1. I was excited to see the new photo of the upcoming Wedge Antilles X-Wing until I noticed that it comes with a silver domed astromech with red markings. How did Hasbro come up with that? Stills from ANH - both exteriors and cockpit close-ups during the trench run show that Wedge had a red-domed R2 unit with white markings - actually the same dome that was used on R3-T2 in Mos Eisley. Is this really the droid we're getting in this set? Can Hasbro really have screwed up this droid's dome *twice*, in that they got it wrong on R3-T2 as well? Can't you just make a call to them and get this straightened out before it goes into production?
--Troy

Don't forget Galoob's previous Wedge X-wing toys, which sported a silver-domed droid with darker panels. It's entirely possible that the establishment of Wedge's astromech droid has been swept under the rug. Sure, it looks one way in some shots in the movie, but perhaps the intent of the filmmaker and/or the Expanded Universe said something else about his droid from that era. Plus don't forget all the weirdness surrounding R2-D2 and R2-X2. Until 1997, R2-D2 was black in the space shots of all three films, and R2-X2 is a figure fans still argue on if he's black or green.

It looks like the figure coming in that set from the photo is R3-M5 (or R3-D1) and as we've seen, Hasbro isn't always great about getting the droids perfect. Sometimes, sure, but not always. Given that it's 2009 and I'm having problems finding reference to Wedge's droid before the Rogue Squadron book era, I'd say LucasFilm may not agree with our assessment as to who his droid may be. I'm not even saying what I think it is, but there are reference shots out there that seem to indicate people may agree with Hasbro's decision for one reason or another.

This item hasn't been confirmed yet, it seems, so either it's going to show up in about a week or is way, way off. Who knows. I'll ask Hasbro when I meet with them if anyone there is on the SW team (I'm rewriting this on February 15, I've got some wacky meeting times.)

2. Here's a question that has been on my mind lately. Why don't we see more OT ships (besides the smaller scaled wing TIE and Vader's TIE) in the $20-25 range? I know some are too big, but you'd think the snowspeeder and the A-Wing could fit in that line. Hasbro keeps repainting the Jedi starfighters, so one would think they could throw in some more OT vehicles as well. It seems that we only get OT vehicles as exclusives.
--Damian

I got asked this a lot a few years ago, and I can keep my same answer-- "what is it you want, anyway?" If you look at the original trilogy you'll notice that most of the vehicles of any significance have been done. There are a few UFOs and Speeders from Star Wars that haven't been done and are unlikely to happen, there's a Cloud Car from The Empire Strikes Back, and as far as size goes I'd say we're pretty much maxed out. The A-Wing did appear in the $20 assortment back in 1997, due to it showing up as an exclusive there's no reason for it to be in the main line assortment right now. Likewise, the Snowspeeder has recently been an exclusive, and if the rumors are true Hasbro is either retooling it or making an all-new version for a future, smaller release. Also, a rumored/confirmed AT-ST of a new design is supposedly on deck but who knows if it'll be cheaper or bigger at this point.

Short of X-wing repaints, there aren't a whole heck of a lot of vehicles from the original trilogy left to do. I guess we can go the Galoob route and get some Y-wing, Snowspeeder, and other vehicle repaints, but truth be told Hasbro managed to bring back virtually every small to mid size vehicle between its original tooling (Skyhopper, Darth Vader's TIE Fighter) and endless repurposing of vintage molds (TIE Fighter, Speederbike). At this point, other than the Cloud Car, I'd say everything left to do would be the size of an ARC 170 Fighter or bigger.

3. I know you have been asked about playsets to the point of blowing your motivator, but I have to revisit the subject in light of recent developments.

Playmates has unveiled both a Transporter Room and Enterprise Bridge playsets for the new Star Trek movie. They are both scaled for 3 3/4 inch figures and can be pre-ordered from a certain online retailer for under $40.00 each.

Do you think this will encourage Hasbro to get off their doesn't fit their marketing model soapbox? Star Wars fans get the incredibly detailed and hours of fun filled adventure with the Disturbance at Lars Homestead playset. Oh, and at the incredible value price of $50.00. If they really wanted to create a disturbance at least they could have included barbequed Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru figures. I digress.

Playmates apparently believes that there is a buck or two to be made from playsets. Despite, as Hasbro would say, the tremendous expense of design and tooling. Not to mention that Star Trek has never rarely been driven by the kid market unlike Star Wars.

What is your vibe on this? Any hope for Death Star, Rebel Base, Star Destroyer, Etc. environments?
--Darth Spock

*smack* *punch* LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO! Despite the "no more playsets" question rule, this is a fair one-- and here's why. Every toy line is entitled to one or two flagship toys, as it were. For most toy lines, that's all they'll ever get, if it lasts long enough that may change.

When a property has a major push with a significant motion picture release, you can get away with certain price points and products that you ordinarily couldn't. For example, this year there's a Star Trek line that's not squarely aimed at collectors, which in itself is a strange thing. There hasn't been a truly mass-market Trek line in nearly 10 years. Because of the movie, this line exists, and yes there's going to be a huge push with some very interesting experiments. However, this is an apples and oranges situation, consistent with Hasbro's behavior. We got playsets in 1999, 2002, and 2005-- movie years. Zizzle made Pirates large-scale vehicles and playsets for the two sequels, Hasbro made an Indiana Jones playset (a remold of a Star Wars piece) last year too. That's because there was a massive movie release and in those situations you can actually get away with some very high-dollar items. The one-two punch of theatrical and DVD releases for movies these days does wonders to push toys and the franchise itself in kids' imaginations, some of which I can't talk about just yet.

The bridge of the Enterprise and a Transporter room (and the Black Pearl) are all truly signature items. If you're someone calls themselves a fan 28 different Star Trek series that have aired since 1622 (or a "Starrie"), you'd know that the bridge is the center of nearly each and every episode is the bridge, with the Transporter room as (generally) the second-most seen set in a lot of episodes. The "magic" of the transporter lends itself to successful toys, as we've seen in previous Trek lines, and people just freaking love the Bridge. It's like a Millennium Falcon-- it's almost unsettling to not have one. The bridge is a character in the show, as is the transporter. There's probably a couple hundred hours of Trek that focus on the (or a) Enterprise bridge, so it's truly significant-- arguably the one thing in the movie and series that you absolutely, positively have to represent in toy form. If we had an analog in Star Wars, I'd say it was the Millennium Falcon.

This is where the "BUT THIS OTHER COMPANY IS MAKING BIG TOYS WHAAAA" argument loses steam. (Nothing personal, I hear this a lot, so the rage you see here is not directed at you, Darth Spock, but more or less at the world as a whole.) Zizzle made the Black Pearl-- that's the Millennium Falcon of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Playmates is going to make the bridge and transporter rooms (and a model of) the Enterprise-- again, the Millennium Falcon of the Star Trek franchise. The toy company behavior from line to line is fairly consistent. Environments like Hoth have little to no personality, even the Death Star and Star Destroyer were fairly sterile places without a lot of quirks. (Well, OK, the Death Star was pretty damned quirky.) It's just that you're making my point for me here-- the Enterprise is the Falcon, not Hoth. Lots of things happen on the Enterprise, if they made a playset of the icy planet in the new Trek film I'd say you had a solid point here. But they aren't yet, so you don't.

And peddling back slightly, Zizzle made a couple of playsets for Pirates 3 including a rather nifty Singapore playset, some whirlpool attack sets, and so forth-- and these all tanked too. (Pirates 2 merch did pretty dang well.) These things did not do especially well. Heck, Hasbro did a G.I. Joe Spy Troops Cobra Island playset a few years ago, I bought mine at Target for under five bucks. (Seriously, there were stacks of them.) I'm not just acting as Hasbro's unofficial (and probably unwanted) mouthpiece here-- I speak from experience. Playsets don't typically do well, and while we can cite flaws in every playset that has been released as "well it would have been better if XYZ," the same will be true of anything else Hasbro makes. Really the only safe route here is paperboard, like the 1990s Cantina and Jabba's Palace, and they aren't hearing none of that either. The little "environment" pieces-- the Lars Homestead, and Pit of Carkoon-- are what we're going to be getting these days until they prove to be failures, too, so enjoy it while it lasts.

(But going back to your point on the Lars Homestead, I think we can all agree that was an overpriced, low-quality item that Hasbro should be ashamed of marketing as a toy given how flimsy it is.)

4. What do you think of the price hike (fracking rip-off) target and walmart are instituting throughout the country for STAR WARS and G.I.JOE figures? Is a retailer scam or the supplier ( Hasbro) being greedy?
--Antonio

What we're seeing here is a combination of multiple problems.

One, Target and Wal-Mart (and to a lesser extent, Toys "R" Us) are toy discounters. They're selling for below the real MSRP at times, sometimes very close to cost to work as a "loss leader." These Star Wars figures probably should have been around $7.99 across the board last year.

Two, there was a big economic clusterf crisis which caused factories and vendors to say "holy cow, oil is going up, that means manufacturing costs and labor and transportation are going to be an issue, we have to make up the difference somewhere." Prices came down to Earth since then, but odds are the pricing of this year's line were already set in stone, and until Hasbro has a reason to have to bring those prices down, they have no reason to do it. Especially if profits are a concern. (Rarely has a Star Wars or Transformers or G.I. Joe item failed on price alone.)

Three, make your money where you can. If something is popular, it's important for both Hasbro and its retail partners to be able to pay their employees. Hasbro makes at least a couple thousand SKUs every year between its puzzles, pet shops, ponies, dolls, Playskool toys, games, and so forth. Not all of these are monster hits.

Four, in some cases, we're seeing real added value in the products. This isn't as common (and doesn't really apply to Joe) but look at Transformers and Star Wars. With the Transformers Universe Deluxe line, we got a few toys that actually had a smaller, bonus toy that turned out to be pretty awesome. With Star Wars, we're getting those build-a-droids, some pretty incredible accessories, and 2-packs. If you bought Wave 5 of Legacy, you'll end up buying 8 figures, but getting a grand total of 12 along with some nifty accessories, two small tables, and top-notch articulation. Except for Trinto Duaba's arms, I don't think Hasbro's cheaping out at all as of this most recent wave.

If things can stay this nice, I think a price increase is something I can live with but at the cost of things like army building and following other lines like Mighty Muggs and the Star Wars Transformers-- the price increase and new economy will ultimately kill off these periphery lines. Things are a little more expensive than they need to be, but odds are to see a price decrease we'll start seeing accessories or articulation vanish, even more repaints, or the eventual loss of the build-a-droid pieces. If price is genuinely a concern for you, I'd advise you to look what it costs on eBay to buy figures from the past 3 years. You'll save a fortune if you can wait 12-36 months.

5. So the new Insider confirmed a lot of cool stuff, but one thing that left me scratching my head is the new Rancor Keeper figure. I thought the old one was pretty good, and let's face it, he's a fat shirtless guy who just stands there and cries. Do we need a super-articulated version of that? There's still lots of unmade characters from Jabba's Palace, and if they had to remake a ROTJ character, why not somebody more important and visually interesting like Ackbar or Venture Bros guest star Nien Nunb?
--Kevin

I'm with you here. The 1997 Rancor Keeper was released and then stuck around at retail for a couple of years. For our newer fans, there were lots of experiments at retail to make these less appealing to "collectors" (which is what stores called people who bought every figure and sold them at a profit back then) which resulted in some figure having intentional damage applied to the packaging to discourage this behavior, and the Rancor Keeper was typically the one left over. When people say "oh that figure is such a peg warmer," I say no it isn't-- Malakili truly was. I used to go to Wal-Marts in the middle of the night and would stumble into stores with 50+ of this guy sitting around unsold. (Today, we're seeing Gargans sitting around.)

In all fairness, nearly every minor character is a "what the Hell?" to one fan and "OH MAN CAN'T WAIT" to another. I honestly don't believe there's a single fan excited at buying another Malakili, but one thing Hasbro has done differently since 1997 is they really shortened the lifespan of a figure at retail. Back then, a figure could be expected to ship for about 6 months to 2 years. Today, unless a figure ships for Saga Legends or is one of Hasbro's "A" figures, it's only going to ship for one wave and its revisions, which is likely about 2 months plus however long it takes to sell through. So with any luck, Hasbro has done the math and said "we can make this number of these and it shouldn't be a big issue."

I agree completely that Admiral Ackbar or Nien Nunb would be way, way more exciting but this all really gets to the issue of timing. Why wasn't the Rancor Keeper released alongside, oh I don't know, the Rancor? Or Nien Nunb released during 2008 with the new Falcon? The line lacks a sort of release synergy outside the basic figure line. Sure, we got a Falcon Training Battle Pack a few months after the ship came out, and we're just now getting the AT-TE Battle Pack, but c'mon. Let's get this stuff out together, it might push kids to buy the vehicle and the pilot. (Also, if memory serves, Ackbar and Nien were pegwarmers in some markets too.)

FIN

But on to other matters which are less likely to bring hate mail, I've been going through my CDs lately trying to rip everything to MP3 so I can get them boxed away and out of sight for a while. What I'm finding is some aren't readable by the computer I write this column on. So I gotta dig out some other machine to rip them, to varying degrees of success. If you aren't already backing up your music collections digitally, I suggest you consider doing so.

I have not seen all the NY Toy Fair news despite being here and going around looking at stuff. I think I've slept 8 hours since Friday morning, so yeah. Surly. And I got more work to do, so I'll take my leave of you for now.

Got questions? I bet you do. Email me with "Q&A" somewhere in the subject line and hopefully I'll get to yours in the next column!

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