Thought the latest episode was just okay, although it was eons better than the first 3 episodes.

The best part was Boba going bezerk on that biker gang when he got Slave I back. THAT'S the Boba I've wanted from this show the whole time! Cold, calculating, and showing no remorse. (And personally, Slave I is so ingrained into my head that I'll keep calling it that... sucks that the majority of the show's criticisms will now be focused on the name change).

A much, MUCH better episode than last week. The "modern" portion was intriguing and left me wanting more, although the mayor's majordomo is still pretty cringeworthy and doesn't "fit" into Star Wars. Boba building his gaffi stick was the coolest part of the flashback to me. Don't want to post too many spoilers so I'll post some more thoughts later.

There's a lot to grieve about, most of which has already been mentioned. My three biggest gripes at the moment are:

1. The way you have to buy figures now. You have a 5-15 minute window to preorder figures online, if that, and if you miss it, it's gone forever because most of the exclusives sell out and are never put back up. Meanwhile, you can't find anything at retail. I understand retail has other pressing issues, but Hasbro doesn't seem to want to bother since I assume they make all the money on their limited run figures.

2. Hasbro's lack of enthusiasm for the line. It's painful watching the Marvel Legends reveals and seeing either a slew of new figures, or repaints that make sense. For example, I'm loving the retro Spider-Man figures on the 90s Animated Series cardbacks... those are a GREAT mix of new/kitbashed figures, or repaints that are accurate to the cartoon. And even then, the people in the presentations are just so excited to show the stuff off. Then you get to these boring Star Wars reveals where it's a corporate suit spouting out corporate buzzwords while introducing a metallic repaint that costs double the price of a basic figure. It just feels like the line is an afterthought, and Hasbro doesn't care about it anymore.

3. The fanbase. Long gone are the days where we critique and analyze everything from figure inaccuracies to articulation in a friendly manner. Now, the sequels have brought in new collectors who eat all of these repaints up with a spoon, and if they see any criticism whatsoever, they pounce on you with the "shut up and buy it and then get excited to buy the next repaints." I know we had arguments in the old days, but you never felt personally attacked for the most part. Now you're "not a real Star Wars fan" if you don't want to buy Carbonized Boba Fett or Obi-Wan: the 10 Year Old Rerelease of a Not So Hard To Find Figure. Forums like these are unfortunately a dying breed, being replaced by things like Discord and Reddit, where if you don't follow along with the groupthink mentality, you get downvoted to oblivion, or outright banned.

Having typed all of that out, it makes me realize... it's not really fun to collect at the moment. Hopefully things start to change soon.

I see you’re still sticking with the denim.

Quote from: Jeff on December 21, 2021, 11:12 AM

Quote from: Rob on December 21, 2021, 10:32 AM

Like, sprinkle in Cal Kestis or something…

I've covered this before in other threads, but the current Hasbro team's "what can we do with the parts we have to pretend we're world building" thinking is really getting stale.

It's dumb to have Battlefront II troopers without Iden Versio.  It's dumb to have JFO Purge Tooper and Shock Scouts without Cal Kestis.  It's dumb to have Sith Trooper and Sith Jetpack Trooper without TROS Palpatine.  But Hasbro just goes, "Meh - troopers repaints sell" and here we are.

THIS!

I think a lot of people who follow The Vintage Collection closely understand some of the elements at work with reusing sculpts from existing figures.  But at some point you have to throw in the odd NEW character / sculpt in order to lend some legitimacy to the Gaming Greats sub-line.  Hasbro has to start factoring in at least ONE new sculpt in each of these Gaming Greats waves.  At least so that it doesn't look so blatantly obvious that they're just repainting an old sculpt and calling it something else.

I got into three different “fights” with people on Reddit (and downvoted to oblivion) for expressing this same opinion. Their arguments basically boiled down to “shut up and buy the repaints then get excited to buy the next round of repaints” line that the Disney super fans love to spout off. Sorry for having standards I guess.

I passed last year and will pass again this year… except for that white Wookiee. That’s different enough to be cool, and can fit in as a “normal” Wookiee too.

I've been in Orlando for work for the last week and a half, and finally had a chance to check out Disney Springs. Nothing good in the Star Wars stores there unless you need a million General Lando figures. Only Galaxy's Edge set they had for sale was the one with 3PO/Rex/R2. All told, not really worth sitting in an hour of traffic and fighting the huge crowds for another hour.

They did have a ton of POTF2 Greedos, and I almost bought one until I noticed there was no price tag. I didn't want to know how much they were charging over MSRP.

Someone at Hasbro really has to have a long discussion with the Star Wars team about whether or not they think it's alright to treat their customer base like we're a bunch of dummies who will buy anything with the Star Wars logo slapped onto it.  That's what I think this episode really boils down to.

To be fair, this is what Disney thinks of Star Wars fans, so perhaps they're just following orders?