Dear Hasbro:

I know I am just a peasant to you. I know that you think I know NOTHING about the action figure industry, how toys are made, which way the wind is blowing in terms of collectibles and retailer interest, etc... but I want to offer this piece of advice.

GET RID OF DARRYL DEPRIEST NOW BEFORE HE DESTROYS YOUR STAR WARS BRAND.

Ok - so before I go any further let me say this. You are at the same cross-roads the Star Trek franchise and Playmates Toys faced with Star Trek: The Next Generation went off the air. Instead of continuing to produce figures that would expand on the well over 200 Star Trek characters already created, Playmates resorted to scale changes, action feature gimmicks and left its core line to languish only until it was too late, many had stopped collecting and the line died a horrible death at the hands of being basically a toy line exclusive to Target stores.

So here we are now, the last Star Wars movie has been released. There are TV shows, as well as re-releases of all six movies with 3-D presentations rumored on the near and far horizons. There should be enough Star Wars from now until at least 2010 in the main-stream media to keep this toy line afloat. Yet what are you doing?

Making scale changes via Force Battlers & Attacktix.

Figures have BARELY working action features - the Battle Packs should be aimed at COLLECTORS - not children, children "buyers" go into a store with their mom or dad and their parent says "you can have ONE", they don't say "oh look, I'm going to buy you this $25 box set".

Employing gimmicky concepts - Titanium Forged Figures, Star Wars 'Choppers', Unleashed Battle Packs and Star Wars Transformers are all products that have NO PLACE WHATSOEVER as part of a Star Wars toy line. Sure there were those "Armies of Middle Earth" things for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but the last time I checked, they didn't sell that well. You claim a 7" unleashed figure for $15 doesn't sell and you can't make as much money off it, yet you think you're going to make more off of a $15 3.75" figure made of die-cast metal? I would think plastic is CHEAPER then metal. And of course, last but certainly NOT least is the concept of Star Wars 'Choppers' - FIRE THE ******* WHO SPENDS HIS FREE TIME WATCHING AMERICAN CHOPPER ON T.L.C. RIGHT NOW AND KILL THIS LINE BEFORE YOU SPEND A DIME ON IT. To spend the time designing, sculpting, tooling, manufacturing, developing packaging, selling it to retailers and marketing is the ULTIMATE slap in the face to the loyal collectors who have followed your 3.75" line since 1995. (or even longer since 1978)

So before your Star Wars line starts down the slippery slope that was already travelled by Star Trek, put a REAL FAN in charge, not some jerk-off who used to run the GI Joe line and start asking collectors what kinds of items they want to see - develop TRUE market research and use that as your tools to get retailers interested in the line.

Please before it's too late.

Ok - so I went into a Target this morning on the way into work to see if I could repeat my success last night and use my "Jedi Mind Trick" to get an employee to bring stuff out when they shouldn't.

It worked last night with the Deluxe figures so why not this morning in a different store for the Collection 2 stuff?

Well - while I was waiting for the person to return from the stock-room (albeit empty handed) - I noticed that they had new pegs up that were labelled simply: "SW Figure" - the price was $7.99 and the DPCI was 087-06-1283....

Jeff - does your contact at Target know anything about this? Is this a special DPCI number for the new figures for April 2nd only and then they'll return to the $5.99 price?

I just got my $1 off coupon in the mail yesterday and I would prefer that it help me bring the figures down from $5.99 to $4.99, but I'm NOT going to buy them at Target if it means brining the price down from $7.99 to $6.99 - screw that **** - I'll go get them over at TRU for $5.99!

I apologize if there is a duplicate thread already dedicated to these vehicles... I didn't see one, but admittedly, I didn't look very hard either...

Anyway - on a whim this morning I hit the Target in Brick, NJ on my way to work. I wanted to see if there was a chance that our Targets were going to see the Mid-size vehicles early just like I read in Matt's report from Friday.

It turns out, I hit the jackpot! I was able to get two of Grevious' Wheel Bike, 2 Obi-Wan Starfighters and one Droid Tri-Fighter.

I don't know why there was multiples of the first two and not of the Droid fighter. I went into the store right when it opened at 8AM so I don't think that there was anyone who could have hit-up the stuff before me.

When I get home tonight I'll open up the wheel bike and snap a couple of pics and post them here.

This same Target also had the EPIII Galactic Heroes asst.