Anyone know what scale these Disney Store exclusive die-cast ships are in, or if they're actual rehashes of the Titanium or Galoob ships...?  $80 for 9 ships makes me think they're sized somewhere in between the Titanium ships and the old Action Fleet ships.  Just curious, after catching Jayson's news post over at Yak about it.

I don't think he'll be participating in this thread, as he's still pissed off that his birthday wasn't even acknowledged this year (despite his continued absence). Then, on top of that, Jeff's gone and embarrassingly demoted him in the annals of the TCJDSWCC.

Dicks.

Big thanks to Anthony for a very helpful hookup on some elusive exclusives...

Just for clarification, is this set up at Star Traders inside the park, or at Once Upon A Toy (or another store) outside the park at Downtown Disney?  I'm seeing conflicting reports around the web on that.  If it's only the former at this point, I'll just wait it out 'til they go WDW's strategy where they subsequently get released outside the park too.  I'm not paying a $100 cover charge to get these things...

Paul, do you know yet?

JD Uber Troll is having yet another challenging dilemma, so I’ve decided to help him out here and start a thread on his behalf, to hopefully help alleviate some of his continuously "unusual" anxiety regarding others people’s collecting habits.  Force Guy brings up an interesting conundrum though, as he is currently confounded as to why people (like me) who dislike the Prequels would still collect prequel figures and toys.  Similary, we should probably nip it in the bud and also address why folks would buy any of the EU figures if they didn't like the book or game from which the characters came, or haven’t even read or played it for that matter.

Any takers?  As for me, as I've previously posted, I do it for the sake of maintaining a complete 4” collection, on top of the fact that I just like most of the figures regardless of movie or source of origin.  In all of the other Star Wars lines I collect (GG, etc), I’ve always gone OT-only though.  But since I've dug the 4” line since 1978, and it's relatively cheap (current distribution issues aside), I’ve decided to grab the prequel stuff along the way too, even if their inspiration comes from 2.5 movies that I don’t particularly care for.  As for EU, other than the Thrawn trilogy and SOTE, I’ve never read any Star Wars EU, and I’ve only played a handful of the SW video games, but I really dig the vast majority of EU figures.  I guess I look at the Hasbro line as part of the overall SW "toy saga" which I enjoy in it's entirety, but a somewhat separate entity from the movie saga (which I only enjoy 58.3% of the time), so I collect the prequel (and EU) stuff almost as happily as the OT swag.

[Tangent]Regarding collecting in general, on a broader level, I’ll occasionally purchase stuff I don’t necessarily love for my movie and music collections, just to make them more well-rounded.  I’ve taken to trying to “collect” each Blu-ray from BOM’s Top 200 adjusted list, though there’s actually a small handful that I’m struggling with that I may wind up passing on.  I'll grab random Jazz and Classical CDs from time to time too, even though I don't love those genres, and have to be in exactly the right mood to listen to them.  I also collect U.S. and Int'l coins, including some from countries that I didn't particularly enjoy, and many that have some ridiculously lame designs on them.  I guess my point is that to me, well-rounded and interesting collections should contain a wide array of items within them: Bizarre, cool, ugly, unusual, popular, random, despised, etc.[tangent/]

So, who else is in the boat of disliking the Prequels (or EU), but collecting their respective figures/toys, and how come?  Also, folks who have ditched the PT figures somewhere along the way should feel free to chime in too since you were obviously at one point in this club as well, before “seeing the light” (or just running out of space, as the more frequent case may be).

These things are now officially shelf warming at several of our local WMs, as I suspected they might.  Now the question is how long 'til the clearance sales start, especially since they take up such a sizeable chunk of shelf space.

Oh no!!!  The world is ending! 

Wait a minute...the MTT is a prequel vehicle, and you hate the prequels, right?   

8 days to jump on that one?  You're losing your touch, FG.  But since I’ve already answered that question several times, I won't bother to do so again here.  How about instead of being a troll, you just go start a thread asking folks here why they collect prequel figures/toys if they generally dislike the prequels?  I know there’s quite a few in the same boat.  You can even use me as an example, if you’d like.  (Yes, I know you honestly don't care one iota how/what others here at JD collect, but please, feel free to play along.)

EDIT:  Here, I took the liberty and went ahead and got the ball rolling for you.  Feel free to work your magic in there now.

Well, as far as "buy big", in my opinion that's what our house is for.  It (usually) appreciates, where a car starts depreciating the moment you drive it off the lot (assuming it's not a vintage/collectible car, obviously).  Owning something that just depreciates year after year 'til there's only a few grand left in it doesn't feel overly worthwhile to me anymore, to be honest.  Plus, to me our cars start to look and feel pretty dated by the time they're paid off in 5 -6 years.  Maybe we're just becoming snobs in our old age now, I dunno.

Like I said, we've still got 3 months to think about it, so maybe now that I've got a little info to start me off, we'll head on over to a couple dealerships soon and see what's what, and take it from there.  Thanks again!

Ok - here are the pics of my droids - sorry there are so many...

Phew!!! 98 Droids done (49 in clamshell, 49 open)

Ridiculous pix there Pete.  Well done!  I've gotta ask though, how did you come up with the various droid "designs" on some of them?  I have a pic of all 71 pieces where I've laid out the various designs I want to eventually make out of this line, but I've only chosen to make 25 different droids - 1 for each unique dome, matched up to like colors as best as possible for the remaining pieces.

For example, in your R9s, why the blue-domed yellow bodied guy?  Short on specific pieces, or just artistic licensing on your part, or was there a strategy to shoot for six per on most types?  Just curious.  I love that you've got so many different flavors, as I was having trouble on selecting a small handful of my choices (red head with red body or white body w/ red trim, for example).  You've got 'em both in there so it gives me a good visual idea of which setup I'd prefer.  Thanks!