Good catch on the era of most of the stuff I cited. I ran out of consistently available display space in the late ’90’s and have become ever more selective in what is out in the open. Short of clawing its way out of the packaging without my assistance, there is basically no way that any of my figures from the last five years will be opened. (The new Ree Yees did manage this. Goofy little bugger.)
Thanks for the links to the forums. I really like the concept pages. The Jabba’s palace two-packs – those would be sweet.
I’m not as down on Hasbro as you. In fact, I’m not down on them. But I have been bummed about the low volume of new characters since the beginning of TVC. Still, better the current state of things than 1989.
Kind of a random question, but do you think 2013 or 2014 was better?

I live in Canada and Amazon sellers either don’t ship to Canada, or the $17 price tag, with exchange and shipping often approaches the $50 mark. 🙁

Well, the list you first mentioned was mostly things that were pre-ROTS items, which would be around a decade or more. And I said “pretty much nothing” rather than a solid nothing. 🙂

Since ROTS, they’ve focus less and less on these types of items. I did overlook the Legacy pack-ins, which were great when we got them, but Hasbro has been missing a lot of opportunity over the years and it’s definitely gotten worse in recent years.

If you’re not in the forums here, I think you should join in and chat about these things. There’s some good discussions about lots of figures Hasbro can still make, improve on, etc.

We have a Hasbro suggestion thread for starters:

http://www.yakfaceforums.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6890

And check out the Concept Series section too…

http://www.yakfaceforums.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=140
On any note, I feel Hasbro has mismanaged the line terribly, especially starting with 2012’s Movie Heroes disaster… it nearly destroyed retailers’ confidence in the brand.

To answer your question, Legacy was the last time we got really nice extras, even overlooking the droid parts. Wave 5’s Ben Kenobi had the table and Pons Limbic a cantina table. Although there have been a few nice accents since then, like the Ewok catapult.

While the line has declined steadily since Legacy, the issue is that Hasbro is running out of material. The cool-looking secondary characters have mostly been done (except for you, Tey How – your day is surely coming soon). Characters that people like you and me currently clamor for are either wildly obscure (Celeste Morne, for example) or look generic to all but the most discerning Star-Wars-toy aficionados(Theron Nett comes to mind). Your mileage may vary, but Toryn Farr’s release meant that my list of wished-for ESB figures hit zero. As in, off the top of my head, there is not one character from Empire Strikes Back that I feel deserves to be immortalized in plastic. Not one!

And a decade ago, that list was pretty long. Hasbro has done a lot of good stuff over the past ten years, even when it comes to environment pieces. So I’m going to chalk up your talk of a decade-long drought to every author’s right to embellish a tad. Quiet five years – sure. Nothing in ten – you’re just trying to get a rise out of me. Incidentally, your concern over the side-lines taking away from the 3.75″ line ignores history. There were competing lines during the best eras, and there were competing lines during the worst eras. Hasbro is a multi-billion dollar company – it is supporting the 3.75″ line exactly as much as it thinks best. Hasbro’s quest for money has been pretty consistent over the past 20 years.

The current wave formula seems to roughly be one new figure, one resculpt of a secondary character, two re-sculpts of core characters, and two repacks/kit-bashes. Waves 3-8 roughly stick to this with the newness quotient being filled with Plagueis, Farr, Brock Starsher, R5-G19, the clone commanders, and Mosep.

So the challenge for us is to help Hasbro design waves that include the figures that we want slotted in with the core characters and clones. I would really like to see a Zayne Carrick and would totally accept him if he is released in a prequel wave and generically labelled as “Jedi General”. Using existing body and limb molds works for me – he really just needs a new head and green poncho. But I really am at a loss on which characters should fill out the rest of this type of wave. Maybe a clone re-paint that needs a general, a Count Dooku resculpt, the best EIII Obi-Wan repack/kitbash, TVC Emperor’s Royal Guard repack, and an R2 repack. What do you think? What waves would you develop around your most-wanted all-new figures?

Its attached to a floor… Time for a new one that isn’t connected to a floor piece.

They have made some good things over the years – but when was the last time they made some good stuff like this?

Other than the Endor logs and bar sections (which are pretty poorly executed), pretty much everything is at least a decade old. Moisture vaporator was great, but it should have been released again by now.

But, if you’re cool with what they’ve done on this front, which is pretty much nothing in ALMOST A DECADE, good for you! I personally think focusing on making the 3.75″ scale line better over the past several years, instead of endeavors like Fighter Pods, Angry Birds and Command would have more life, but Hasbro’s only about the quick money grab these days and has been for a while now.

I don’t get it. They did that long ago, back in the Final Jedi Duel cinema scene set. Granted you get some crappy figures with it, but the throne rocks. And it’s still reasonably priced ($17 on Amazon and it’s eligible for Prime).

Blast you Hasbro for the stupid gimmicks and ignoring so much of the glorious potential of the 3.75″ line!