Hey Jesse - want to hear something really cool?

The heads from the Monkey Man, Cairo Swordsman and the Cairo Thugs (of course) are all inter-changeable.

So to add some variety to my Cairo Street "scene" which includes the vintage cart & fruit stand, I have the Monkey Man head on a Cairo Thug body (since some of the Cairo Thugs didn't have face coverings). I've got a thug in all black and red with his face covered. I've got a tan Cairo Thug w/black headdress but his face exposed and I have a Cairo Thug with his face fully covered wearing a lovely purple & tan number.

I know these head swaps aren't anywhere near movie accurate, but for $13 tonight I added four more "bad guys" to my little display.

I'm tempted to go out and see if I can score more Cairo Thug 2-packs and Cairo Swordsman figures so I can make the head swaps that way and give the main Cairo Swordsman his own little squad of faceless backup warriors.

For me it all just depends on how long the Walmart clearance prices hold and the stock remains in the stores.

For your scenario to work Pete, a retailer would have to want the item as well...  It's possible nobody does.  From what I hear every etailer is pretty pissed off about the Indy stock they're left with right now, and Indy's like a hot potatoe to them.   

Ok now - this is a good answer. I wasn't aware of this. Sure, I can understand Walmart being upset with having to blow out the rest of their IJ figures at $3 each, but an e-tailer is going to be hit even harder with the left-over wave 1 figure cases.

I'm sure EE will have no problem selling through their Temple of Doom cases (even though the second half of the case is absolute crap) simply because the ToD figures are hard to come by. But I did notice that EE has the first two waves of both basic figures and deluxe figures as part of their Winter Blow-out sale.

I'd love to see it happen too because that wrapped up pretty much the last ROTLA figures anyone really REALLY wanted, but IJ has had the fork in it for some months now, and Hasbro and retail both see it as a plague I guess.

It's unfortunate that e-tailers and Hasbro can't look at the situation and try to work something out that. I'm perplexed that Hasbro would not want to show some sort of ROI for taking the time to sculpt (and possibly tool) these five RotLA figures. If the figures of Indy in German Soldier disguise, Marion in the White Dress, the German Mechanic and Sapito haven't been tooled, fine.

But what about Toht?

Toht's body w/o any modifications was used for the suited Cobra Commander at Comic Con. You mean to tell me that as a single carded exclusive, no one could swing a Toht figure with both heads? How about finding two e-tailers and split the figure where you have to buy it with a normal head from one and the melty head from another. That way, you can get the collectors who would want both to make two figure purchases instead of just one. I know I probably sound pretty out there for even suggesting that, but I would have wanted to buy two Toht figures ANYWAY simply because I would want to display both head versions as opposed to just a figure with an alternate head at its feet.

I'm hoping that as a minimum they will possibly do that for a SDCC exclusive or something.

I have to wonder how big of an overlap there really is between IJ collectors and SW collectors. I guess it must be a lot smaller than say the sub-set of SW collectors who will purchase EU based items. I know quite a few guys locally who pass on anything that wasn't in a movie. So you mean to tell me the projected audience of that Crimson Empire Crucible set is more than the projected audience of a box set of figures that updates all but one of the old vintage RotLA figures?

Perhaps I'm taking it a bit too far, but to me it's almost like Hasbro pushing the Crucible set on Diamond and going "it's Star Wars, no matter how bad the figures are, the lemming collectors are still going to buy".

Whereas, they really should be shopping a set of these five figures around going "these are great figures, they complete updating most of the vintage Kenner line, they are going to be exclusive to you, anyone who bought RotLA figures is going to want one, etc..."

Like Pieter said, you almost get the feeling that Hasbro just doesn't want to be bothered and you have to wonder if there is a fifth Indiana Jones movie, are they even going to support it with an action figure line?

But hey - I heard that Darryl DePriest is taking dumps in a box and slapping the Star Wars logo on them - I'm sure those will sell! 

Simple answer -

2008 is done, and so is the Indy line of toys. 2009 is a new year and it is time to focus on new lines of toys and on the lines that don't sit on the hooks collecting dust like Indy did.

Wow. Thanks for the thoughtful response.

I suppose that the box set WOULD collect dust if it:

a) Were to be hung from a peg

and

b) Were to be sold in a store

Yeah, I think it's starting to get to be a bit much.

But I also remember what it was like in the wake of the Episode 1 crash. The POTJ line was very hard to come by and in most stores (even TRU) the Star Wars section almost seemed to be an "after thought" in terms of the plan-o-gram space allottment.

I really hope that Hasbro slows things down a bit, it's already starting to show that perhaps, at least exclusive-wise, they might have gone a bit overboard this year. Since it doesn't appear to me that they're slowing things down single-carded-figure-wise, perhaps in the wake of X-mas '08, we might (hopefully) see a slow-down in exclusives.

I don't mind them in moderation, but just in the past four months we've gotten:

• Lars Homestead
• Dagger Squadron B-Wing
• "Flaming Wampa" ARC-170
• "Lucky Lekku" Gunship
• A-Wing Starfighter
• Ecliptic Evader TIE
• Crimson Empire Crucible Box Set
• Sarlacc Ultimate Battle Pack
• Battle of Christophsis (sp?) Ultimate Battle Pack
• Yoda & Clones Battle Pack
• Obi-Wan & Clones Battle Pack
• TFU Vader & 2 Inferno Troopers Pack
• TFU Emperor & 2 Shadow Troopers Pack

And that's ON TOP of getting 29 BAD figures, 24 Legends figures (including variants), ~20 Clone Wars figures (including variants), 12 Comic 2-packs, 6 battle packs, 4 new Evolutions sets, 4 new $20 vehicles, the $100 AT-TE and the $150 BMF. Not to mention the fact that I'm leaving out the repacked battle packs, vehicles and evolution sets, the K-Mart third round of Tins and the Legacy of the Saga 5-pack.

WOW.

I really do hope the retailers are still generally "happy" with Star Wars after this season, although, my local TRU is sitting on a mound of "Flaming Wampa" ARC-170s, Lars Homesteads and BMFs.

My local Target has an abundance of the Sarlacc UBPs and two of the WMs I frequent still have plenty of the "Lucky Lekku" Gunships. And it's already Christmas Eve....

Not that I would want to waste a JediDefender Q&A slot on this, but I'd love to see this question asked in the next Hasbro Q&A....

Why did you decide to cheap-out with the sculpt for the Emperor's Guard Trainee body? The limited number of articulation points and the oddly sculpted left ankle FORCE you to pose all four of the trainees in pretty much the exact same pose!

For the same price couldn't ball jointed shoulders, elbows, torsos, hips, knees and ankles all been put into the sculpt and just throw out the Vader and Emperor figures? (i.e. make it a set of FOUR super-articulated figures for $40)

You always claim that you need a visual presentation or a "story" with each item, but exclusives like this, that are sold only in comic shops or online, should not fall into that category. The person who will seek out this set already has PLENTY of Vader figures and PLENTY of Emperor figures. This is not the kind of set that Bobby is going to see at WalMart or Toys-R-Us and ask his mommy to buy, only to get home and cry that the guards don't have a Vader to "spar" with.

This set smacks of Hasbro thinking "How LITTLE can we get away with and still charge $40?" as opposed to "What kind of additional value can we offer the collector community for $40?" In this day-and-age with how much articulation Hasbro throws into a figure like Yarna, Hasbro should be ashamed of themselves for even putting this set out.

Can you tell I just opened this set? 

This set SUCKS - plain and simple. Due to the stupid way they sculpted the left ankle, I can't get ANY of my Trainee figures to stand on their own. They stuck stands in with the Droid Battlefront 2 packs - they should have put stands in with this set to at least soften the blow that the four figures you REALLY bought the set for all suck 'cause they all have the same stinky body.

Picked up two 327th Star Corps Clonetroopers to open.

To me, considering the fact that FOUR of the SIX figures in this set share the same body and only have unique heads underneath the masks, I would hope that these guard trainee bodies are all-new sculpts.