I don't think both books 4 and 5 would be split into two seasons.  I would think you could get away with either two or three seasons between those two books and I would think those seasons would be combinations of those two books.  Since they are concurrent stories, I don't think viewers would be happy not seeing certain characters for a whole season since they would only be in one book and not the other.

True.  I can't see the HBO showrunners having Tyrion disappear for that long of a stretch.

I think there's the potential for Class II to blow up in Hasbro's faces.  I certainly don't see the potential for sales with collectors.

As for other hopes?  Hasbro has always pledged to get product that they've shown publically out to fans/collectors.  So it leaves me thinking that they'll try to find a way to get these BAF droids out to market.

Personally, I'm hoping they can parlay this situation into a modern Droid Factory playset that includes the parts for the 4 droids Hasbro has already shown.  And if they can get some more droid parts in there, too?  So much the better.  Obviously, developing something like that could take a while.  And then there's the matter of shopping it to a retailer, because it would almost certainly have to be an exclusive.

I don't think that there was some grand conspiracy by the owners and MLB to have players start taking PED's.  The players are responsible for their own actions, especially if they were taking a substance with the intended goal of boosting their stats.

That being said, I think the owners and MLB turned a blind eye to PED's.  Especially when you look at all of that buzz that surrounded both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa during the season when McGwire broke the home run record that Roger Maris had held since 1961.  A lot of sports writers looked at that home run chase as the thing that saved baseball after their last strike.  The owners and league may not have forced the players to take PED's, but at the very least they were complicit.

As for the baseball writers who vote on the Hall of Fame?  They excel at being curmudgeons over who should be in the hall, and who should not.  But then, the Baseball Hall of Fame does have a higher level of cred than pretty much any other Hall of Fame for professional sports, and that's because of the selectivity of the HoF voters.  I think you had to expect that the writers would make a statement like this with some of the most high profile players who were linked to PED's.  Even guys with phenomenal career numbers.  They routinely make these statements with guys who have HoF numbers, but aren't regarded as the elite of the HoF and won't vote them in on the first ballot.

Another sample from 'The Winds of Winter' has been posted by George R.R. Martin!  Tread carefully.

After digesting the news for a few days, this announcement is starting to make more sense.  And it's for a range of reasons.

A few months back we heard Hasbro acknowledge that the Episode I TVC wave created this huge logjam in the distribution system.  And a side-effect of that logjam was that there were warehouses filled with cases of the waves that followed that TPM wave that would not get to retail.  What did Hasbro offer on that front?  They talked about offering some of these waves via discounters, but so far I've only seen figures from 2011 at chains like 5 Below.  Are we really going to see 2012 TVC figures at 5 Below or TJ Maxx/Marshalls?  Because if we do, Hasbro is going to take a bath on these figures!

And then there was the announcement of "TVC's GREATEST HITS".  It's pretty easy to see that this is a ploy to get some of those older 2012 cases out to retail.  The figure lineups pretty much confirmed that.

How will this likely play out?  I get the sense that Hasbro will use the first half of 2013 to try to right the ship.  Get those 2012 TVC figure cases out to retail and clear up the distribution system.  I think that the discount chain avenue for 2012 TVC figures may have been shot down by someone higher up at Hasbro who saw how much that would have hurt their bottom line.  So how do you clear out all of these older cases?  Get them out to your core brick & mortar retailers who barely got them in the first place!  And repair retail relationships with chains like Walmart that have been shrinking your shelf space.

That probably means that the new figures that we thought were in the pipeline for Spring '13 will probably be pushed back to July/August '13.  And that release schedule will jibe much better with the 3-D release of Attack Of The Clones which comes out in the fall.  As for the Droid Factory packaging sample that we saw from SDCC?  I get the sense that Disney's licensing arm may have offered some "guidance" to Hasbro about the packaging look.

And then there's the announcement of Episode VII in 2015.  For Hasbro to launch a toy line that's going to be ready for retail by March 2015, they need lead time of 2 years to 18 months.  Development of a figure alone can take about 1 year.  But a full toy line?  That's another thing.  Hasbro's team needs to get started on development of that line within the next few months.  This is very likely a major factor into Hasbro's organizational plans for Star Wars this year and 2014 as they start getting ready for the E7 line.  Especially if they're planning on an E7 Preview wave like we saw for both Episode 2 & 3.  IIRC, those were released 2 - 3 months before the movie line debuted.

But overall, I think this is a reset period that is being used to right some of the wrongs of the past year+.

Christmas was good to me

Nice, Name!  I've been meaning to check out the Woodford Reserve, but I can't bring myself to buy more bourbon while I've still got a fair ammount of Makers in the house.

My wife was nice enough to get me a bottle of this:



I'm not sure if they're technically allowed to call this bourbon, since it's not being distilled in Kentucky. 

There's been a lot of speculation at the otheR site about the cause of this cancellation.  So many people seemed hung up on the fact that Disney was taking issue with the Droid Factory value added pack-in, and it being in conflict with the Droid Factory promotion at the theme parks.  Personally, I think they're dead wrong.

I think Disney's licensing people saw the packaging design and balked.  Sure, Lucas Licensing signed off on it, but we're in a new era.  Disney paid $4 billion + for Star Wars, and everything that comes with it.  I think that means they wanted that iconic black and silver packaging, because you see that and it says STAR WARS.  It's part of the brand identity.

As for the BAF droids?  I hope we see them at some point down the line.  I was really looking forward to all of them.

Sad to hear that we won't be witness to how JJ Abrams would try to shoehorn some lens flare into the Star Wars saga.