I'm thinking that the Han Stormtrooper will probably be along the lines of the Removable Helmet Vader figure.  The current Stormie has a flesh colored head under his helmet (I haven't and will not attempt to pry it off to see if there's a face too), so it wouldn't surprise me if Hasbro just slaps a new Han Solo headsculpt on the Stormie body, gives it a removable helmet, possibly a new base, and put it out there.  The fact that so many people still haven't gotten the regular Stormtrooper continues to bother me though; these have to show up at retail sooner or later.

On a really odd note, my local WM had put out the Unleashed Chewbacca (not the rumored new one, the old rabid one) on the pegs today.  One lone figure, the card was in great condition, and it just came out of nowhere.  Very strange.  By the time I went back this evening to get some Pepsi (mmmm carbonated) it was gone.

Thank you for the clarification on what the UL situation is though Jeff, as it came across as a really cryptic (and typically overdone) Hasbro response as to the line's future.  I'm hoping that Yoda and RH Vader will be rereleased, since I still need those and I don't feel like selling my kidneys to get them.

So, were the other two rumored ROTS pieces mentioned at the con (Chewie and/or the Clone), or was it more "If we told you, we'd have to kill you" Jethro Bodeen Double-Naught Spy BS from Hasbro?

(I'm still holding out hope that the Chewie is ripping a Battle Droid to pieces)

I did the unthinkable today and asked a Target employee if they had any more deluxe figures in the back.  He was very helpful, even though he said that he could check and see if they had any of that assortment but not a specific figure (I told him I was actually wondering about the entire assortment and he said okay), so he called back to the stockroom and asked if they had any more cases.  The stock person said they did not, and I thanked him and left.  Very nice guy and he seemed geniuinely excited about the film himself.

Even though I know it's not the thread for it, Target employees have always been very nice to me and very helpful.  They have gone into the back several times to check on items and have bent over backwards to see if they have what I'm looking for.  Be it the Unleashed Vader last fall or the Slave I, they've always treated me with respect (and I extend to them the same courtesy).  It's reasons like this that I do the majority of my shopping (toy and non-toy) at Target instead of Mega-Lo-Mart next door.

DNS is a good place to order from, although their prices are always a tad higher than retail.  Still, Dave at DNS is very friendly, answers emails timely, stock status is always up to the moment, and shipping/billing has never been a problem.  If I needed to order online from one of the smaller toy retailers, it would definitely be from Dave and DNS.

Oh, and CHEWIE, could you PM me?  I wanted to ask you about some genetically bred soldiers. 

Around here, the top sellers seem to be:

1.  Royal Guard (both of them)
2.  Aayla Secura
3.  Darth Vader
4.  Clone Trooper
5.  Emperor Palpatine

As far as what isn't selling...everything else.  This is making it very difficult for stores to restock any of the post-32 figures as they're either restocking with 1-32 again or they just don't have the room to put anything else out. 

Sucks for us, but to any corporation, people are cattle.

Worse than cattle, we're all just numbers to them.  At least with cattle they can sell the meat for various products, get milk from them, etc; with numbers, the only thing that we represent is leverage for corporations to line their own wallets.  They operate under the guise of actually caring what their customers think, but in the end scheme of things, their basic philosophy is "if you don't like it, go somewhere else."  Except for Wal-Mart, whose philosophy is, "if you don't like it, too bad, because we ran all the other people out of business and you have nowhere else to go."

But I digress.

The thing that gets me is that retail is leading Hasbro to believe that there is a future for SW toys.  To retail, Star Wars is only really profitable in a movie year or with something huge attached to the movies (e.g. the DVD box sets) to tie toy sales to.  When January 2006 hits and ROTS is just another DVD in the movie section, SW will be back to its now all too familiar four pegs for basic figures at WM, Target, and K-Mart (if they are even still around by then).  The majority of the ROTS figures will be hanging in the clearance aisle for 2 bucks a pop, and Hasbro will be citing disappointing sales for everything they did in 2005.  They will scale back SW production until a lot of the items they probably have planned for 2006 won't even see production on a large scale, retail will have been burned for the third time in six years by a massive product rollout and won't order enough, and a combined low production with low ordering will equal collecting nightmares.

The SW toy line, in non-movie years, is pretty much seen as the redheaded stepchild of the toy aisle.  If you look at any WM during a non-film year, SW has the smallest section of pegs allotted to it of any toy line in the boys' action figure aisle.  90 percent of the time the only thing that I ever saw in the SW section last year (OTC included) were lightsabers in both electronic and basic varieties.  Some will say that it's because the OTC sold so well and they flew off the shelves, but even if that is the case, empty pegs are poison for retailers.  If there's nothing there, they can't make money, and wouldn't logic dictate that they restock them constantly?

The problem with that is that retail doesn't want to order a lot of SW stuff because while the stuff sells well in the short run, in the long run, it's a disaster.  Most collectors will get their 1 or 2 of each figure and that's that.  You might get some kids or random adults buying something, but it's a real rarity in this day and age of video games and a lack of imagination.  When there isn't a movie to tie into the toys, kids aren't going to be interested, and even then their interest is dubious.

Television show or not (and let me commit heresy by saying a live action television show fills me more with dread than it does anticipation), SW is dying a slow death at retail.  Target can charge 13 dollars for an action figure all they want, since they know this is their last chance.  It's like the elephant in the room these days, and retail knows it.  Once ROTS has run its course, retail will turn its backs, and Hasbro will be caught with their pants down because they'll keep churning out the same old thing, again and again and again, and what retail didn't kill of the line will be put out of its misery by Hasbro.

And once again, we will be blamed because we just didn't buy enough of those Force Battlers to keep the line afloat.

And to keep this even remotely on topic (says the man that just went on a tirade that is even more pessimistic than I usually go on), I looked at Ebay this morning to see how out of control the Clone Trooper auctions were.  At around 10 AM there were 70 or so auctions and none of them that had been active for more than a few hours were below 30 dollars for a single figure.  And in a lot of cases, the sellers were offering multiple figures, even full cases of the figures.

But the SW line isn't dying, Hasbro has the license until 2018 or something like that.  Just pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Well, the little placard in front of the ship in the Con pictures says it is supposed to be 19.99.  TRU.com is charging 29.99 at last check for the item, so there you go.

I'm going to pass on this one completely, as two Jedi Starfighters are enough for me.  What makes it worse is that the figure is the #2 basic Anakin with a halo that you can borrow from your Clone Wars Anakin figure (you know, the one that won't fit the figure's head and the figure that won't fit in the cockpit of his own ship) and put in the regular Anakin Fighter.  They could have at least ditched the action feature, made a soft goods skirt piece, or something.  Then again, this is Hasbro. 

I was finally able to find a box of Froot Loops (strangely enough the cereal that, as my grandmother would say, I "foundered" (e.g. sickened myself) on back when the Han Stormie offer was happening, and got a saber spoon for myself (red).  I'm more than happy with it.

Also, as a heads-up, the local Burger King had a window cling at the drive thru window of Vader with some line about "Your focus determines your destiny" or something like that and the date 05.16.2005, so I guess we finally have our answer as to when this is all going to start with BK.

I can't believe that I'm going to say this, but it would be nice if they would do color/rank variants on the Clone sets (equally packed in a solid case of Clones of course, which would also be sold for retail value at websites). 

Just looking at the individual options, we've got:

Episode II Clone: Blue, Green, Red, Yellow
Episode II CC: Red, Green, Orange, Yellow
Episode IV ST: Orange, Black, White, Grey

If there was some way that Hasbro could do this where a case of six would have two of each set, and it would ship in an assortment all its own, this could be a very cool concept.  As it is though, Hasbro still can't grasp simple case assortment logic ten years in (why a Super Battle Droid is packed at anything more than 1 per case in anything past the first case period is a mystery to me), so this would be asking too much of them.