I'm liking how Obi-Wan always gets the **** beat out of him now for some reason.  The um...Sail-y-wing Barge thing was sure different

Actually, that ship is reminiscent of Lando's ship, the Lady Luck, which is from the EU.  Gotta love how they're paying homage to some of these things by way of the show.

Scored the new Clone Trooper & Cody this morning.

So the criteria for who has been made and who hasn't is now resting on the position of a zipper?  It's great to see how these discussions can come full circle.  Good times! 

Looking at the possibilities for the future of big items to accompany the 3D releases, there are obviously a bunch of possibilities.  Here's what I'm thinking:

ATTACK OF THE CLONES
I think what people would think of as obvious here is a new Republic Gunship.  It's right in the midst of the action and the main characters are directly involved.  Plus the Gunship remains a very strong seller on the secondary market.  I think there's the potential here for Hasbro to cash in with an existing tool.  The same goes for the AT-TE.  It's an awesome Episode II vehicle.  Again, it's another existing tool.

But the new MTT makes me think that perhaps Hasbro is planning to go out with some memorable new items.  So what would be a new item that would wow collectors?  My out of the box prediction would be for the LAAT/c



I could also see a possible reissue of Slave I in the AOTC deco.  I'd also be interested to see if Hasbro can retool the AOTC Jedi Starfighter with a functional droid socket.

As for anything beyond Episode II?  I think we have to wait and see how this TPM-3D line performs first.

Not so sure I agree on the Endor Trooper.  A side-by-side comparison seems in order here:






I think these might be as close as it gets.  Simply because I think the vintage Kenner figure was so simplified that it's quaint in comparison with the POTF2 figure.

Scored the WM exclusive Dewback & Super Vulture Droid today.  Getting a couple of WM exclusives out of the way in one shot is always a good way to ease my collecting concerns.

Yeah, that's called the Nielsen people meter.  And even when viewers were consuming all of their television live there were flaws in that system.  It couldn't account for how many people in a household were actually watching a show.

As for selling the show to a network, McCallum made it clear that HBO wasn't in play because they won't give Lucasfilm complete creative control and they want some level of ownership of the show.  I imagine that's going to be a sticking point with some other networks as well.  And then there is Lucas's outsider status with Hollywood.  He's done some amazing things on his own, but look at the obstacles that he had in getting Red Tails made and distributed.  He's been quoted as saying that he had to pay to have the theatrical prints made himself.  So it comes down to who is going to do business with Lucas AND provide the budget that the show will need in order to get made.

What is the issue with Nielsen?  I would think sponsors would be lining up for this show.

Nielsen probably cannot account for the varied delivery systems people are using to watch television at this point in time.  They're still very much tied to the old methods of measuring how a show does in an individual time slot.  But programmers are running their shows in multiple time slots in order to accomodate a wider audience, and get ad revenue from multiple airings.

There's also the varied digital formats that people are using to watch their shows.  TV shows are on iTunes, as well as the websites of networks and VOD services.  Nielsen doesn't seem prepared to deal with this broad-based way of measuring a total audience across all of these media at this time.