RotS Product Leaks: Already?

[MetalJedi]

Nice score there!

[Jesse James]

Pittsburgh must have the best retail employees on Earth. 

So far no leaks of figures...  The mid-size ships did trickle out though to most Target stores in the area and even have had their shelves replenished.

Anyway, the Red Royal Guard looks great...  We called that one back in January like Jeff mentioned and it's nice to see him trickling out too so we can get images of him finally.  Looks like my salt & pepper shaker Guards are coming down finally.

Hell these I may need a small army off for the prequals and classic trilogy.  Great looking sculpt on that one, good articulation, and I love softgoods robes on figures.  Even when they're sloppy, they're usually more fun than a figure I can't do jack squat with.  The Royal Guard needed this treatment.

No pikes sucks though.  Need the pikes for them.   

[Morgbug]

I popped open the clone trooper this morning.  Mostly did it to see the insert in the bottom that is indeed trilogo.  Just shows some of the coming product, nothing really spectacular or that hasn't been seen before. 

Anyway, got to mess around with the clone a bit before work and it's a pretty nice figure.  I'll try and find time for pics later but for now I'll just sort of tell you about it. 

The paint app, as I mentioned earlier is ok.  It's a little rough around the shoulders, but otherwise fine.  It's your basic white and black fig, with a little blue on the helmet. 

Neck is a ball and socket joint, so the head is quite poseable, nice touch and it works quite well. 

Shoulders are pretty stiff, but ball and socket is a nice touch.  The right arm is pretty tough to pose as this is the arm involved in the action feature which is a quick draw motion.  It work fine by squeezing the legs (only the right leg moves btw, left is static for the action feature). 

Right arm is less poseable, the elbow articulation is kinda crappy if it's there at all (hey, I was playing with it while driving in too work as it was, bad enough I dropped a blaster on the floor).  The left arm is pretty much the same as the SA clone arm.  Elbow joint is very nice and quite poseable.  Both wrists are articulated and the hands hold the blasters pretty well (nice to see both long and short blasters, of which the plastic didn't seem too soft, at least right now).

I didn't do anything with the waist, so can't say what the articulation is like there.  Also didn't play with the legs much, but I presume the upper hip joint is pretty minimal so as not to interfere with the action feature.  Guess I'll have to take a closer look.

The knees were good but really stiff (hmm, sounds familiar).  Rotation and bending possible so that was nice.  Ankles were turnable but the vertical movement, which seems to have been allowed for, is absolutely minimal.  You can see they are articulated to do so, but the movement is less than 1 mm (that's really, really small for the Americans).

It's not a perfect figure and like most of you, I'd be really happy without the action feature.  With the action feature though it is still leaps and bounds ahead of the red clone we received as a basic figure for Episode II.  So they stepped it up a notch here.  I will be picking up more of these guys, no doubt about that. 

[Brian]

Thanks for the review Brent, and a big congrats on finding those figures (even if you don't keep them all ).  Sounds like the clone is a pretty nice figure, and that is good to hear.  What are your thoughts on the Chewie?  I know many (most) people aren't looking forward to that figure all that much, but it will be one of the first ones I grab on April 2nd, just being a fan of the character.  Hopefully the yellow "highlights" aren't over-stated too much (same goes for Tarfful).  Anyways, thanks again for the review, looking forward to hearing any more of your thoughts (and/or pics).

[Morgbug]

Well, Chewie's in the trunk and I'm waiting on JuvyD to decide if he wants them.  He was initially going to pass until I told him about the insert that's in there

The Chewie figure is huge, but on first impression the color didn't bother me much.  I guess I was stuck on his size relative to other Chewie figures more than the paint apps.  I'll take a look at him later. 

[SilverZ]

Walked into a Walmart tonight was able to grab cases right off a palette at the back of the toy section. Got 12 Collection 2 figures, including the red Royal Guard, Preggers Padme, Organa, Dooku, and Kit Fisto. Got a pretty good assortment of Collection 1, too.

Overall I'm really not impressed with the C1 figures.  The action features are stinky, even though they're hidden better, and the paint jobs are really spotty.

However, C2 is hit-or-miss, too. Kit Fisto was probably one of the figures I was most looking forward to, and the paintjob on his head is so terrible that I'm shocked.

I've been working on the image database for JD, and I'll be putting up pictures as fast as I can manage. I put up #11 Vader tonight:

ROTS Vader

[Brian]

Congrats on the find Tydirium, and thanks for the pics, they look great.  Looking forward to seeing more .  I'm hoping our Wal-Marts will start leaking the figures as well, but all they have now is an empty Star Wars section...and it has been that way for a couple weeks.  No figures at all, just a couple Vader Voice Changers and OTC Lightsabers.

[JediMAC]

Walked into a Walmart tonight was able to grab cases right off a palette at the back of the toy section. Got 12 Collection 2 figures, including the red Royal Guard, Preggers Padme, Organa, Dooku, and Kit Fisto. Got a pretty good assortment of Collection 1, too.

A picture would be nice, you doof.



I was lucky enough to grab the leftovers from Jared's monster score here, which was about a third of what he's got there.  Lucky bastard, he is!   

[CHEWIE]

Damn... please keep me in mind if you happen to score an extra of either Ki Adi Mundi, Kit Fisto, or Agen Kolar.   

 

[Diddly]

Damn, I'm glad Spring Break is next week! Hopefully the stores here are putting figs out early.

[SilverZ]

I brought this up in the SoCal mission reports thread, but I wanted to bring up a problem I think might come from all these early Walmart leaks. I have this nagging feeling thier selection on April 2 is going to suck.

First, because of the simple fact that they won't have the massed inventory the other chains will. I remember a the toy section supervisor mentioning in '02 that inventory that was put out before the street date didn't get accounted for or reordered until after the street date. So if they sold through all their cases before then, they had a problem. Not sure if that's the case anymore. Would suck if so, though.

Second, of the 4 cases found, 3 were Collection 1. Based on the quality of the figs so far in that assortment, I don't see a problem early on getting any of them. Collection 2 is going to be where it's at, and there's variants to chase in that assortment.

I'm thinking that after MM at TRU, the first morning stop has to be Target. Haven't they always been C2 heavy?

[MetalJedi]

I remember getting most of my Collection 2 figures at Target the morning of the release.

[Brian]

That's a good point, I wonder what the selection will be like on April 2nd.  Still no leaks here, and actually no Star Wars on the pegs at all at Wal-Mart, but I did notice yesterday that the barren pegs had a price change from $5.88 to $5.24, which is just fine with me.  Every little bit I can save .  Hopefully those prices stay there (or lower) from this point on.

[Pete_Fett]

That's a good point, I wonder what the selection will be like on April 2nd.  Still no leaks here, and actually no Star Wars on the pegs at all at Wal-Mart, but I did notice yesterday that the barren pegs had a price change from $5.88 to $5.24, which is just fine with me.  Every little bit I can save .  Hopefully those prices stay there (or lower) from this point on.

I too noticed this in THREE WalMarts in NJ - the pegs now have the tags that read "EP3 Movie Figure" and the price is $5.24. At one WalMart I got someone to actually HELP me and they scanned the sticker's barcode - unfortunately the gun didn't indicate if they were getting any in or not. I'm going to hit up a different one on the way home and see if Customer Service will check for me.

The $5.24 price tag is nice - definitely going to be where I pick up as many figs as possible come April 2nd.

[Ben]

I noticed that $5.24 price as well. The lightsabers were marked at $15.33, too, so I picked up an OTC Vader saber since I didn't have one.