I never said, nor implied that this was pushing troops to the backburner.
A quote from above for clairty:
Give me some all new Rebel Fleet Troopers instead. Or a damn Rebel Trooper Evolution set while we're at it... not more pilots.
My responses have been to that CHEWIE... I took that to imply we're getting one (pilots) in the place of another (Rebel soldiers), and I just don't see the ties. Like I said, I think Hasbro would sell the Rebel soldiers individually. Filler for any given wave... Rebel Pilots on the other hand are figures that can re-use some parts and work better together in a 3-pack format with some new heads.
Regardless though, putting the two together is what gave the implication that one cancels the other out, but I guess it was just random wishlist insertion instead... Obviously you can see that's more than a tad confusing though.
My only point is, we could be getting Rebel Soldiers this year, or early next year for all we know, and that we should just enjoy the obscurity of the Rebel Pilots sets in the meantime because one has nothing to do with the other... Even if you're not into them, they're not really cutting into getting something else.
Pilots are the tougher sell individually... Biggs Pilot didn't sell horridly, but he didn't exactly fly (no pun) off shelves either. I think they're a "fan wank" to use the term, as I think the majority of collectors like getting new pilots, so it's something good Hasbro's trying to do for us by offering them in 2 3-packs of somewhat limited release (at least for me Evolutions tend to come and go quickly).
Rebel soldiers on the other hand, are likely to do significantly better on their own... I don't think we're NOT getting them because of the pilots sets, and I think we're likely to get them soon (I hope).
Why even do the Evolution sets at all then? Wouldn't the Fett figures have sold just fine on single cards?
I think, to Hasbro, Fett's are like Vader... You put them out, you have the molds, you re-use them again and again at various point. I don't know that they look at Rebel soldiers the same way... I wish they did because I'd love Honor Guards with new heads maybe, or a new SA Hoth soldier with slight decoration variants, etc. I just don't know if Hasbro looks at them the same way as they do Boba and Jango, who they can whore till the cows come home.
Again though, I'm not arguing with you on a Rebel Soldier evolutions set idea... I'd love it. As a matter of fact I think I might have been the first person to ever even suggest it during the first run of Evolutions sets in 2005. It's a cool idea to me, but at this point I think Hasbro maybe disagrees. I can't recall if they've addressed it in Q&A's or not, for someone to check out.
And I'm also agreeing with you on the re-use of Luke (for males) and Dutch on any and every Rebel Pilot... Wedge sucks because of the Dutch body, I think Zev's goofy tall because of it. I hate that too, and if the Entertainment Earth sets wind up (hypothetically) being Dutch bodies with new heads, I'm totally disappointed in that... Just like you.
I won't say, "boy I wish we'd gotten a new set of Rebel soldiers instead of this crap", though because that's like saying, "boy I wish we'd gotten a scale AT-AT instead", to me. It doesn't jive with the patterns, is perhaps the point I'm going for here then. And I'd be disappointed with Saga Endor Rebels and POTJ Fleet Troopers with new heads too. So I'll just keep wishing for new Rebel soldiers in some format (I'd love an Evolutions set, but I'm not hopeful on that, and I'll be more than content with basic figures), and in the meantime I'll hope that the Entertainment Earth set is something cool, but I'll accept that it's likely to be at least 50% re-used molds from something or other, because that's the pattern.
And if the EE sets are Rebel Pilots, I hope they use the new bodies like Tycho's, or the Evolutions pilots. That would rock to me, even if the pilots were generic head sculpts, or various aliens throughout.