First I can tell by your response you are taking this way too seriously.
Not at all... I'm simply explaining to you WHY we ask the questions we ask and tend to ignore the character-specific questions such as "when will you make _______?" type questions. If by "serious" you mean that you expected NO response from the people who work here at the site, well I don't know what to tell you... I posted for the site's benefit, and for the staff's pertaining to the Q&A selection here, the ideas and creative thinking we'd like people to put into their questions... You didn't agree with that and I explained why. You cited a question you didn't like because you'd rather have had a question that had a probability of getting no answer because you feel it influences Hasbro's decision making on action figures (and what they'll produce or consider), and I explained why we don't feel that's probable and don't feel it's worth using up one of our 3 slots every week (or every other week now, as it were).
I guess that depends on your definition of taking things too seriously... Since I do work here though I'm trying to make it as abundantly clear as possible the how's and why's of the selection process since there's a lot to ask and Hasbro's given us some distinct precedents to work with in the Q&A's.
And completely separate here, I hope the store reports bit is working out for you since the Cali group can be pretty active and that's an area that's reportedly pounded with scalpers, collectors, and everything else.
I think this is pretty convoluted reasoning for selecting that question. If people were curious about the about the battle pack delay, directly ask that question. They have answered that question before on other things, especially if the delay is longer than anticipated. For everything else see my first comment
I don't think you really understood what I wrote... There was no curiosity about the delay of the battlepack... Well, nothing that required a question anyway. I think it's fairly established on that pack actually that the Stormtroopers being dirty was what held it up and why it's delayed into 2007's BP assortments... I could be wrong on that but off the top of my head that was the reasoning Hasbro gave at some point or another.
The reason we asked for pictures of the Fleet Trooper's headsculpt was because people were simply curious, knowing the Troopers had new headsculpts with removable helmets, what the troopers would look like. Some consider that a substantial improvement on the figure... Since the pack was announced, images had surfaced of the set boxed/loose, we decided to ask Hasbro for a photo of the Trooper sans helmet... It didn't have to do with the pack's delay, so I'm not sure what you meant there. It was simple curiosity to see something new up close... much like our request to see the Galactic Marine figure sans helmet, which Hasbro obliged.
I am sorry, but I still think this was a poor question, especially since you were able to obtain the answer from a different source within a week from when the question was asked.
And as I noted, that's fine by us that you weren't happy with the question... At the worst it's no less/more information than we would have obtained asking a dead-end question, so to me personally I'm no more happy or disappointed with Hasbro's response to it...
Though about the photos we did obtain early, that really has no impact one way or the other on the question we asked... Why it disappointed you even more since we got the photos on our own is a mystery then. What we can/can't obtain via sources is completely up in the air, usually till last minute, so we got the photographs to use and we ran with them knowing we'd submitted that question a little less than a week prior to Hasbro answering it... I guess to simplify it; How are we supposed to know that we're going to dig up a news scoop on our own, and just incase we do aren't supposed ask Hasbro about something they may answer themselves?
As I noted, the reasons we asked that question were that the pack was announced, there had been some images... We wanted to see the changes made up close, and Hasbro's photo actually would've done well for that had we not gotten our own image to use. But either way it's no better/worse a question than one that wouldn't get answered too.
I thought this particular question was a poor choice and reasoning that you provided for the selection of that question a little sublime. I am not attacking every question JD posed, I am stating this particular question could have been better selected. At this point I would have rather had a "we will see" response. I would be more curious about some of decsion making process that Hasbro goes in selecting or not selecting a specific vehicles than whether they have a picture of some figure with his helmet off.
Well, as I noted... Our reasoning for trying to avoid the "we will see" answer is we view it as a guaranteed wasted question. I know you cited the argument that it gets the character's name out there, it gets it into the subconcsious minds of Hasbro somehow, but I think you underestimate how many characters they're always pondering over at Hasbro. And to us that hopeful idea that they'll at least consider something since it got mentioned isn't a fantastic reason to use a question up. Sometimes maybe, but not generally when you can get actual answers and information out of them too, about something you haven't seen/heard yet.
I know you're not attacking every question we ask, and I'm trying to give you the reasons why we don't run with many questions... It's a weeding out process. To us, our site ran with the question you dislike because it had a reasonable chance of getting answered and there was curiosity about the subject... not by you obviously, but other people found it interesting (at least they found the story we posted with photos we got early interesting). Some questions in our log maybe would've been better, we don't rank them, but they'll get asked eventually if the Q&A continues steadily for the extended future. If worse came to worse all we'd ask is "when will we get ____________" type questions for lack of question asking most likely. Depends how long the Q&A runs I suppose.
I hope that helped clarify the point... I don't think you caught some of that information the first time. The question definitely wasn't asked because there was any curiosity why the battlepack was delayed at least. That wasn't implied in anything I read back through anyway. It just got asked because people were curious about the headsculpts on the Troopers.