Seriously.
All the news that Hasbro is seemingly releasing for ComicCon has my head pretty much spinning:
-More cup sets with rehashed figures
-Another holo figure
-Lava figures/exclusives
-Clone pilots that were never in the movie
-Clone repaints in bad case assortments
-Box set after box set with odd inclusions (clone pilot?)
-New, largely unnecessary and mostly repaint vehicles
Really, I was looking forward to a bit of a slow down on Hasbro basic figures (regardless of what packaging) but clearly that's not to be. Worse, they seem to have no concept whatsoever regarding what is or isn't sitting at stores. I have no qualms about reshipping Darth Vader or any clones (aside from a pilot) but is Grievous, Tarfful, Anakin or Obi-Wan remotely hard for anyone to find???
I just don't get the logic behind these and if they were to be easy to find, packed well (in the sense of assortments) and sensible figures, then fine. But the only redeeming aspect is about 1/3 of the figures released are new army builders. The rest is largely undesirable crap. The kid portion of the market has moved on to Fantastic Four, so all they're doing is pissing off collectors, what many people consider to be the real market anyway.
I've moved from carded completeist to loose completeist to loose incomplete getting what I want. I'm finding vastly more appeal in products from Gentle Giant, Sideshow, Master Replicas, Kubrick and others. Don't get me wrong, I still like the 3 3/4" scale but half the fun is finding stuff myself. I haven't bought anything for myself in better than a month, Scott finds my stuff for me. It's easy, uneventful, cheaper and while I'm tremendously appreciative of the help, it's no fun.
When you start adding up all those factors, I wonder why I bother. There's clearly lots of other stuff to collect, albeit more expensive, but if we're looking at 200 figures over a two year span that would leave me with a fair bit of money to divert elsewhere or simply not even spend. Is anyone else out there in the same boat?