Mine arrived today. It's interesting, they have moved away from the plastic-free packaging on these (at least for this set). There is a molded-pva insert for the droids instead of the cardboard & wax paper inserts, but they still have the blasters in a wax-paper baggie.

I seem to remember when they were first introducing this set, they said the droids would be made of a more rigid plastic. After opening one set, they seem gummy as ever... but it is also 100-degrees outside today, so I may have to wait for these to cool down a bit and see if they stiffen up. If not, I may return a few of the sets I bought.

I will note that it is nice that they varied up the weathering on each of the three grunts a little bit, making them each unique.

Got my order in, just for one though. I’m really glad this is a new tooling that better fits with the more detailed TIE series ships we’ve been getting since the late 2000s. I’m not thrilled with the price, but at least it’s an entirely new ship.

Looking ahead to SDCC 2025 as it'snow 5 weeks away, and I'm wondering if Hasbro is going to shift the way they conduct the SDCC panel this year? Last year they were still offering the Pipeline Reveals - and 2 of those that were announced in June of '24 are still yet to be officially revealed. But per Hasbro they decided to taper off the Pipeline Reveals since they seemed to diminish the excitement level for announcements in general.

This is what got revealed for TVC last year at SDCC:
-3 TVC mainline figures [Imperial Jet Trooper, Thrawn (Ahsoka), Ahsoka Tano (Peridea)]
-1 TVC deluxe figure - Cobb Vanth
-1 creature pack - Mando and Blurrg
-1 playset - Armorer's Forge
-8 TVC mainline figures announced as Pipeline Reveals.
-Shortly before SDCC Hasbro announced the Mandalorian Shriek Hawk Training Team multipack

Given the shift in how Hasbro is announcing things? I suspect that there will be more announcements than last year.  It's fair to expect Hasbro to finally reveal the new Han Solo and Chewbacca that were pipelined a year ago.

Yakface also has 4 named characters on their current rumor list, with another 17 entries for mainline figures, 3 slotted for deluxe figures, as well as a couple of multipacks. I think we could see anywhere from 6 - 8 mainline figures announced, a deluxe figure and a multipack announced for TVC. I'm also not ruling out the possibility that Hasbro could make at least a couple of pipeline reveals, but those would be an exception to the shift in the way Hasbro is announcing things.

I was ready to pounce on this and the two new pre-orders. I reminded myself last night and when I woke this morning. When that 1pm ET (10am Pacific where I'm at) hit... I forgot.  But 2 hours later when I was reminded of the pre-orders after seeing related threads here, I was able to order without a problem. <relief> The world is (almost) OK again.

Hasbro needs to smooth out their real person verification setup. Like many, I had to jump back to the main page and redo the buying steps. It was a little hairy for a while, thinking an item (or all) would be snagged out of my cart before I could pay. I genuinely appreciate their attempt at purchasing fairness, though.

Not so with most of their buying steps. It was clunky at first, but after months with no improvements, I would classify it as LAME.

Got the same e-mail.  It will be interesting to see how they've been improved from the previous versions.

Just having a less bendy plastic would be enough for me.