What is the Republic Recon Fighter with Anakin that is also listed in this wave? Is that a TPM based offering? Or another Clone Wars selection?
 

I was definitely thinking that this is THIS VEHICLE that was shown at Toy Fair 2011 with Obi-Wan.  That got cancelled, but Hasbro may have re-purposed it for Spring '12.  Plus, with the upcoming Naboo Skiff being offered with a TPM Obi-Wan, perhaps Hasbro wanted to get a different character paired up with the Republic Recon Fighter.  If they're going to be in the same Deluxe Figure & Vehicle assortment I can see Hasbro wanting different characters in the lineups. 

Plus, there's this:  Hasbro has consistently stated that if they have PUBLICALLY shown an item in print or at industry events like Toy Fair / Comic Con, they feel a committment to getting that piece out to market.

Well, it looks like they definitely visit LV-426, because it certainly looks like they find the wreckage of the alien ship that the crew of the Nostromo investigated.

Well, that's the challenge, isn't it?  A license like both Hobbit films will have a run of about 2 years at retail, give or take.  Hasbro's Star Wars & Marvel teams have licenses that will last far longer.  And the same goes for most military figures.  Those lines have a much longer lifespan and can support an in-house modeling/sculpting/engineering team.  The Hobbit films don't have that going for them.

Nick not to pick nits but the Toy Biz stuff was 6" not 8" 

But I agree...they really really kicked it up a notch starting with TTT...I remember that the FOTR figures were good but not great likenesses...some of the ROTK and Trilogy figures are almost lifelike in their likeness

I honestly wasn't sure if it was 6" or 8" scale.  But I agree:  the quality really picked up when they went to the more slimmed down basic figure packaging.  On the packaging front alone, the original crescent shaped packages were HUGE and ate up a ton of peg space at retail.  And when you do compare some of those original FOTR figures to the later trilogy figures the difference in likenesses was like night and day.  But there were some absolutely great figures in the line overall.

For instance:  the Trolls!  Without going into movie spoiler territory (for a book that's been out for half a century   ) , we know there are going to be some Trolls in the movie.  Toy Biz made some pretty awesome trolls in the form of the cave troll and the battle troll.  And they managed to do so in that 6" figure scale.  Now a 3.75" scale would make the trolls considerably easier to do, but they wouldn't be anywhere near as impressive. 






And on a similar note, could they manage to do horses as well in this scale, too?



We know how long it's taken Hasbro to get on board with ball jointed hips so that we could get a Sandtrooper that could ride a Dewback without looking perpetually bowlegged.  Imagine a 3.75" scale Hobbit or Dwarf and the challenges those would pose to ball jointed hips so that they could ride horses as we've seen them do in the trailer from the other day.

Grievous was the one notable ROTS figure I spotted.

The official trailer for the Alien prequel Prometheus is set to premiere tomorrow.  It's great to have Ridley Scott involved with the Alien franchise again!  There are already some teasers up on YouTube.

Scored some AOTC wave TVC at 5 Below.  $5 each for TVC Senate Guards, Mace Windu & Super Battle Droids?  Sounds good to me.