The figures I've seen at shows are often resin hand-painted prototypes, not hard copies/test shots of figures. Like you'll notice on a lot of the Toy Fair imagery you can see the pins in the shoulder joints and things. I don't know if that's the case for most shows, just the ones I've been to seem to be that way.
I believe those actually are the hardcopies, Jesse. They would sculpt the figure and cast it then create a resin hardcopy that they could pin together and paint. They use them to check the detail and as the paint masters. The hardcopies are what get turned into molds. The first shots are taken from the mold to make sure it worked right.
One extra step that Kenner used to do was to take the hardcopy and create their own mold in-house and create some first shots from it with plastic before sending the stuff to the factory. I don't think Hasbro still does that but I'm not positive.
The stuff we see in the Hasbro cases at shows are sometimes the hardcopies and then we also see the ones with the lettering on them at times (HFE or something similar), those come from the factories and are plastic first shots taken from the molds.
Some of the recent figures, including Deliah and Nihl, had their articulation joints and everything but were hand painted. So they could either be hardcopies or first shots. If they're only hardcopies then there might not be any molds in China which would make it easier for Hasbro to can them permanently.
If they're painted first shots from China, then the molds are made and there's a better shot at getting them eventually.
On the themed waves of comic packs, personally I'd have loved that. I didn't like getting one issue of a comic that was part of a 4 issue arc because I didn't want to go track down the issues to read the outcome of the story (or what led up to the end in some instances). The only problem is what happens if you have a 4 story arc that doesn't have more than 2 or 3 interesting characters. I read through the comic that came with Ki-Adi and Sharad Hett, for example. I don't know the whole story but besides A'Sharad Hett and Aurra Sing, could you have padded out a larget set comic packs with characters from that story arc?
AT this point if the comic sets are done I'm not going to cry over them, with two exceptions; I wan that Deliah Blue/Nihl set and I want at least Jareal from that pack. I can't get too upset over toys that weren't shown, but those were so I want them. Plus, I have to say I really wanted a Zayne Carrick to go with Jareal (Yes, KOTOR had a lot of excellent characters that needed figure treatment, but those two seemed a must).
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