It's funny that you mention Adam's Q&A - most of the time, I agree with the commentary he makes on the line, but in this week's column he said a few things that I hope never come to pass...
I'm sure he is correct - Hasbro would love to see the Super-Articulated 3.75" line go away and leave us with the same
garbage stuff that they're doing now for Iron Man 3 and Spider-man.
And while that may work for a one-and-done movie line, I'm afraid it really won't work for Star Wars.
Hasbro can hope that the 6" line takes off all they want, but the history of Star Wars toys at different scales is littered with more failure than it is success. Sure some of the other figure scales lasted for a couple of years, but they eventually died out and the only scale that has endured is the 3.75" one.
I think right now, more than ever, Hasbro is seriously misguided in the decisions they are making. Pure and simple.
There was no reason they couldn't have released the 2013 Clone Wars and Movie Heroes figures in the United States. If they are soliciting cases of 2012 product in new case-pack ratios it tells me that THEY are at fault, not the retailers. The retailers are clearly looking to buy product, they just don't know the difference between a 2012 Wave 2 Movie Heroes case and a 2013 Wave 1 Movie Heroes case. To the retailer, it's just a box with 12 Star Wars figures in it.
You have to wonder why EE is even soliciting these cases - if I was EE, unless Hasbro was essentially giving them to me for free, I would tell Hasbro "no thank you". (not exactly how I'd put it, but if I typed what I'd really say, it'd just get edited out anyway)
Hasbro says that we (the collectors) aren't the audience for Movie Heroes and Clone Wars, yet collectors are showing determination in acquiring foreign-packaged versions of figures that are not slated for release here in the US, at double or even triple the MSRP just to make sure their collections don't have any holes.
If that's not the definition of a disconnect, I don't know what is.
So while I'm sure Hasbro may be hoping that they can re-tread all of the same characters yet again in a new 6" scale. My hope is that the 6" line will fail - it may not be right away, it may take 2 or 3 waves for its failure to be complete - but it WILL fail.
What kind of figure line will we get for the Sequel Trilogy and other movies that are in the pipeline?
Unfortunately, I think we'll get the 5 POA stuff. My hope is that Hasbro will see wisdom in offering limited "Collector Grade" lines of 6-12 figures for each of these movies as well. After all, the characters and/or versions of characters from these movies should be ALL NEW - and whether you're a new collector or a long-time collector, you SHOULD want high-end versions of the Sequel Trilogy characters. Fingers crossed they never start releasing 6" figures of characters that have never been made in the 3.75" line.