Fans looking for the floodgates of toys and information to unleash upon the collecting world were in for quite the drought (only surpassed by California’s actual drought) at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. It wasn’t a huge shock that merchandise for The Force Awakens is still being held very close to the vest but I was genuinely surprised how little was revealed. At the time, we had already seen two teaser trailers but we have only “officially” seen two 6” figures – and both of them troopers – one of which is only available in a gigantic TIE Fighter that garnered oohs and aha’s at the beginning, but quickly evolved into “but where would I put it” and “I’ll wait for a sale or clearance” type conjecture. Unofficially, we’ve seen prototypes of Kylo Ren, Rey, BB-8, Finn and Chewbacca but they weren’t even hinted or acknowledged by the Hasbro team last week. Hasbro didn’t even have the new packaging featuring Kylo Ren on display. Why not take the opportunity to at least have a physical representation of that on display?
Despite the mystery box of all that is The Force Awakens, that didn’t really excuse the lack of everything else unrelated to the new film either. This is the “Journey” to The Force Awakens after all, isn’t it? Sure, we got some great reveals of 6” figures like Kanan, Sabine, Jango, Farmboy Luke, a detailed look at Ahsoka’s proposed deco and, to no one’s surprise, Darth Revan as the Fans’ Choice winner. But where was the stuff for the 3.75” fan? The bantha in the room was the fact that there was no direct answer regarding collector targeted figures (i.e. super articulated) or vehicles in that scale. There are still plenty of other figures in the fabled “parking lot” that could/should have been revealed. Star Wars Rebels is ripe for the picking though we only saw two new figures from season 2: “Old Man Rex” (who wasn’t even mentioned during the presentation) and half of the new Inquisitor team: the male one. We were treated to the fact that the 5 POA Star Wars Universe (previously Saga Legends) line — the line that “everyone” loves to hate — will see an unwelcome bump in price from $9.99 to $14.99 MSRP for the figure two packs. That might not mean much to those that don’t like the style of the figures, but as someone who does, that’s a 50% additional hit to the wallet that could be spent elsewhere.
Disney’s power over the licensees (Hasbro in particular) prevented any real clarity as to what to expect for the upcoming “Force Friday” event on September 4, and as a result, collectors are frustrated. What can we buy that day? How much should we budget? What if retailer “X” has an exclusive but I’m camped at retailer “Y”? These are clearly first world collector problems to be sure, but the lack of information has prompted these questions and more from a lot of collectors, myself included.
We can only hope that announcements through Hasbro’s new venture Hasbro Pulse, other media outlets, and sites like ours will be able to provide some answers and reassurances to collectors and fans in the weeks to come.
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