I feel guilty that I pointed the whole thing out in the first place.

I am in business with Chris from Fans Strike Back right now, when they were just starting up in late 2018 they requested an exclusive Cardboard Galaxy piece they could sell in their store and around Thanksgiving we were able to hit on something I could supply for their customers to buy, so my perspective is probably skewed...

I would say they seem to usually do runs of their custom figures before putting them up for sale, so the pre-sell method is probably something they are still on a learning curve for. It stinks that you are coming up on the limit for PayPal protection though. That makes the purchase tougher to justify.

As the resident 5" GoA fan, I feel it is worth pointing out that my local Wal*Mart reset the toy aisle. The planogram called for an obscene number of pegs for lightsabers(all empty as of today), three pegs for Vintage figures (which as of today had 2 Jawas to man them), a 2-foot wide shelf for Black Series (today's stock was Jannah, Rey/D-0, and Luke Skywalkwers)...and no GoA space (or vehicle/playset space for that matter.)

Granted, my Wal*Mart is one of the small stores that hasn't had a spot for the playsets or vehicles since the Vintage TIE fighter anyway, but dropping the "kid friendly" line that fast seems indicative that it's not doing so well. Weird, because there were only a couple Chewies and Airtroopers left after Christmas at that store.

(And I can handle all of the Star Wars absence because I saw the new Lanard "Aliens" sets and I think those are all going to come home with me eventually!)

Post-viewing, I thought it would've been a nice twist if Palpatine was revealed to be Plagueis.

Palpatine: "I am every Sith!"

So there you go...

Oh no, please don't buy into that conspiracy theorist BS.  Someone on reddit started a rumor about some JJ Abrams cut, and that the studio stepped in to make drastic changes to the movie.  It's the same kind of nonsense that happened when DC movie fans started clamoring for a so-called "Snyder cut" of the Justice League movie.

No, I am not buying into any conspiracies, but I totally believe Disney would hedge their bets after "Solo" underperformed by making sure the movie could squeeze one more showing in per day to bolster the numbers, rather than play as a 3-hour movie with some time for scenes to breathe and plot threads to come to a conclusion. I am not saying it was done for any of the conspiracy reasons, just the number-crunching Disney math. I am leery of thinking that it was done behind JJ's back, but I can buy that in the end he was not in charge of the final edit. The most telling part for me is that JJ intended for Finn to tell Rey he is Force-sensitive. If he was going to cut the reveal, I have to assume he would go back and cut the teases leading up to it as well. That is kind of basic storytelling there.

To me this is totally different from the Snyder Cut situation, which would be more analagous to what happened to the Gareth Edwards cut of "Rogue One" before Tony Gilroy reworked it with rewrites and reshoots.

This is more like Peter Jackson's "extended cut" of the LOTR films, where the vision behind the story is the same but things are allowed to unfold a little less breathlessly. I would happily plunk down cash either in a special theatrical run or a home video release to get to see a "less compressed" version of the film.

I see your point but that line-up would never happen
 It would be Rey Finn Poe Kylo and something random like ESB Bespin Lando.

I like the 5POA better than the Vintage line, if one had to go I wish it had been Vintage. But since they exist, I like the GOA and I will collect the OT characters in lieu of my other options at this point.

I liked the movie. My 10-year old son really liked it. I do need to see it again to get a more honest read, I went into it with such trepidation yesterday that it might have gotten a big pass from me by not being a horrible mess. My son asked me to rank the "Skywalker Saga" movies on the drive home last night and this one slotted in at #7. In his ranking it was #4.

A few random thoughts I haven't seen mentioned here yet...

* My son was extremely creeped out by Palpatine's milky blind eyes. To the point where he was squirming when they talked about going back to his planet because he didn't want to see that again.

* I get the feeling "Claude" got mostly cut from the movie. He was onboard the Falcon at the beginning, but just barely. They mentioned him by name and he was with our main crew so I locked him in as someone to remember, but then he was just totally removed to background shots.

*As far as the hyperspace skipping...I would guess Han pushed that envelope to the point that he proved atmospheric jumping is possible, and now hotshot pilots are testing it to see how far it can go. You will notice doing it breaks the Falcon.

* I think my favorite bit of TLJ-correction was the inclusion of the young Mon Cal that someone called "Junior." I am assuming "Ackbar Jr."

* When Rey decides to hunt down Palpatine, the "Ancient Jedi Text" she consults is Luke's personal journal. So either Luke decided that belonged in the revered library, or she swiped it from his hovel. Either way I chuckled at the audacity.

*JJ can write funny Threepio stuff. He was comic "gold" here (and I always liked his humor in TFA too.)

*Since the "Sith Wayfinder" had been moved to Palpatine's hidden boudoir just off the throne room aboard the Death Star II, I am going to assume from here on out that he was making the station his permanent residence as of ROTJ. This further confirms my own "Krennic's Law: if you build a planet-destroying weapon, make sure you never find yourself on the surface of a planet."

*I could almost see the Disney+ logo appear in the corner after Lando and Jannah talked about finding her homeworld.

*Seems to me that Luke, Leia and Ben all inherited their Force abilities from Anakin and their "dying when the story is done with them" abilities from Padme. I did not understand why any of these people died, Leia especially. She shouted, maybe Force-shouted, and that killed her? Did Kylo's stab wound kill her? I just didn't get it.

*Chief Wicket! My kind of superfluous fan-service!

That's all I've got for now.

Can't wait...my oldest son and I have a tradition now of going out to dinner and seeing the first showing at 6pm. In 2015 after TFA we were talking about the fact that he would be 10 when Episode IX came out...he couldn't even conceive of it back then. I wish my younger son (and their mom!) could come as well, but with his autism he does not do well in theaters (much less sold-out ones) so we do what we can.

It's going to be a fun night!