Was talking about the HasLab with a friend at work. He asked me a question - "Why is the fact that this is a "re-do" so upsetting to us?"
He pointed out that quite a few other HasLab projects were "re-dos" - GI Joe Skystriker; Unicron; Sentinel. Technically the Cantina can kind of fit here too in a way. They were all "ultimate" versions of something that was already made once upon a time. They all funded.
I wonder why it's so disappointing that Star Wars has arrived at the same spot - an "ultimate" re-do.
It's a completely fair question, and one that bears some closer examination. But I was also thinking about this in the context of how Hasbro has gone back and re-done all of the original vehicles from ANH through the modern era, albeit NOT as Haslab campaigns. It's taken YEARS to do it, but bit by bit Hasbro has redone the Millennium Falcon, the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Landspeeder, the Imperial Troop Transport, and now the Darth Vader TIE Fighter. Sure, there's the Sandcrawler, too, but Disney addressed a larger one of those. And the Y-Wing remains the only ANH vehicle that hasn't had a complete re-design from the ground up. However, each of these was made in the mainline and was made available through traditional retail channels. The other wrinkle? When these were originally released those of us who remember that time were likely children with no spending power of our own. That's something that I will come back to...
And then there's the Gunship. First released in 2002, and it was a centerpiece vehicle from AOTC onwards. Heavily featured in The Clone Wars, and it was also in the mix in ROTS, and most recently in a flashback scene in The Mandalorian season 3. It saw 7 releases between 2002 and 2013. Odds are that many people in this community have those releases - I myself have 6 of the 7. I skipped the 2013 TRU exclusive TVC version for a few reasons:
-The price was $120. I didn't see the value compared with even the later releases which had the price creep up to almost $80
-The "newness" wasn't there - I had the TLC battle packs with the bubble turrets, the figures weren't that new, and previous releases had the other features
-I was a new parent. Discretionary spending was down and this didn't make the cut.
Do I regret skipping that TVC release? A little, but not completely. It's a completist thing, mostly. But then I look at the secondary market prices for that TVC version - $500, $600, $700 or more! And a few of the other Gunships are up there in secondary market prices, too. I suspect these secondary market prices were part of Hasbro's calculus in moving forward with this campaign.
But the broader point? A lot of people in the collecting community - including those in this particular corner of that universe - were adult collectors with greater spending power when the first Gunship releases were made. Some were troop builders who bought multiples and went about making fleets of Grand Army of the Republic vehicles. I might have had 3 of the 2002 release myself! And this is where I think some of the discontent about this Haslab comes from - we were okay with updating a vehicle that was released in the 1970's or 1980's some 20, 30 or 40 years later. But updating something that was released in the 2000's when we were adult collectors with that greater spending power? I think this might be where the conflict arises for our age cohort. But then there's a younger generation that were kids in the 2000's who have greater spending power now. Could they be the target market? I think that might be the case.
This is a slightly different angle, but I do want to address something that Hasbro's Chris Reiff called the original release while showing off the new version at SDCC - he called it A TOY in an almost pejorative way. Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. Now I appreciate the work that he has put into projects like this and the Darth Vader TIE Fighter. Based on things he has said during the Hasbro Pulse livestreams he has been really thorough in referencing Lucasfilm's archives to make the new vehicles super accurate. But newsflash for Chris - YOU WORK FOR A TOY COMPANY. Collectors might not like the word, but they're TOY COLLECTORS. And it seemed like he was diminishing people's existing collections in the process of showing off this new version. Hasbro's attitude about TVC releases seems to have aligned somewhat with elements of the TVC collecting community that are telling them what they want to hear, and I fear that the balance between collectible and toy might be slipping in a direction that makes things inaccessible for some.
And then there's this angle - TROOP BUILDING. Making this particular vehicle a Haslab campaign locks it behind that Haslab paywall. I have been one of numerous voices expressing that the price seems too high. I think the size of the vehicle puts it on par with the Razor Crest which was $350. But this Haslab campaign means that this vehicle gets locked behind that wall. Troop builders won't be able to pick this up at their own pace, and the price makes troop building difficult. But I'm also mindful of this - we aren't likely to see a vehicle like this at brick & mortar retail ever again. The last large vehicle to make it to retail was the Smuggler's Run Millennium Falcon, and that's only because overflow had it land at Target stores.
Lots of factors to think about in this situation. And I think Hasbro might have struggled to come up with something that was a homerun for this particular Haslab campaign. But I think the complications are something that should be discussed among collectors.
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