Seriously?  A new Lobot?  I can STILL find one hanging on the pegs at a local mom & pop shop near me.

The character duplication across multiple lines has definitely been troubling to witness.  Case in point, look at the Qui-Gon Jinn figures offered in 2012:  there was the TVC version, the Discover the Force exclusive wave at WalMart, the regular Movie Heroes version, a second Movie Heroes version with the electronic lightsaber, and the Duel on Naboo battle pack version.  Out of these 5 figures, only 3 were unique.  And the TVC, MH and DtF versions were all based on the same figure.

Now, was this Lucasfilm mandating the oversaturation of Qui-Gon Jinn?  Somehow, I doubt that.  And what's worse, is that we saw the exact same thing with Obi-Wan Kenobi figures, too.

Lucasfilm Licensing's reasoning to change the packaging is well reasoned.  Retail research shows that changing the appearance of packaging helps to keep things fresh.  It's also a natural transition point for UPC codes, and the clearance of old stock.  These are things that may not seem important on the surface to collectors, but it does help a toy line maintain some momentum at retail.

As for how sites are reporting and interacting with Hasbro?  It's certainly complicated.  Every person who is working as a reporter on a collecting site started as a fan.  Nobody is doing this purely as a journalistic pursuit.  And very few have any serious journalistic training.  And very often their lines of questioning may be guided by their own personal interests.  Is it admirable that some collecting sites went to Hasbro with reader questions?  Sure.  And there is something kind hearted about them keeping those questions in their original form from the readers.  But in the grand scheme of things, you need to do some editing of those questions in order to make them coherent for both Hasbro and the readers.  Because this Q&A session frankly came across as a completely unfocused mess.

TRU, and about $16.99, IIRC.

Like I mentioned, I have an extra up for trade.

Yup.  I bought three, actually!  One of which is up for trade.

I just know him from the inordinate ammount of time he would take photographing everything at a Hasbro display.  I've seen him at various events for years and years, and we even wound up on the same tour of Hasbro's sculpting shop in Rhode Island when they said screw Toy Fair, we're doing our own thing.

And +1 on the quality front.  If you compare even the middle of the road offerings from Hasbro in the Star Wars line, the quality is well above what we're seeing in action figure lines from some other companies for major movie toy lines.

I managed to score most of this wave today.  Interestingly enough though, I didn't see a Vader on the pegs!  The rest of the wave was there, though.

Also, this was at WalMart.  The TVC carded figures scanned, but the Lost Line cards would not scan.  WTF?!?!

Good times & safe travels to those of you going to Celebration 6!  I wish I could've made it to this one, but sometimes life gives you a better plan.