But yeah, Ki-Adi seems like an odd fit here.  He's a nice figure, but not something a lot of folks were asking for (were they?).

In all seriousness, yes-- this and dual-bladed Plo Koon were things I've been muttering for.  So I'm actually pretty thrilled.

R2 is a lame rerelease

You say "tomato", I say "about damn time we got one with a non-chrome dome, this is my favorite R2-D2 figure in years."

...and I gotta agree, I don't think we'll see the Kal Fas eye variant.  The run on this figure was most likely complete before Hasbro noticed.  (It happens.  The Tan AOTC Battle Droid was caught in early 2002 and made it out in the correct red color in early 2003.)

Quote from: evenflow on October 29, 2009, 07:36 PM

Gone now.

This dude (Scanner Technician) goes fast! 

Does anyone know when Hasbro said the 2nd variant would be out?? 

Hasbro said that it would be in the EU wave.  Problem is, the EU wave does not have a Scanning Trooper in it.  So it might not make it out.

I believe in an older Q&A Hasbro once stated that they were not 100% certain that it would be released during "Legacy" but I can't seem to find that one as I am presently lazy.

The release date/availability for action figures vs DVD business model is hardly a synonymous comparison. Have you ever tried to get a DVD out of the stockroom before its release date or have you ever seen them out available for purchase before then?

Yes and yes.  (Video games, no, but DVDs, yes.)  A friend of mine and I used to go out to Best Buys and Wal-Marts (and Blockbuster Video stores) specifically to do just this.  It is doable, although we found more out on the floor than we ever saw stuff come out of the back if asked for.  Employees who just don't care are your friends, sometimes.

Action figure release dates to some extent are marketed as such in some Japanese lines, specifically I've seen this in Transformers marketing, but their stuff is also largely solid-packed.  Doing release dates on a specific figure (and I'd argue DVDs, games, and CDs) never *helps* you get the figure.  It just alerts people which day to wait out in front of the store to buy something up, creates even more hype, and often causes stores to hold items in the back until a specific date, rather than just putting them out when they show up.  I may be alone here but I *HATE HATE HATE* street dates for products.  If you have it, you should be able to sell it-- why turn down a sale?  Street dates just prevent people from getting stuff early for marketing/hype purposes.

In the case of Star Wars street dates-- arguably one of very few lines which have managed to do a successful "launch" (which Hasbro has tried to do with Marvel, Joe, and Transformers to very little success in terms of coordination)-- it doesn't hurt when there's a huge aisle reset with dozens if not hundreds of new SKUs like the TPM/AOTC/ROTS/TCW launches.  But if they didn't have that launch date, you would be able to find those items out on the pegs much earlier at most stores, due to the AZ Wal-Marts' not giving a crap, I bought a ton of AOTC Saga items about a month before the official date.  They were out and about, just the way it should be.  Get it out, let it sell, and then reorder and sell some more.

The way figure assortments work, street dates for specific waves and figures is just not doable.  A store might only get 30 cases, putting that kind of marketing effort for a batch of 6 figures is a waste of time for all involved.  For the hundreds or thousands of a game or DVD, though, it makes good sense.  TRU experimented with in-store pre-orders with dates for later wave Episode I stuff in 1999... it didn't work.

...and yes, I do agree that 2009 (black/red) as of today is absolutely the worst year for Legacy figure distribution from what I see in the wilderness.  Clone Wars, it's about the same as the movie lines used to be on an OK day.  Blue was basically OK except for Wave 7.

Quote from: McMetal on October 23, 2009, 12:45 PM

Quote from: Brian on October 23, 2009, 12:11 PM

I think I've seen each figure at retail several times except for the "last" wave with the Padme, IG droid, Matchstick, etc. 

Yeah, apparently that Wave is an "Online-Exclusive".  Most e-tailers have had them for weeks now, but not a single one has shown up at a brick and mortar ANYWHERE. That's a pretty significant lag, IMHO.

WHOAH! No way - I don't normally order figures from online - I always buy them at retail. Feeling disappointed .... 

He's kidding. I've seen that wave at retail.

Wow, that seems bizarre, but good that they are doing something I guess.  How about just looking at the figure/ship and comparing it to the back of the box?

Doesn't always work out, with most companies it does but sometimes Hasbro takes shortcuts with its packaging. 

Hasbro's Valor vs. Venom line frequently had figure repaints use old figures artwork, so they don't match up.  For Transformers Energon, a handful of toys didn't match the box photos at all.  A great example is Energon Ultra Magnus, which not only showed the wrong color of toy (it's a blue repaint of a red toy, the box showed the red toy), but some showed Mini-Con accessory figures of cars.  The actual toy included space equipment.  During Revenge of the Sith and The Saga Collection, we had some variation figures that showed the wrong deco-- to an uneducated person trying to do their best, it certainly looks like someone swapped out a plain white Clone Trooper for one with green markings, for example.

On the other hand, people who put a plain white POTF2 Stormtrooper in a Vintage cardback likely would slip it by (and have, from what I saw) because it did basically look correct.  This new policy is probably to avoid people buying dolls and returning phone books, I'd wager.

When BAD ends and invariably it will, the cost of figs must come down by at least $1. That was one reason for the price increase per figure. I think people are forgetting that.

Whoa!  No, Legacy, Saga Legends, and Clone Wars are the same price.  (Prices may vary by retail location, but they all have the same SRP.)  It's just a happy coincidence that we had something nice with the price increase to rationalize it.

Hasbro decided to give us a cooler "bonus" that we happened to really like (as a group) with this particular price increase. It could just as easily have been a stand, a coin, or nothing at all (like The Clone Wars range).  Hasbro increased the prices of its products across the board since early to mid 2008-- we as Star Wars fans were not singled out. Transformers, G.I. Joe, Littlest Pet Shop, NERF, everything had a jump in price over the past year and a half.  Build-a-droid had nothing to do with this increase, and there's no reason for Hasbro to throw out a decrease unless their costs changed or they think it will help overall sales.

During the Power of the Jedi era after Episode I, Hasbro actually did decrease its price to retailers-- those retailers mostly opted not to pass along the savings to us and kept retail at around $6.99.  Pricing is a really tricky thing dictated by a variety of factors, some of which are... shall we say difficult to discuss in a public forum.

It's gotta end eventually, but we're probably a ways off. Even the most successful movie tie-in lines don't last as long as one packaging line look does for Star Wars.   Seriously, aside from tiny little sad lines of 2 figure a year from NECA or another company, nothing is as huge as this line, nor will anything ever come close to this level of success for quite some time.  If ever, given the toy business today.

If history is any indication, the line is going to end as a surprise-- the last series will be hard to get, and future series will just not get made.  The original TMNT line had a year or two of showings at Toy Fair where a chunk of product never got made before going away, and when it went, it was pretty quick.  Playmates' original Star Trek range ended with increasingly goofy limited editions and exclusives, with the final batches being Target exclusive figures probably culled from the main line.  Or Indiana Jones... just kinda up and ended there, but the writing was clearly on the wall.  Which, for Star Wars, it is not.  Show me another line with this much new stuff every year that isn't the same body with a new head on it (excepting, of course, the clones.)

Comic Packs have already been pared way back-- the Dark Empire Luke/Palpatine and Republic Quinlan/Faie set were very late 2008 entries.  In 2009, we have been given exactly 6 non-exclusive packs, 3 of which just hit about a month ago.  It's already on the way out the door, but it's interesting to note that Wal-Mart has had 3 already this year and 3 more are due any time now.  On the whole, anything but basic figures tends to come and go in fairly short order, the fact that we got about 3+ years of comic packs is pretty gosh darned great and certainly bolstered the expanded universe toy lineup.

There's still plenty of money to squeeze out of us, so it's not going away.  Fans may remember 2004 as a particularly slow year for new basic figures, between Saga and non-Vintage OTC, only 28 new figures were made, plus a couple of POTF2 repaints.  By comparison 2003 had 45 basic numbered figures (the last 2002 figures hit early 2003), and 2002 had 54 if you count the Rebel Trooper variant.  Things come and go, go up and down.  Don't forget, Wal-Mart virtually dropped the entire line save for basic and deluxe figures around the end of 2003 during the Clone Wars push, it was really tough to find some of these items for a while.  Things have been absolutely nuts since 2005, and frankly, I'm just fine with a year that doesn't have $600+ worth of exclusives in Q4 before the basic line even comes into consideration.

40-45 "new/refresh" (assuming "refresh" is slang for "new accessories/slight retools/repaints") is totally reasonable to me.  We got 44 in 2008.  We got 35 so far in 2009, with another 22 or so likely before the end of the year.  I'm sure there will always be a couple of token Cantina aliens and Jabba's Palace aliens each year, just to keep us interested, alongside the token Han/Luke/Anakin refreshes.   If Hasbro and Toys "R" Us can successfully sell a $50 TIE Interceptor this holiday season, seriously, what do we have to worry about?

When Wal-Mart drops the basic movie-themed figure line (which probably won't be "Legacy" or "Build-a-droid" forever anyway), that's when I'll expect the line to die in 6-12 months.