Does he still talk about what he can find in his local stores?
I haven't seen that come up in recent Q&As really, but I know that our own JediMAC has met him (Pawlus recently moved to California to work for EE apparently) in a Target recently, so who knows.
Yeah, I've run into Adam at one of our local Targets, and I've actually seen him mention at least several times in his recent Q & A's (since he move to L.A.) how much harder toy hunting is out here in SoCal, with all the scalpers and dealers and such... So it's safe to say that he's still looking for some product at least. He was looking for the new Target cupsets when I last ran into him, so maybe it's just the retailer exclusives he has to track down. Or, it could still be everything. I dunno.
6. If someone complains about the price, he'll make a snide remark toward them and say that people are overreacting.
Well, he might say something in his Q&A, but that would be the extent of it. He doesn't participate in the forums though, so it'd be highly unlikely that he'd ever speak up in that format. I think that's something that's always struck me as odd about him, that he has absolutely no interest whatsoever in being a part of the greater collecting community, and making friends and/or participating in discussions in the forums. Not sure why that is exactly, other than perhaps he doesn't like mingling with the "commoners". Just speculation on my part...
I was a HUGE fan of his newsletter way back in the day. I don't think there was a collector out there who's heart didn't skip a beat when they found that waiting in their e-mail inbox. That's where most all of the breaking scoops and new information came from during the mid/late 90's. I have no idea how a 14/15 year old kid had such incredible inside connections back then, but he sure did, and I loved reading all about it.
But since then, I haven't found any of his Q & A's to be nearly as exciting. Just answering a lot of the same ol', same ol' questions. But since he's joined EE, I've grown a tad bit tired of his frequent proclomations of "being in the industry" and "I know everything, but can't tell you anything since I'm sworn to secrecy" stuff. Yeah, I get it. The first few times were more than enough to make me remember. Thanks. I guess the fact that I've talked to him numerous times in person and he never has any idea who I am (despite the usual re-introduction everytime), bugs me a bit too.
Now, back on topic, I've got to say that personally I love these Astromech multi-packs coming from EE. I've wanted to see something like this for a long time, so I'll at least give Adam a little credit for pitching the idea to EE (granted, it's just some repaints yeah, but still). Would've loved some R5's in there too, but as has already been noted, a good R5 sculpt just didn't exist for them to use. But hey, at least they didn't go "clean" and "dirty" on the droids this time, like they did on their prior Clone sets, so that's cool.
As for the price on them, seeing as it's very much in line with the prior Clones, I can't fault them on consistency there. Also, I think we have to remember that stores (smaller retail, or e-tail) that don't get stuff in mass bulk like the big boys do, usually have to charge a slightly higher amount on figures to compete. But on the flipside, obviously the production cost would be lower on these, since they're just repaints, and there's no new molds involved. As Jeff and others have already pointed out though, the way to go is by grouping up with a few others and ordering a case of these. Much cheaper that way, and hell, they basically come all the way down to current retail figure prices if you do that (with a painful shipping cost though). But it is a bummer that folks that would like to avoid all that, and just want to order a couple sets, have to get gouged a bit on the prices.
Anyway, Adam may not be the friendliest fella, and his ego's getting a tad bit too big these days for my liking, but that aside, I definitely dig the Droids a lot, and am happy to see them coming, so kudos to team EE for getting them out to the collectors like this.