I'm all set to see:

• Tenacious D

Where you seeing the D? Have they announced an official tour yet? I saw there is a new album coming out next month. If there's East Coast dates, color me there.

"SMALL seasoned curlies!"

That's awesome, Nick! Definitely not an isolated occurrence then.

I made a few late night Walmart runs last night in the hopes of finding some of the new Class I sets but nada.

Sweet carbonated Jesus, perseverance finally pays off!

I rolled by TRU over lunch today even though I knew they were not due for a truck. I recall seeing a post from somebody else recently, not here I think, that found a case of Deluxe sets with the Scout Bomber at TRU a few weeks back. And I remember the same thing happened with the last toy I had never seen at any retail outlet - those cruddy Red/White BP's that showed up months after I had been forced to order them online via HTS. TRU got a buttload of them way after the fact.

So anyway, I walked in and sure enough, there was a whole fresh case of SOTDS Deluxe sets, including a minty Y-Wing Scout Bomber that I immediately snatched up for $18.99. Crazy.

Definitely might be worth your mileage to sniff around for some of these showing back up at TRU...really glad I held out and never resorted to getting gouged on this thing via the secondary market.

Also happy because this keeps my streak alive of having seen every Clone Wars toy on the shelves at least once.

It's weird...part of me feels sad and frustrated that these are going to take FOREVER to show up here because of all the garbage stuck on the pegs now...and then part of me just doesn't care anymore. This wave kinda blows, and having so few figures due this year just sucks all sense of urgency out of the very thought of hunting around for this stuff.

Way to kill collector interest, fellas.

Thanks Dale!

I have another pic to post with all my loose vintage figs, LMK if I need to do anything different to get that one up too. It's not terribly impressive but it's taken me over a year to even get this far, so baby steps. 

So yeah, I had posted about DT Luke recently but the VC Jawa is the new crown jewel of my collection, and by far the most expensive item of the lot.

I picked up both on eBay. DT Luke was sort of an impulse deal...I bid just over the latest bid with a few minutes to go and ended up getting it. I'm fine with him...a little paint loss here and there but no obvious defects, has good tight limbs and the saber is in pretty decent shape.

I had actually bid on a different VC Jawa about 10 days ago that I just missed out on, so I was kind of bummed. I have been watching these for awhile now and the prices do not seem to dip much. I actually found a listing for one at night that had just been posted, was a BIN auction which normally I avoid like the plague but sometimes you can work those to your advantage. I spent some time that evening researching the seller and the item itself so I could verify 100% the authenticity, at least as best I could. Everything checked out, the seller had perfect feedback and had a number of high dollar SW items up for sale, so I went ahead and bit.

I got it for at least $100 less than I have seen any other loose ones go for on eBay the past couple of months, at least any ones from reputable sellers that did not seem fishy in any way. So even though it was a LOT of dough to drop at once I don't feel like I got raped or anything, and after receiving it I was able to confirm that it was in fact the real deal. (Went to far as to actually scratch the cape with my finger and compared it to the WAV file on SWCA to verify)

So I'm really happy with these recent puchases, along with my carded DROIDS C-3PO and A-Wing Pilot. I JUST missed on picking up a carded DROIDS Fett a couple weeks back, so this helped soothe the pain.

Not many gaps now, outside of stuff like DT Ben and Vader, and Vlix of course. Picking up the VC Jawa has sort of re-ignited my vintage interest again though, so I think I'm going to get back into the variant thing again for awhile. This week I picked up a couple of new ones, the Imperial Commander (Long neck + smooth jacket) and that white droid with the circle on his one hip. (Sorry, at work and can never remember his name)

I swear, I could keep going and going with just the vintage variants...what a slippery slope!

Well said Nick, that makes sense...I agree that the retailer situation is the big gray area in that equation. For example, I've seen the Blu-Ray figures at several Walmarts over the past few weeks, but nary a whiff of them at Target or TRU.

I haven't really seen any new stuff shipping at all recently outside of that Deleted scene stuff. It's a weird landscape right now.

What's crazy is they had the exact same figure at the Walgreen's close to my old house, at least up until a few months ago...I have not been by there in awhile. Would not surprise me at all if he was still there though.

Wow...that is incredibly disturbing.