This one is going to be bizarre, but the first movie I remember seeing (actually it was my second movie I went to see ever) was Disney's "Song of the South."  There's a lot of controversy about this film nowadays (Disney pretty much refuses to release it on DVD or VHS or Betamax or 16mm in the US ever again), but I do recall going to see it in a small town theater when I was a kid.  I can't remember how old I was or what year it was, but that's my first memory of a movie theater.

My mother and aunt actually took me to see "Star Wars" in 1977 but I don't remember it (I was far too young).  My mother told me later that I did not make a peep during the entire film and that when Darth Vader took his first step onto the Tantive IV, I began rocking in my chair and smiling and cooing, so I guess things were predestined from that point.

I also remember seeing the Robin Williams "Popeye" movie at a drive-in in that same town when I was a kid, but again, I don't recall the age. 

I also consider myself lucky to have seen Weird Al's "UHF" and The Transformers Movie in theaters during their opening weekends (I still have the DVD of "UHF" in my collection and it still holds up as a hilarious film).

"Badgers?  WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING BADGERS!"

It does swivel?

Yep, and apparently it's on a ball joint like the rest of the Clones too.  You know how I know this?  My attempt to loosen the neck joint resulted in said Clone's head flying completely across the room. 

Thankfully I was able to get it back on as it is just a traditional ball joint in socket thing, but it was hard as hell to get it to budge.  I find it really strange that the neck is so damned tight and the hip, knee, waist, and ankle joints are so damned loose.

By the way, is the left elbow "joint" glued together on everyone's or is mine's joint just tight there as well?  I don't want to break his arm or anything to see, as he holds his gun perfect without any swivel, but just doing my homework.

As for the other deluxe figures, Vader is great, although that oven mitt on his right hand is a bit much, Yoda is amazingly cool (well, the Can-Cell is anyway, but the fact that Yoda can sit on it (AAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!) without falling off is a big plus, and the Vulture Droid is just one of the ones from the Episode I three pack of TF Droid Fighters with slight retooling on the bottom (there is no peg to hook it into the armature of the E1 versions) and a new paint job.  The Buzz Droid is the same one as packed in with the Tri-Droid Fighter, but with a nicer paint job and no little peg on its foot to hook it into the Jedi Starfighters.

As for the Clone, I'm not terribly impressed.  I mean, the figure is nice enough I suppose, but the missle launchers on the jet pack don't work worth a damn and the lack of ball jointed elbows and right wrist articulation on what is supposedly a "deluxe" figure detract a few points for me.

Which brings to mind another question I have about the Deluxe figures.  In my world (where, as always I am ruler supreme of all that I survey and Giada DeLaurentis is my wife), I've always thought of Deluxe (the word as it applies to normal things) to indicate that it is either bigger or better.  The POTJ and Saga Deluxe figures followed this really well, but so far, the ROTS stuff has been really lacklusted in terms of value as compared to a regular figure.

From the first wave, I would only count Sidious and Anakin as being truly deluxe figures (and each of them could have used some more detailing), with the Grievous' only difference with the basic figure being the paint detail and the direction of the action feature (one opens up, one swings) and the Obi-Wan being a complete abortion that should have never made it past the initial conceptual meetings at Hasbro.

In the second wave, Vader fits the description, and I'm really surprised that Hasbro didn't try to fit the Can-Cell into the small vehicle assortment with the Boga, AT-RT, BARC, and Wookiee Chopper, so it fits.  The Clone's jetpack could have been included with a basic Clone, and the Vulture Droid ends up costing you more than what one of the three TPM Droids would have cost if they had been sold individually back in 1999.  So, out of eight so far, in my mind, we have four that truly classify as Deluxe figures.

And in the next wave, we've got super cool figure with a Speeder Bike that will probably blow up if you look at it crossways, a three pack of minimally articulated army builders (good for army builders, though), a droid that sucked the first time around, and another droid that may or may not be totally out of scale and/or inaccurate to the film version.

Oh well, at least Obi-Wan might have some company when the Dwarf Spider Droid is released. 

Well, I just got back from the local Target where, armed with the DCPI number thingy, I decided to see if they had the Clones in stock since there weren't any on the shelves.  As seems to always be the case (thankfully), I found a really sweet and helpful Target sales associate who happily went into the back to see if they had any.  She emerged about two minutes later with a case of Clones that hadn't even been opened.  She asked me if there was a space for them on the pegs and I pointed out the four empty pegs for the Lava Vader (which she remembered) and she said, "That must be where they go then."  She opened the case and inside were 12 Clones, tissue paper and all.

She looked them over and said, "Are these supposed to be out yet?" and I told her that people across the country have been finding them but that I had no idea if there was an actual street date attached.  She seemed really nervous about selling one of them to me and I (yes, I did the right thing, and I believe in karma) told her that I would let her check as I did not want her to get into trouble just to sell me a toy.

She went into the back and came out about 10 minutes later with that ROTS handbook that Lord Philip of Assholia had up on RS before the Lava Vader launch and apologized profusely because it said to restrict the Clones until May 8th.  She kept telling me how sorry she was, and I told her that was fine with me and I double checked to make sure May 8th was the official date, and she said, yep, and opened the handbook to make absolutely sure.  I thanked her again for going to such an extraordinary effort for me and apologized for troubling her.

The good side of this is that, while waiting, I managed to get all four of the new Deluxe figures (Vader, Yoda, TF Droid, and the Jet Pack Clone), so my karma came back to me almost immediately.

It looks as if I'll have to go back to Target on May 8th and hope that between now and then the figures haven't magically disappeared from the back stock room in that time.  But, as for today, I really lucked out by finding yet another wonderful and helpful Target employee and was rewarded for it by getting four figures I didn't expect to find at all for at least three more months. 

(and by the way, the Yoda on Can-Cell is AWESOME)

I dunno... just way to many Jedi Starfighters everywhere I look it seems.  It's more or less the vehicles I am upset with.

I'm hoping/figuring that the Jedi Starfighters (Anakin and Obi-Wan's at the very least; IMO Plo Koon's will bomb completely) will start moving once the film has come out and kids see how integral they are to the first part of the film.  With the Episode II version, all Obi-Wan did was fly around in it and the scene it was involved in was basically him getting chased.  With these, we're going to see actual battles taking place on and around them, so maybe more people will be interested in them from that perspective.

I do agree though that there isn't a lot of love being shown toward the Separatist army, either in ROTS or in retrospect for the TPM and AOTC lines. 

With Episode I, they released a STAP (I still maintain that this was an awesome toy), the AAT (which they have since rereleased), a three pack of Droid Fighters (which were pretty lackluster), and another Droid Fighter that came with the Royal Starship.  Then they did the EU-themed AST which, while neat, wasn't all that great. 

I said around the time of that film on rasscm that Hasbro was passing up a really good opportunity with the MTT (the big tank that all the Battle Droids unloaded from) to do a vehicle and a carrying case at the same time.  My idea was to do an only slightly fudged scale version of the vehicle on the outside, and have the "droid rack" actually hold about 30 figures in the same way that the old Imperial Transport thing (it might have belonged to the Rebellion; it was the little bus looking thing on Hoth) worked, and each slot would have kind of an indentation where you could "hang" BDs by their backpacks if you wanted it to be (fairly) film accurate.  Sell it all for about 30 bucks, pack in a Battle Droid or a Pilot Droid, and there you go.  I would have much rather paid for a hollow piece of plastic with some functionality and detailing like the MTT than the hollow piece of overpriced plastic that the Sandcrawler turned into (I only paid 17 bucks for the thing and I still felt like I got ripped off).

With Episode II, they gave us nothing for the Separatists, unless you count the Slave I.  It wasn't until the Clone Wars line that they gave us the Geonosian Fighter and the Hailfire Droid (again, I maintain that both of these are awesome pieces).  They gave us a Spider Droid that was a piece of crap (and hooray, they're giving it to us again), and a Dooku Speeder that was good enough for what it was, but that fell prey to their obsession with action features at the time.

And now for this film, there is an inaccurate Wheel Bike with what has to be one of the worst pack-in figures of all time, and a Tri-Droid Fighter which, while completely amazing in my own mind, is pretty much MIA on shelves in most places due to the fact that it was packed 1 per case.  And from the photos, it looks as if the Vulture Droid Fighter is still using the TPM mold and as such, probably comes up short too.  They still haven't done one in a great way unless you count the Action Fleet Droid Fighter from TPM, which had its flaws as well.

I can't help with the link but the toy you're talking about is the Armored Scout Tank (AST).  It was released in very late 1999, but didn't show up until early 2000 in most areas.  There were two different boxes: one was a regular box with a window for the figure (along the lines of the Sith Speeder) and the second was a window box with a Naboo background.

This was the first vehicle in the assortment that later included the Gungan Assault Cannon w/Jar Jar, Gungan Mini-Sub w/Obi-Wan, and the Sith Attack Speeder w/Darth Maul.

Hope that helps.

Hasbro keeps telling us that they "do it for the kids" yet everything they do points to "doing it for the collectors".

And that is the dilemma that Hasbro is going to have to face in a short period of time, I think.  As I (sarcastically, yes, but it was all probably true) alluded to in a post I made in another thread, Hasbro only actually pays collectors any lip service in non-film years, as in those years, we are literally all that they have to keep the line afloat.  During the film years, they act like we are the scum of the earth and that we don't matter a bit to the line because they are "making the toys for kids." 

The cycle usually goes like this (and look back on this if you don't believe me):

2001:  Power of the Jedi (collector based line, Fan's Choice is introduced)

2002:  Power of the Jedi (collector based line, really obscure and much requested characters)

04/2002:  Saga/AOTC line launches with stupid action features and horrible sculpting on many figures, because "kids love the action features"

2003:  Saga continues with more stupid action features in Collection 1 and a collector's focus in Collection 2.  By the end of the year, the action features are more or less nonexistant.

2004:  Saga continues with a very collector based focus.

08/2004:  Original Trilogy Collection starts; figure choices range from being kid focused to really obscure ("Cool, mom, it's the guy with the computer in his bald head, can I have it?") characters no kid would really care about.  DVD release to tie into

2005:  Original Trilogy Collection winds to a close with very collector-based figures from TPM, AOTC, and the Cantina

04/2005:  Revenge of the Sith launches.  Back to stupid action features, "these are made for kids" all over again

See the pattern?  When the fickle youth abandon SW in the toy aisles completely by January, we'll see another assortment or two (unless Hasbro has already stopped making them in anticipation of this) with action features, before they are phased out and we see the obscure and collector focused figures return.

The problem is that this time Hasbro is being much more insulting with collectors.  In 2002, it was "kids make up the bulk of our sales."  In 2005, their attitude seems to be "if you don't open your toys, you're a moron, but here's an overpriced Clone Trooper to chew on."  And in 2006 they're counting on everyone forgetting these little snide comments, but in the end scheme of things, to paraphrase one of my favorite films of all time, "When the end comes, all that will be left...is US."

Store displays are very cool but can often take up more space than you realize due to the odd shapes of most of them. 

I only have one in my collection, and it's friggin' huge to the point where it takes up an entire corner of my collection room.  I knew the manager at a small mom and pop video store and when they sold the Episode I VHS tapes, they received this huge display that was about 5 feet wide by 6 feet high.  It had a cardboard standee-like cutout of Obi-Wan on the left, Amidala and Anakin's heads on another standee-like cutout on the right, a "tower" in the middle that had cutouts of Anakin and Sebulba's Pods attached to the front (to look as if they were flying against the sand), a huge logo (like the one on the DVD) with SW:E1 TPM on it at the top, and two huge shelves to hold the videos in the middle.  Above that was a placard that said "The one to own on video."  Very cool, and the shelves have come in handy over the years, but it's big and unwieldy to say the least.

The one thing I always wondered about were those people who ended up winning the TRU Naboo Fighters or Milennium Falcons (the ones that hung over the SW area in the stores) and where they put those.   

It's always good to ask at these stores about old displays, because 99% of the time they just get thrown out in the trash.  Sometimes though they are promised to other areas (a local WM had promised their OTC display with the Struzan posters on one side of the island kiosk to a local Children's Home to use in a charity auction, which is great), but it never hurts to ask.

I can't seem to find Force Battlers anywhere - can someone hook me up with a set of these?

Thanks a lot, ruiner; you just made me do a spittake for the first time since I was in high school.  Having any trouble finding that RARE VHTF DISCONTINUED DELUXE OBI-ONE WITH SUPER BATTLE DROID too?  I might be able to hook you up with one, as I think I've seen one every now and then, but it is a difficult find.