With all of the problems many (or most) of us have had finding figures at retail in 2003, do you think things will change for next year?  Personally, there are a lot of figures being shown and/or rumored that I really don't want to miss out on...but its always nicer to find them in the store for retail price.  I have finally seen 2003 figures at retail in the past two weeks, spotting a DF Padme, Flying R2, Research Droids, and a repacked Jango Fett KE so far.  I also found the first two Screen Scene sets, but only had enough $ to pick up the Jedi Council one, and all were gone a week later when I came back.  Also, my brother was nice enough to pick up WA-7, Emperor, Wat Tambor, repacked Vader, Coleman Trebor, and Dannl Faytonni (he lives about an hour away from me)...so I was thinking maybe retail might be starting to improve...even here in Nebraska.  But, things still aren't great, and I know others have had problems still.  I'm still trying to catch up on everything from 2003 (waiting on preorders from Kebco).  I have noticed however that even if stores don't have the latest figures, the old ones have at least been cleared out (there's usually almost nothing there period, at least for basic figures).  Anyways, long story short, do you think things will clear up towards the end of this year and early next year?  I don't know about everyone else, but really the basic figures have been the biggest problems around here.  I have seen the Luke/Sidious/Obi Wan Unleashed wave a few times, the Council Scenes once, the 12" Han/Lando/Officer wave once, and all of the Clone Wars ships (just saw the multipacks this week too).  Do you think retail will shape up in time for us to find great upcoming figures like Hoth Luke, Wampa, C-3PO, Rieekan, etc.?  Good luck to all of you on your searches.

I thought the same thing OCB, quite a few X-Menish figures with that new line coming out....although I am glad to see them too.  We'll have to see I guess.  This, combined with the XMC series 2 rumors of Nightcrawler, Iceman, Pyro, as well as ML Colossus, XMC 1 Cyclops and Archangel, it could be a great year for X-fans.

Sorry to hear that OCB...but I can see where you are coming from.  It seems a lot of lines are getting difficult to collect, and unfortunately, I don't see MOTU lasting a whole lot longer either.  I am barely into this line (just He-man and Sy-Klone so far), but I am hoping to stay with it for a little while.  I am only collecting them slowly, and the figures I want have a limit to them.  Its not like Star Wars, where I end up wanting most if not all of the basic figures released....with MOTU, I basically want to work at going back and getting the characters that have been released so far, then add in a few of the upcoming figures (especially Roboto..as well as Zodac and Fisto), and wait and see if they release figures like new-style Mossman, Clawful and Stinkor.  Much further than that, I think I'd be pretty much done with what I wanted anyways.  Hopefully the line can last another year, but it does seem like it is limited.  Thanks for your past insights on the line though OCB...it was many of your comments on this line from forums that got me interested in the first place .  Best of luck to you in whatever you decide to collect/not to collect.

Do you ever find that you end up taking certain figure lines further than you originally intended?  For example, when I first got back into Star Wars collecting, it was around the time of Episode I...at the time I thought I'd just pick up a few figures (Obi Wan, Maul, 3PO, R2, Yoda, Qui-Gon), but I ended up diving in and getting not all...but well over 30 from that line.  Around that same time I also picked up the Commtech Han and Luke, thinking they were pretty cool, and I just thought I'd pick up the main characters...now a few years later my collection is littered with Amanaman, Duro, BoShek, etc., and anyone else I can find .  With my vintage Star Wars collecting it was just going to be the ones I had as a kid (around 20 or so probably), but now I find myself trying to get a complete loose collection.  Also, with other toy lines (why I originally posted this here), I find myself wanting at first to just pick up a figure or two...but then changing my mind and thinking I need more.  First it was Marvel Legends...just Wolverine I thought...then I saw Beast, and also got Gambit and Magneto...and now want all the X-men releases in the future.  Next it was MOTU, first it was just He-Man (and maybe Skeletor), then it was all the ones I had as a kid only, now I'm thinking I'd like to get all of the regular figures (without exclusives, variants).  I've also been on the fence with LOTR for some time.  First I thought, just a Smeagol and maybe a Legolas...now I'm thinking about picking up the 9-pack, a Smeagol, and a few of the ROTK figures if I see them.  Sometimes I'm scared to start a line because I know I'll end up wanting lots of it .  Has anyone else had experiences like this?

If this is true, this is pretty good news...thanks for posting it.  Although I don't collect Spidey figs, that sure seems like a heck of a lot of Spiderman versions for the next movie...but if people like them, sounds good to me!  I'm most excited about the X-men Classics news...Iceman and Nightcrawler are two that I was really hoping we would see soon.  It would be pretty nice to have a Legends/Classics X-Men lineup of Cyclops, Beast, Wolvie, Gambit, Iceman, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Rogue, and Archangel if this news all holds up.  Thanks again for posting this .

I'm not entirely sure either, but I think the last time was when I was a sophomore in high school, and I got the flu hard core on the day of one of our basketball games.  I kept trying to go back to school (we had to be in school a half day the day of a game to be eligible to play), and I kept throwing up each time I tried to stay up and around for very long.  Ended up being the only game I missed all through high school, but I wasn't too happy about it  So I guess I would say its been about 10 years or so.

I was curious, has anyone received the Jedi Council Set number 2 from Amazon?  I was fortunate enough to find the first one at Target this weekend, and I thought about just waiting it out...but if the second set is actually shipping now, that would be tempting.  I was just curious if anyone had received theirs yet, or if there was going to be a little bit of a wait.