very crisp and movie-like IMO, while the classic stormtrooper is looking a little mushy and walleyed at this point. (And of course I'd like to see some flat lenses on the eyes instead of bubble lenses, that would help with the walleyedness. And as you know, the flat lenses are more accurate for sandtroopers, along with the slight armor differences.)
--JR

While there are elements of the 2004 Stormtrooper we've seen used time and again I'd like to see updated, Hasbro seems pretty pleased with it. Short of making changes to bring it closer to the 25th Anniversary G.I. Joe figure line, I don't think there's too much you can do to really improve it. Hopefully we'll see something all-new when the tooling finally gives out, but I don't think Hasbro has much incentive to do a new sculpt for another few years.

As far as the Sandtrooper versus the Stormtrooper, well, you have to remember Lucasfilm approves all these things and so far doesn't seem to care-- if Hasbro takes the initiative to make Sandtroopers with even more accurate armor, that'd be wonderful-- but the problem is few fans ask for this, so unless there's an uproar I wouldn't get my hopes up here, either.

6. I got a two part question for you concerning EE exclusives.
1) Being a huge Madalorian geek I bought the Forces of the Republic sets and I was wondering what are the chances we will see a carded female Mandalorian from Hasbro?
2) Are we gonna get more EE exclusive sets this year?
--Andrew

Hasbro has stated recently that their stance is something like this when it comes to reissuing exclusives: if the original exclusive seller is out of stock of the item and has no plans to bring it back, they might consider it for reissuing at some point. Since Entertainment Earth has more of Rav Bralor and her buddies coming soon, it's going to be a long time before either of these specific figures make it to store shelves individually. It's possible Hasbro may decide to introduce a third female Mandalorian but there have been no plans made yet.

There are plenty of other Mandalorian characters out there to explore with all the comics and beyond, so certainly there's an opportunity to do more if they wanted to.

Will Hasbro give Entertainment Earth another exclusive this year? Sounds like a good question for Hasbro if you ask me. Naturally, you can bet there are plenty of ideas going around but as to what happens and when? Well, that's something you get to wait and see.

7. What was it with Hasbro (and before them Kenner) with blue lightsabers? With Kenner, I don't believe they ever made a blue rollplay lightsaber - they were red and yellow and,after Jedi came out, green. Fast forward to 1995 - we didn't see blue rollplay lightsabers until AOTC Obi-Wan's came out, if my memory serves. Was there a reason that blue wasn't used - was it harder to get the blue plastic for the blade? Did the lights not show up as well through the blue plastic? Just kinda wierd, since the green lightsaber was only used in 1 original movie, and yellow was never used. As far as the Kenner figures went, I won't even get into that as it was a mess with the yellow and blue and green and red plastic blades and the mis-colored pictures of Ben with yellow blades etc etc....
--VirdenBoy69

Hasbro's first electronic role-play lightsaber came to being in-- if memory serves-- very very early 2000 with the Obi-Wan Kenobi lightsaber. Why didn't they do one earlier? Heck if I know. I think in the old days, it seems people had a hard time agreeing on which colors those weapons really were. Today, my guess is it's just the kind of thing they wanted to do-- the green Luke Lightsaber and the red Darth Vader Lightsaber look very different, while the blue Anakin/Luke saber looked a lot like Vader's. Perhaps it was for variety, or perhaps it was just because they hadn't got to it yet.

8. I'm not sure if the question has been asked before -- I read your column regularly and haven't seen it raised specifically.

Are you getting the impression -- personally, or even from talks with Hasbro -- that our friends at Pawtucket may be influencing a few decisions on where the SW saga and characters will be going in the coming months...particularly with the new TV series looming?

To turn the question around, could Lucasfilm be writing in new character parts -- such as new clone commanders like 'Captain Rex' -- with a mind on toy sales?

Obviously you need new supporting characters to keep the saga going, but the number of Clone Commanders we're getting is plainly getting out of hand.

Not that is is being felt at the counter, obviously. And I hear you, they'll keep doing it for as long as we keep buying.

But I am wondering. Are we reaching a point where the tail is starting to wag the dog?
--John

Many fans have indicated that they believed that Return of the Jedi was the turning point where Ewoks and other character designs were thrown into the movie just so it would give licensors a wider array of merchandising opportunities. With toyetic concepts like the Speederbike, the very cuddly Ewoks, and the mind-blowing array of creatures in Jabba's Palace, there were way more designs than the story needed, which worked out well for us as toy junkies.

Fast forward to 2005, and most people once again said the same thing-- Lucasfilm saw that there might be a lack of merchandising opportunities after the film, so someone decided to do a ton of clone designs so fans would have years of product to gobble up while also having a new concept introduced (multi-colored troopers) that would allow Hasbro and others to make up tons of new characters within the context of the films. Pretty slick stuff there.

I personally don't believe that anything from the new TV series was done to be more merchandisable than what we've seen from Pod Racing, Ewoks, Clones, and so forth. I'm sure someone, somewhere is saying "we have to have new characters every week to do more toys" but you really need to do stuff like that to keep the stories fresh, too. Star Trek would be a real drag without new recurring characters, villains, ships, and so forth every week. I'd be disappointed if Lucasfilm didn't introduce new clones, Jedi, and other characters every episode.

But if you don't like Clones? Well, like you say, market forces will adjust the future of the toy line. If we buy, that's what we're going to get. Clone repaints are easy to do for digital animators, toy makers, and even writers-- just come up with a new planet, paint the squad pink, and now you've got a whole new squad of troopers. We've also seen multi-colored Daleks and countless other sci-fi beings over the years, so honestly, this is something I expect to keep the budgets low. (That and the name of the show is "The Clone Wars.") I seriously doubt we're going to see the toy line dictating story, but stranger things have happened.

9. Do you know when and what assortment the Legends 501st clone (super articulated) might be in? I am really looking forward to this figure and just hoping it isn't getting scrapped.
--Matthew

Looking at all the assortments Hasbro has announced, it seems likely to show up with the "Wave 6" Saga Legends figures-- that is, Zev, and the formerly exclusive Clones and Troopers. Samples have surfaced of this figure so it should still be showing up, but some things take time-- lots of time-- especially when intentional variants are concerned. Few (none?) have surfaced on the collector's market or at retail yet, so keep checking-- it could leak early.

10. One response you posted in the Jan. 20th responses has just startled me and I was hoping you could provide a little information and/or summarization of rumors you have herd supporting it:

"I personally really hope they're [CW3D figures] realistic because while I admire the animated style (and bought the Gentle Giant maquettes to prove it), I like my toys realistic. I expect all basic waves until the TV tie-in line starts to be realistic-- and as far as the TV line goes, I really hope they're realistic, too. But I'm not hopeful."

This is the first I've heard from any source that I attribute credibility to that there is even a chance that the Clone Wars 3D figures could be produced in any format other than 3 3/4" realistic. Please expand on this, as this has incredibly major implications for my collecting plans. There's no way I'd take my collecting in the animated direction - nice as they might be to some. Please provide some background to your thoughts.
--John

Pessimism and market trends are what make me think it might be non-realistic style. We just saw Hasbro crank out stylized G.I. Joes last year, and now we're seeing it with Transformers: Animated. Zizzle is doing an animated, stylized line of Pirates of the Caribbean toys, and well, take a look at those Bratz things. There's a lot of stylized stuff being made these days, and even Hasbro is trying it out with the Mighty Muggs. Animated is very "in" this season, it would not surprise me at all to see a kid-oriented line try to invent itself to appear new to kids, parents, and yes, collectors. Convincing kids and parents they need to buy another realistic Obi-Wan Kenobi might be tough, but if there's an entirely new style, well, who knows? This is of course merely speculation and we don't know what the line will look like until Hasbro reveals it to us in about-- if my hunch is right-- three weeks.

Also, fans have been constantly demanding more animated style figures. It's possible the overall fanbase is happy with the realistic figures, but there's a significant amount of chatter demanding cartoony stuff. If ever Hasbro had a reason to give it another shot, this would be it. (Also, some toys would work well for both-- I think vehicles might look "realistic" either way, so who knows.)

I'd rather it all stay one way across the board, just because I don't like change all that much. But that's me.

FIN

Hasbro has stated they're unlikely to do many more Star Wars environment playsets. This is unfortunate, but it doesn't mean it's totally hopeless given that some real-world locations were used for the saga. They shot a lot of stuff in Tunisia using actual, pre-existing buildings. That style of architecture wasn't unique to Tunisia, so if you want to make your own Tatooine homes, you might be in luck. In 2009. BEHOLD!