You know those talking M&Ms in the commercials? I'm guessing these are like that, only with sabers, blasters, helmets, etc.

I'm adopting a "wait-and-see" attitude--like until I see pictures and details.

Normally I disdain gimmicky exclusive bull like this, but for $29.96 it's still cheaper than the EE sets.

Either way, I want to get my hands on it bad.

But since there aren't supposed to be hordes of commanders or ARCs, logically it should be the plain E3 clone -- otherwise the proportions are wrong if you buy several sets.

I'll probably bring the wrath of the collecting gurus upon myself by saying this , but I hope the Sandtrooper is a repack from the POTJ/POTC version. IMHO that's an all-around great figure. Plus I already have two, so this way the new ones would match. At any rate, I hope he comes with white, black, or orange pauldron instead of a repeat of gray.

Does anyone know what these will be packaged as--Clone Wars, Post-OTC silver-on-black, or simply ROTS?

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but I think I'll get the first one at least.

Yavin 4 Anakin looks promising, and I don't have the movie-style Asajj Ventress so I want this one, repack or not.  I don't feel strongly about General Gravy one way or the other, and it's hard to tell what kind of Yoda that is.

And clone-armor Obi-Wan honestly sounds too good to be true. What's the catch? Probably the armor won't come with the cape, the pieces won't snap on properly and he'll look like the Stay-Puft marshmallow man when wearing it.

The second set looks like new or modified sculpts of Obi-Wan and Anakin, so we'll see how that turns out. And I don't have any Jango, believe it or not.

I think the Clone Wars movie style figures were crap on a EU plate.  Jedi Armor and Mexican Bandito outfits and the like don't show up in the movies do they?  Mace Windu wears the same outfit in AOTC and ROTS, why would he change for the Clone Wars?  It smacks of doing something for coolness sake.

True, but I don't have a problem with that. What's wrong with a change of pace from the moldy old bathrobes now and again?

The one figure that stood out really badly to me (in terms of a "WTF?" moment) was the Mace Windu.  Great idea, Hasbro: take the single most overproduced and underselling figure of the Saga era, which also has a garish action feature that makes it nearly impossible for it to look good holding a lightsaber, slap a new head on it (presumably; as has been said, the lighting isn't that good), and put it in a five pack as a "new figure."   

No kidding. He's still a pegwarmer at my TRU. *forces a laugh but cries a little inside*

At least they swapped the head.

That was what made POTJ great--it was mostly background aliens and bit players. In future, Hasbro should make one or two definitive sculpts of core characters and recard them endlessly in a perpetual Hall of Fame assortment. How many new versions of Cantina Han and Arena Mace do we need anyway? Just pick one version and recard it forever.

In principle, I'm not against repacks, as long as they're chosen well. In fact I'd be perfectly content if 2006 or 07 was 75% repacks of hard-to-find figures. I'd happily buy into an OTC style line with deeper range and good distribution (I would have bought a lot of OTC but most were very hard to find in my area and I'm not going to pay $10 apiece online).

Suggestions:

Qui-Gon and Eopie
Holo Sidious
Regular Sidious
the astromechs from Amidala's starship
AAT Tank
Spitting Jabba
SA Clone Trooper (let's face it, they could crank these out by the hundreds of thousand and it'd never become a pegwarmer)
Red ARC Trooper
Hailfire droid
Movie-style Asajj Ventress
POTJ Security battledroid
Sebulba
SOTE Xizor
Coleman Trebor
McQuarrie concept stormtrooper
Ephant Mon
CW Animated Yoda and Dooku
POTJ Sandtrooper with four variant shoulder pauldrons
And whatever ROTS figures end up being rare (like the later waves)

I dig Holo Yoda, and I'll spend enough to put me over the $35 threshhold.

I wouldn't bother with Lava Vader even if it was a normal $5.99 purchase. But ultra-limiting the number per store, then making you wait in line before dawn after being up till 2 the previous night, THEN shelling out $13 apiece? Now that's just bull****.

There's only one or two toys I'd do that for (let's say, Super Articulated Silver ARC Trooper With Functioning Blaster Rifle and Exploding Miniature Concussion Grenade) ... and this definitely ain't one of them.

The Micro Vehicles and Lava Vader don't do much for me. I'm withholding judgment on the Cup sets. But the 5-packs and Stormie/SA Clone packs sound promising. Though something tells me they'll be scarce--particularly if Target does something boneheaded like restricting the number per store (a la Lava Vader).