I can totally understand the point of the tooling dollars being wasted here, and wondering what they are doing with such superior versions of these characters already available (and could have just been repacked). I'm not sure if I'll pick these up or not, but in some ways I don't mind them. First of all, they're not necessarily for us as we all have very nice versions of these characters already. The more pressing problem is seeing CW shrunk to basically nothing while stuff like this gets made, I can see that being frustrating. I know after seeing last week's bounty hunter-centric episode, I'd much rather see a mess of figures from something like that than tooling dollars dedicated to these BPs.
On the other hand, I don't know if I'd mind figures being done this way in place of most of what is currently there for movie heroes. If they're just going to repack '99 or action feature extreme posed past figures, I would almost rather we had these more simple figures for a much lower price. Granted, I'm not buying Movie Heroes anyways, but if they're aiming that line at kids I could see that. I will say, after seeing TPM in 3D last month, our daughter has really gotten into Star Wars. She wanted to watch the OT, so we've started into that a bit now, and she is always wanting to play SW. I gave her a slew of figures, and actually sitting down and "playing" with SW toys shows me how frustrating some can be. Some have said it before on there, but it is so appreciated when figures are sturdy - meaning they can stand, hold up to play, sit in vehicles, and hold onto their weapons. That is something that I can't remember ever having problems with as a kid with the vintage figures, and if they returned to this sort of thing for the kids' line, I don't know if I'd mind. Granted, I've also found several figures we've been playing with (the most recent TVC Bespin Han and Luke are good examples) that are able to cover all those bases and still have the sculpting and articulation we've grown accustomed to. Anyways, sort of a different topic entirely, but I'm just saying as a parent I can appreciate having a sturdy toy that holds onto its accessories and can stand up without much trouble (and fit into vehicles).
The one larger question here is there any chance that we'd see something like these BP figures carry over to the main line eventually? I don't see it right away, but I do wonder if they are testing the waters here or not. Otherwise it seems strange to tool up all new figures when they have several versions of all these characters they could use for these BPs (both good versions and bad). I wonder, if in the attempt to cut costs, this is a direction they would want to go in the future. We've heard the rumors of the Vintage Collection going "on hiatus" after this year, I wonder if they'll try this in the meantime? Either way, it is a bit of a strange time with the SW line right now.