Quote from: Muftak on October  3, 2023, 09:46 AM

Thrawn picked up the Ysalimiri because he knew (or at least had a strong suspicion) that Emperor Palpatine had left a dark side force user to protect Wayland.  Thrawn used the cloning cylinders to clone his best troops so he could crew the dark fleet quickly.  He made a bargin with Joruus C' Bayoth to use battle meditation to help coordinate his troops and offered up Luke Skywalker as a psooible apprentice for him.

As far as the caskets, I'm wondering if they are more night sisters.  Thrawn mentioned waking up the three mothers shortly after his arrival on Peridia.

You are not wrong. Thrawn wore a ysalamir down to Wayland to protect himself from whatever Guardian was there. He did promise to deliver Luke, Leia, and the twins as apprentices too.

Nevertheless, Thrawn's ultimate plan for the ysalamiri was to negate the Force around the cloning cylinders to allow accelerated Clone production. At the climax of The Last Command, C'Baoth kills all the ysalamiri in the Wayland Clone chamber while our heroes are in there trying to blow it up, and they are specifically attached to the cloning tanks.

Which books?  In Heir to the Empire the ysalimiri evolved to negate the Force around them to hide from the vorksnyrs who used the Force to hunt.  Thrawn used them as protection against Joruus C'Baoth and Luke Skywalker.

Yeah, I am referring to the Heir to the Empire Trilogy. Thrawn's master plan is to grow a Clone Army, and once he finds Wayland's location with its cloning facility he starts harvesting ysalimiri. He didn't know he would find C'baoth there, but had contingency plans if he ever discovered a Dark Jedi to team up with.

And I don't think he ever worried enough about Luke as the last Jedi to make a formal plan against him. The ysalamiri he carried around on Fleet ships were protection for the crew from crazy C'baoth as he learned to coordinate individual Imperial minds.

(In the end, I don't think the crates on Ahsoka have ysalamiri in them...that would have needed set up or referenced by Ezra in some way to work...)

I don't know why other than Kenner Greedo is Greedo to me, but I have had no interest in the Stan Solo version at all. I even tried to psyche myself up as it could be Beedo from Jabba's Palace instead since it looks more modern than 79 Greedo, but to no avail.

Last year I felt the same way about his updated Fetts, but I eventually did get the ROTJ version by justifying it as a POTF figure. The ESB version I just could not justify.

Weird the philosophical avenues this hobby can take you down.

Regarding these pipeline reveals...

Hasbro announced a total of 5 figures from A NEW HOPE.  Granted, the versions of Luke Skywalker, R2-D2 and the Stormtrooper are all reissues.  But a new Darth Vader is in the mix, plus the biggest reveal - a new Princess Leia - which has been called for in the whole "Make The Mains" campaign that's been circulating around social media.  But I'm struck by what looks like it might be a wave of A NEW HOPE figures.  Is anyone else surprised by this development?  And could it be an indication that Hasbro might be moving back towards building waves of figures based on a common theme?

The thought that immediately crossed my mind was that Disney told Hasbro that the movie is going to be in theaters again in 24 or 25 to help fill the schedule vacancies created by the strikes.

Next I thought they could be gearing up that Haslab Death Star.

Cynical me thought they were getting into some new ANH tooling so they had figures ready to rerelease for the 50th anniversary that is 4 years away.

It looks a lot like the Jabba's Goons repack wave coupled with Han/Vader/Piett wave honestly.

I received notice of the Throne Room shipping soon, too!

I still don't understand why this didn't pre-charge. It seems a lot riskier of a sale and a lot lower of demand than the Ghost was.

In a way I am glad to have that charge finally landing and no longer hanging over my head. Oh, and excited about the playset too.

Target had to find ways to get stuff into the online buyers hands faster in order to stop losing business to Amazon Prime 2-day shipping.  The Store-as-hub model apparently saves them tons in that regard.  Filling the orders closer to where the customer lives is apparently driving a lot of those savings.  I am sure there is probably savings in the fact that the retail store workers ($13-15/hr average) are usually getting less than the warehouse workers ($18-20/hr average).

In the case of little plastic Star Wars figures, it may not be saving them very much at all. I'm sure there probably is a better, cheaper way to service the niche "old men buying little plastic men" community, but not cheaper enough to any degree that it makes sense upsetting their giant store-as-hub strategy and $110b in sales operation.

Thanks, that really does add a lot of context outside of the action figure niche, which of course is their focus as a company, and may at long last help to satisfy my curiosity about Hasbro's switch to solid case packs (vs assortments)  in the TVC World-Building boxed figures, the Retro ROTJ wave, and the TVC exclusive figures.

I appreciate the education!

Nicklab, the theory makes sense, but how does it jibe with the stories of Target stores not even receiving full cases of some of the products at times? I understand stuff like the nonassortment packed Boba Fetts and Indiana Jones figures arriving in stores and being shipped out to fulfill online orders, but when the regular TVC and Retro figures show up in batches of 3s from the repack box it doesn't add up.

Especially considering their has to be a warehouse/DC somewhere putting together those repack boxes to ship out to the Target stores.

They allow the figure to sit on a speeder bike LIKE A BANTHA.

Fixed that for you!!!