Although not entirely surprising with the rumblings we've been hearing lately, it is another strange move with the Hasbro Star Wars line in a series of weird things over the past few years. Admittedly, a lot of this may not be Hasbro's fault at all. With the 3D releases moving around, the whole Disney thing, along with the sales/distribution problems of 2012, something probably had to give.
I guess in a way, the break is alright with me as well. I'm going to do my best to have the discipline to just save that money up for when things do start hitting (or for something else) and not just spend it on other collecting areas (LEGO I'm looking at you), although there may be a bit of that too.
I wonder how much Hasbro even knew about the possibility of more movies too far prior to the Disney announcement. They've often said it takes a couple years from start to finish to make a figure, and at this point there isn't even a cast for the next movie. Once stuff like that starts getting confirmed, I would guess that Hasbro will have to be dedicating most to all of their resources for the new movie stuff. I think it was sort of that way going into the prequels even, prior to AOTC we had a scaled back (especially compared to today's standards) POTJ line, and prior to ROTS we basically had the OTC and post-OTC lines (and the first round of VOTC), which - aside from VOTC - was very largely repacks. Like it was mentioned, I wonder if they'll coast on a largely "greatest hits" style line for the back half of this year and next.
Either way, it seems to be a very quiet year, or at least first half, for SW this year. I guess the Vintage re-release (or really, first release at retail for much of it) is a good thing for those who are still looking. I would think that many (most?) of us had already settled and got what we wanted online (or via the recent sales). I may buy an extra figure here or there, but otherwise I'm largely satisfied with what I picked up this year. Which is fine, because it would be good for me to save the money - even if it is for the future movie lines
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With this news today, I had to go back and double check what all figures were announced for Droid Factory. After checking them I was sort of "ok, no biggie" with what we'd be missing. Sure, there are several that I'd buy and was looking forward to, but at the same time it wasn't anything I was too upset about losing (for now) either. A lot of that comes from the majority of them being resculpts (or resculpts of resculpts) - and I'm a fan of updating figures in general - but so much of it was stuff we already had pretty decent versions of already (although I was looking forward to Yavin Luke and Biggs as well).
