I guess $200 doesn't sound so bad in light of that one having been gone for a good long time. 2 Astros left doesn't sound insurmountable, either. Good luck!

I finally bit the bullet too and got the Stan Solo Ball Speeder when it came back in stock last week. I do love it, fits right in with the Kenner Mini-Rigs.

I will be receiving a Baby Wampa and a Toothface (J'Quille) soon, I will let you know what I think of them when they arrive.

I received my "TheNext17" figures a while back but hadn't had time to futz with them much. They are pretty close to Stan Solo figures as far as construction goes, the joints feel good and they are injection molded plastic as opposed to a heavier resin. The design aesthetic is a bit stylized in a way that does its own thing and is not really what I think of when I think of the Kenner style. It works really well for his original creation Baby Wampa, though. Super cute figure.

The big difference to me is the 3 I got ( I picked J'Quille and Baby Wampa but he threw in a Tanus Spijek as a bonus) are all fully painted figures, and that is a huge visual difference to a molded in color figure. It might just be my luck (they are also all fur-covered creatures) but that choice makes them seem more custom and less factory-made, even though I know they were.

I also got my Rebel Fleet Trooper and Sandtrooper from ProCustomFigures. They are much closer to Kenner style in my eyes, though they have their issues.  It seems they struggled a little bit with proportions on the RFT. He feels just a hair too big. The limb joints feel a bit iffy and on the loose side, too. Also, the Sandtrooper struggles to balance, probably due to the backpack being grafted straight on to a Kenner Stormtrooper template, and not compensating the leg stance for a new center of gravity. He has to lean forward a bit to stand on his own.

If it is the one I have seen in stores, it is 50-75% to scale for 3.75". Kinda small.

These are the kooky collectors though, the ones that collect this kind of one-off "boutique brands." He makes hundreds of each, not several thousands.

Still, Hasbro has the Retro artoo and threepio molds now. Maybe Adam Pawlus will get them to do more EE droid packs. Hmph. That could be our best chance.

If I had any of those droids or figures, I would be really tempted to be selling now, that is a pretty sizable return.

He's like the Howard Hughes of the Star Wars bootlegger set. I guess Dagobah Luke will be his Spruce Goose.

Here the business just hit another level of notoriety in the last week with the panic sell outs of all the astromechs, and rather than being thrilled and trying to parlay that into more sales and lining up future stuff, he is out because fans aren't supporting his war against a goofoff youtuber?

Which, by the way, has to be more than coincidence. Getting roasted by the guy brought a whole bunch more eyeballs to his stuff, period. No such thing as bad publicity.

Oh well, maybe someone else will be spurred on to pick up where he left off. Or the other personality will surface tomorrow and reverse it.

I wound up redeeming the points for a new set of Apple AirPods.  Otherwise they were going to expire.  So no Slave I for me!

No Slave I for anybody, this release is Boba Fett's Starship! 

Anecdotally I would say we can be assured that there are way less figures produced today than 10 or 20 years ago. Even if every peg at every Target and WalMart were full, you can't deny there used to be 6 pegs versus today's one or two pegs. And that's not even considering the loss of pegs at TRU, KMart, Kaybee...there are less figures around these days.

Figure sell through because collectors need one full case each (or two cases if they collect loose and carded) and automated inventory systems seem to not replenish when the case is sold, but rather on a set interval unless there is inventory on hand. So a case hits, gets bought in its entirety, and then the store gets another case or two 6-8 weeks later. It is a really slow drip process that looks like empty pegs 95% of the time, unless something like 3xLando happens.

He quit before, which is what wound up giving The Fans Strike Back control of their Bantha project and the legacy of quality that Smith Lord Creations used to have that persuaded people to prepay for the 13 figure set that has never been completed.

But it's like with the way his droids just dried up: he has said he can't rerun them because he had to switch factories and lost the tooling, but also he is (rightly so) very reluctant to do second runs of any of the figures, because he doesn't see that the market will buy a full second run and he would be losing money in the transaction. Can't ask him to do that, but it seems to me there are plenty of reasons for him to consider tooling that astromech up again at the new factory and continuing to do smaller runs of those and of course getting to new, different, unique ones.

And then the caveat, if Hasbro lets the flood gates open up on their Retro collection now that they've done the Artoo, too, he's out of business on it anyway. I know he took a hit last year tooling up Retro Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood figures. He only got the the Marion out just ahead of Hasbro's announcement and scrapped his Indy release plans...that's an a lost investment that would probably make me second-guess decisions in the future too.