Hasbro Q&A - Round 67
1) The deluxe assortment seems to be inspired mostly by the success of the Clone Wars, and thus the early figures we've seen are focused on that property. Is there a chance we'll see Original Trilogy deluxe figures, or realistic prequal era figures/characters in the line, or will it mostly be focused on Clone Wars?
Interest in Deluxe expressions has always been much lower than for basic figures, but given the success of Clone Wars and demand for more of the mid-range vehicles, we believe that the Clone Wars Deluxe assortment is poised for success. It's very unlikely that we will be pursuing a deluxe-type assortment for the Legacy Collection; that is why we have tried to do some things differently in the Battle Packs this year (even thought that format will be changing eventually as well).
2) Regarding the upcoming Scramble on Yavin battle pack, can you confirm which body Red Leader will be using? Will it simply be the VOTC X-Wing Luke body with a new head sculpt (as shown in some pictures,) or will it utilize the new torso pieces from the recent Nrin Vakil figure as shown in other pictures? Most fans are hoping for the Nrin Vakil body, as it's a more average height body/limbs it seems, while Luke is obviously a shorter character.
Red Leader used the Luke figure. When the set was originally created, the Wedge/Nrin Vakil body was not available and thus the Luke body was selected. In fact, if it wasn't for some heroics from our engineering team, Nrin may not have had that body at all since he was supposed to use it *after* we were done running the Wedge/X-Wing exclusive, which was subsequently delayed until this Fall. We managed to push the tooling dollars around, and we were lucky to get him, but not soon enough to impact Red Leader.
3) Multiple headsculpts are a great way to make the maskless troopers have some variety, as evidenced by the upcoming Hoth Rebel Soldier... Is this something Hasbro will make more "standard" with army builders such as Rebels, Bespin Guards, Naboo military, and other non-clone type soldiers? It's a great feature and definite encouragement for army building.
We like to see variety, but we probably will be doing fewer of the
"running change" type figures since it causes extraordinary difficulties in our system. More likely we will look to do head sculpt changes and release alternate versions in some other way, either as candidates for "repaint waves" (should we ever need those again), or Battle Packs.
Thanks as always to Hasbro for the answers! 
Saturday, May 2, 2009 | Jesse McCracken
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