Good discussion.
RE: Yularen, wasn't really trying to single him out, but he's a good example of a non-action character (kids, you can pose him as if he were standing regally on the bridge) that Hasbro has cranked out already that IMHO doesn't really fit their "playability" model. As Jayson notes though, the lackluster sales probably hurt the chances of other figures like this who have had even more screen time, like Palpatine, getting made.
RE: Market research, if they're just grabbing some random kids and making them watch the cartoons and do Q & A, that seems pretty slack, IMO. Maybe kids in Rhode Island don't like the same figures kids in Florida like. (Gross oversimplification, but you get the point) If their research was so spot on, we wouldn't see an ocean of Yarnas or Organas, it seems to me. I know it's a challenge to divine accurately what kids will buy, but that's sort of my point. They seem WAAAY too convinced Satine would be an instant pegwarmer. Maybe she would too, I guess the answer just seemed a bit snippy to me. Maybe they should just tell Dave Filoni to stop putting characters in his stories they can't make figures out of. I wonder what that relationship is like actually, hmmm....