2023 Last Figure Standing Poll

[Nicklab]

The folks over at BanthaSkull.com are running a new Vintage Collection figure poll.  It's called Last Figure Standing.  The format is similar to the vote-off format of TV reality shows.  The goal is to try to find genuine consensus within the TVC collecting community over what may be the most wanted new figure in The Vintage Collection.

Collectors are being invited to submit their own Top Ten lists for consideration in the poll.  The Top Ten characters from those submissions will be offered up to the community in the vote-off format until it works its way down to the Last Figure Standing.

Check it out here:  https://www.banthaskull.com/story/news-launching-last-figure-standing-a-vintage-collection-fan-even

[GrandMoffNick]

The use of the word "consensus" for this poll everywhere is rubbing me the wrong way.

[Nicklab]

I heard the Banthaskull guys talk about this on a livestream with the guy from MAKMCSWF on YouTube.  Their general pitch was this:

Previous Fan's Choice Figure Polls had winners in fields of 5 or 25 contestant characters.  The last example being a couple of polls conducted in cooperation with Hasbro, The Official Site and the defunct ToyFare magazine.  The winner(s) would have something like 26% or 31% of the vote.  That was enough to edge out the rest of the competition, but not enough to reach a 50% +1 level where there was a clear winner.  Hence they're trying this elimination model of poll.  The SWTVC IG page's March Madness poll certainly garnered a lot of attention in the social media sphere of collecting.  This seems like a concerted effort to offer something different.

In the end I don't know if the results from this poll will make the whole TVC collecting community happy.  That's because there will always be some sort of compromise where it boils down to an either/or scenario.  And it's about which character(s) do you prefer over another - not which character is head and shoulders above the rest in the entirety of the community.  To me that seems to be artificially guiding the process.  And there's the potential for some participants to drop out because any characters they were interested in voting for were eliminated and they don't feel interested in continuing.

So what will it yield?  We'll see.

[Muftak]

Agreed that this is a concerted effort by the March Madness team to provide a different style of poll. Doubly agreed that the results, while engineered to give a "consensus" result, will in fact not be a figure on the top ten most wanted by most collectors.

I submitted 10 off the top of my head yesterday, it wound up being 6 Andor figures, 3 OT aliens (Shasa Tiel, Wiorkettle and Treva Horme)  and Therm Scissorpunch. I doubt any of those will make the next round, much less survive further.

[Nicklab]

It's actually a different team organizing this particular poll.  March Madness is administered by the guys that run the SWTVC Instagram page.  This new poll is being run by the guys from BanthaSkull.  I think they saw the heat that March Madness generated, and they wanted to offer a different take/approach to this particular poll.  They also got a number of the top sites / social media pages to help promote this, including Yakface, Bossk's Bounty, the SW The Vintage Collection Facebook group and the SWTVC IG page.  Hasbro is almost certainly going to take notice since I know they have been keeping track of March Madness.

This was my Top Ten.  Almost all of them came from the Top 25 that I submitted for the March Madness poll.  I was pleasantly surprised to get 5 characters from that list made or revealed since that poll launched.  This was what I submitted for the LFS poll:

Palpatine - Office Duel / Jedi Arrest - ROTS
Han Solo - Takodana - TFA
Senator Amidala - Declaration of the Empire - ROTS
Baze Malbus - RO
Admiral Raddus - RO
Jedi Temple Guard - TCW
Asajj Ventress - TCW
Dedra Meero - ANDOR
Luthen Rael - ANDOR
Bannis Keeg - ANH

[Nicklab]

IIRC submissions of Top Ten lists are open until midnight this Friday night.

[Scott]

My biggest gripe of the March Madness poll is that the demographics and voting skews PT/Clone Wars

While many OT characters make the list they rarely make it past the Round of 32

[Jeff]

My biggest gripe of the March Madness poll is that the demographics and voting skews PT/Clone Wars

Do you think that is just because that is the Star Wars era that hits for the main Instagram user base?  I guess maybe the old man collectors (like myself) just aren't on instagram as much as the younger PT/CW set?

[Nicklab]

I think the demographics might be a part of the situation.  But with TVC as well as past lines the Original Trilogy is really well represented.  Aside from ultimate versions of the main characters (see the whole "Make the Mains" movement), it's getting difficult to come up with something truly new and exciting for the OT.  Hasbro's just not going anywhere near as deep with background characters as they did before 2013.  Things that seem important there now is the whole Finish the 96 concept, and I see an increasing amount of discussion around making things like a TVC Momaw Nadon so that Hasbro can get closer to having all of those original 20 back characters on a Star Wars card.

What I can see from the standpoint of the social media centered community is that Clone Wars presents some fresh territory with a lot of characters that just haven't been made in a realistic form before.  If the budget for the TVC line wasn't so tight we almost certainly would have gotten Asajj Ventress and Savage Opress a long time ago.  We're only just getting Count Dooku coming up in TVC in the next few months, and it's been at least 13 years since Hasbro made the last really good Dooku.

And on the flipside, the demand for Sequel Trilogy figures remains pretty low.  And I think we can all get a good sense of why sentiments have developed that way.  I see a lot more demand for figures from the Disney+ series, ROGUE ONE and even SOLO than the ST.  Again, it's because of how little it's all been covered in comparison with the OT.

Where I do think the OT is going to thrive in the near term is with the Imperial officers.  Hasbro is going to run that into the ground really fast!  So I expect figures like Admiral Ozzel and General Veers to get delivered sooner rather than later.

[McMetal]

There are actually still quite a few characters from the Clone Wars they need to make in their screen accurate animated form too. They had at least 5-6 figures in early stages of production when they axed the line that they could still put out as a commemorative multipack or something. Pong Krell, Rako Hardeen, etc. I think that would literally be the most exciting thing Hasbro could possibly make for me.

[Nicklab]

The Top Ten contestant have been revealed - this was the order of the reveals, not the rank order:

1 - Anakin Skywalker (Revenge Of The Sith)
2 - Shin Hati (Ahsoka)
3 - Baylan Skoll (Ahsoka)
4 - Luke Skywalker - Farmboy (A New Hope)
5 - Momaw Nadon (A New Hope)
6 - Asajj Ventress (The Clone Wars)
7 - Luthen Rael (Rebel Alliance)
8 - Cobb Vanth (The Mandalorian Season 2)
9 - Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi (A New Hope)
10 - The Tonnika Sisters (A New Hope)

[Dave]

I voted for the five figures that haven’t been made yet.

I’ll tell you that the social media thing is a definite challenge for us Gen Xers. 
A - I’m almost never on social media
B - When I need to interact with it (like this voting process) I really struggle to figure out where I’m supposed to click

Now I know how my parents must have felt every time I had to program the VCR for them.   

[Nicklab]

Here's a link to the first round of voting.  You get to select 5 out of 10

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScuoPbdW6vjOxz-sucGzKMq65VPCB8xvO6Wpa8bQeGxa5RLrQ/viewform

[Jedi Idej]

Thanks, Nick. The link was helpful. I'm in the same boat as Dave with all of this social media. And I also voted for the unmade characters.

Now, someone step on my lawn so i can yell at you to get off.

[Nicklab]

There were some big upsets in Round 1 of the voting.  Check out the Top Six contestants following the first round of voting:

-The Tonnika Sisters
-Cobb Vanth (The Mandalorian Season 2)
-Asajj Ventress (The Clone Wars)
-Momaw Nadon (Hammerhead)
-Baylan Skoll (Ahsoka)
-Shin Hati (Ahsoka)


LINK TO THE VOTING FORM