Who'd you e-mail it to Michael, and when?  Any chance it made it through to one of us, and we might still have it?

If you say you sent it to me a while back and I never took care of it, well, uh...  I'll be a tad bit embarrassed.  Embarrassed

I honestly can't remember at this point, Matt.  I know it was at some point during the first week I signed up here last year, but I'm drawing a blank as to who I emailed it to.  Like I said, though, I was having some problems with the email account I sent it from at the time, so it may have never even been sent in the first place.  No big deal.

I throw myself on the mercy of those with plane tickets for a C3 Talking Vader figure, if someone can pick up an extra.  If not, that's cool and it won't break my heart, but I'd be your friend if you could hook me up with one. 

Well, I guess I'll be the first one to say this: the DVDs of the 5 films.

If you want actual "collectibles" counted, though, I'd have to say the ROTJ Burger King glass with Luke, Vader, and Palpatine on it.  This was the only one I had when I was a kid, and it somehow survived into adulthood by being put in the back of my grandma's kitchen cabinet away from light and the elements.  My mother dug it out about two years ago and I was beyond thrilled.  I swore up and down I was going to try to put together a complete set of the BK glasses from all three films, but due to finances and health problems, I never did.

One of my cousins, however, gave me a head-start and got all four ROTJ glasses for me, mint condition, from someone online, so that was a really big moment for me, collecting-wise.  It's odd that with all the pieces that have cost me countless dollars over the years, it's the one glass that was maybe a buck from when I was a kid that brings me the most happiness.

Does anyone know if M&Ms is still planning on doing the mailaway promotion for the plus M-Peror and M-Luke dolls?  If I could get the M-Peror for (relatively) free, I think I'd go ahead and do so, but if I have to pay 12 dollars (plus SWS's shipping costs) for a plush M&M, I think I may have to pass.

I haven't seen anything listed on any of the wrappers or in the store displays thus far, and didn't know if the mailaway had been abandoned or what.

Oh, come now, we all knew that Hasbro would manage to screw up the case assortments on everything this year, and let's not forget that regardless of what happens, anything that includes a newly sculpted Clone/Stormtrooper is never in the first assortment, and is often at the tail end of the line.

I was fully expecting it to be 4 Anakin/Vaders in a case, which would ship to retail en masse.  Then they would do another case with 3 Anakin/Vaders and 1 Clone/Stormtrooper pack, and then the line would be cancelled due to the glut of the Anakin/Vaders and Hasbro would claim that "fans weren't interested in the concept."

Once again, Hasbro takes a wonderful concept and manages to screw up the execution.

Okay, I've got a few questions for the openers out there about the action features of some of the Collection 1 figures.  More to the point, I'm curious about how their accessories are involved in the action features themselves (if at all):

1-Would some explain to me the purpose of the base that comes with R2?  I suspect it is something underwhelming, but as it has a kind of see-saw action to it, and there is no explanation of how to use it on the package, I'm a tad confused.

2-Again, what the hell is that brownish-gold pylon looking thing that comes with the second Obi-Wan figure (number 27)?  There is an indentation in the base, but it will not hold the pylon secure enough for him to kick it over, and there is a spot on the back of the pylon that makes me think it may attach to something else.  Naturally, as with R2, Hasbro did not include instructions on what it is or what it is for, so I'm drawing a blank.

3-This isn't a question, but something else Hasbro didn't explain that I figured out: the little hook thing with the handle that comes with the Clone Commander figure is actually one of those zip line things that can hook onto the (rather short) line that comes with the figure.  Or, if you happen to have the Episode I Rappel Line Attack accessory pack laying around, you can use the suction cups on that with the CC figure and have a really big slide.

If I can be serious for a moment, an idea that has been coming up a lot lately (in varied situations) is that of quantity vs. quality.  In this day and age, certain people/groups/websites/etc seem to put a premium on claiming that they have "over 10,000 visitors every 10 seconds" or something similarly outlandish.  The thing that comes to my mind almost immediately upon reading that is, "Sure, there were 10,000 visitors, but how long did they stay?"

I've been a so-called "visitor" to several really bizarre and esoteric websites over the years, but often times I would only be there long enough to look at the front page, realize that there was nothing there that I was interested in, or I had been linked to said page for a story, I left once I "got what I came for."  The point is that I visited the front page long enough for their great big clicker-tracker-thingamabob to catalog that I had visited the site, even though I would never return to said site in the future.

The last time I looked at RS.com's front page about a week or so ago, at least half the content was an advertisement of some sort for a site sponsor, a link to an article at TFN or another offsite source (usually Hasbro or SW.com), or some short, vague byline for a news story which more or less consisted of unsubstantiated speculation (OMG EARLY BIRD LOLZ).  There was very little of substance on the front page that could not be gotten (and in more depth, I might add) from JD.com, GH.com, or so on and so forth.  JD's front page has (and this is an unconfirmed empirical observation here) about 1/10th the daily postings that RS.com does, but at least 10 times the actual content that RS.com's updates do. 

RS, going back to my original comparison, has increasingly put quantity over quality.  It's easy to say "We post 10 updates every day at the least" when at least nine of them are "Pay 20 bucks for a figure you'll see everywhere for 5 in two months right now through our sponsors in Abu-Dhabi so we can get a kickback!"  Whenever JD or GH or some others post an update on the news page, I can be reasonably sure it is something that will interest me and I don't have to wade through ads or C2 Ventures autograph scams to get to the information.

Same thing goes for the RS.com forums: I'd much rather be here, which is relatively smaller, for the intimacy that comes with the smaller size and visibility, as the conversation is more personal and everyone (my random posts about whimsical actions at C3 aside) usually maintains a level of maturity.  JD might not get 15000 posts a day, but if JD got that, I can be more or less guaranteed that the majority would be worth reading.  At RS, people post just to (metaphorically) hear the sounds of their own voices.  For us (at least for the ones who don't work on the site itself), JD is something we come to in order to escape from reality for a moment; a lot of the people on the RS forums (GNT) seem like they live there.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that I'd rather be here than there, for the reasons I (and many others before me) have outlined above.  And even though it's not the thread to say it, thank you to Chris and the staff for making this site available to us.