Quote from: Rob on April 16, 2025, 04:52 PM

I was surprised Hasbro didn't include him in the Ahsoka retro wave!

I've noticed over the years that Hasbro doesn't always make the best choices.

I think that is why all these customs exist.

If we look strictly at the retro collection, I can't complain about the figures that are direct copies.  I understand what they are doing there.  Once they go into the unproduced figures, that is where they get hit and miss.  The prototype ones are a big example.  The Vader was fine as a one off because it had an actual past in the Kenner process.  Once they started doing other ones, it just go annoying.  I think they have a lot of misses in the waves of figures as well.  Acolyte wave really comes to mind.  They should have at least had "the Stranger" figure.  Even the board game pack-ins weren't the best.  Tarkin was definitely a smart choice as an overlooked 70's figure.  The "Hoth Pilot" Luke was terrible, as was the Trivial Pursuit "dirty" remnant Stormtrooper.  Better choices could have been made for those two.

It does seem like they are getting back on track with the newest wave.  While Yavin Luke isn't the most exciting, I can see why he was done.  The rest are what they should have done from the beginning, hence why customizers have beat them to it.  Han ST, Sandtrooper, and Rebeltrooper are what people have wanted, but have been done on the secondary market.  Dr. Evazan is a great addition, but I'm almost certain someone has done him in the custom realm.  Understandable why Walrus Man is in the wave as well.  Perhaps he could have been updated with a normal version to be in a future wave.  That leaves 7 of the original 20 to be done:  R5-D4, Gonk, Death Star Droid, Hammerhead, Snaggletooth, X-wing Luke, and Greedo.

I have to think there is a bit more to Krahn saga than stated.  There is a lot of evidence of multiple court cases against him that are unrelated to SLC/TFSB.  Perhaps he didn't get into this to rip people off, but his later actions after losing the factory don't help his case.  All this nonsense about the alleged US manufacturer for the Bantha shows the type of person he is.  Also, retroactively trying to change preorders into "crowd sourced" product looks like a desperate attempt to cover up grand larceny. 

So you will have the full set of 13?  I managed to get SLC to actually ship me Thrawn and Han ST a few years back when he started the "do you want me to ship as they come in" stuff.  I was more excited about most of the rest of the figures, but unless they could be found for around $30/each, I really think I have to pass.

I guess we will have to wait and see how they turn out.  It is quite comical the grand design this guy had.  I chatted with him a bit when I first placed preorders and he said the plans were for a second ANH wave, followed by ESB wave, and then ROTJ/EU wave.

I've seen various rumblings over the past year or so about the SLC 13 being out there in China.  Considering this guy also has SS figures listed, I wonder if these are just some left over product or if this guy has access to the molds.  SS has had some excess stock of the big red snaggletooth in the past several weeks.  That was one I had never purchased so I jumped on it when I started seeing the posts.

Such a shame if there is SLC product out there that somehow never made it from China to the US.

As for quality, I could almost guarantee it is less than SS.  All you need is to get Slave Leia from each (which I have) and that tells you all you need to know.

Still available.  Just got my order in.  Almost forgot about it.

I have never shipped a loose set assembled.  My worry is it would break apart during shipping and then the buyer would claim pieces are missing.  The only downside is during breaking down the set, if you run into those brittle dark red or brown pieces that break.  I just built a set this week that had no fewer than five dark red pieces break during assembly and disassembly.  Fortunately I had some other open sets with the same pieces that I could temporarily steal from as I ordered spare parts.

For my loose stuff, I do a full assemble and take a picture.  Then I take a picture of just the minifigs with the instruction books.  Lastly I take a picture of front and back of box.  I disassemble and put all minifigs in a small ziplock bag and then try to go through the instructions backwards to put all the bricks in ziplocks and label them 1 of 3, etc. depending on how big the set is.  If there are more than one book of instructions, I try to put the bricks from book 1 in one bag and from book 2 in another.  Doing a full breakdown makes it like you are shipping a sealed set if you have kept the box.  One thing I found out this week, is weight really doesn't matter for large boxes.  I had someone ask if I could ship bricks in one box and the actual box in another due to the large shipping cost because of having to use a large dimension box.  I notice when I changed the box weight, the price didn't change at all.  I went from 10 lbs down to 0.5 lbs and it was the same price.  I then tried raising the weight to 25 lbs. and it was still the same price.  It was all based on the box dimensions.

As for selling on ebay, I avoid it like the plague.  Way too many scammers.  I feel that you literally have to take a video of yourself packing up a box with your item and even then ebay/paypal will probably still rule in the scammers favor.  At this point, I have sold 134 sets, both loose and sealed.  I have done it all through FB marketplace.  I even sold a Cloud City set with the expensive Boba Fett mini figure that I had to ship.  I haven't had a single complaint about anything.  FB marketplace can be set to global, so I have had hits from all over the world for stuff.  I have sold and shipped MR items overseas from FB marketplace.  There are no fees, except for the normal fees from using Paypal.  It is really the way to go in my opinion.

I honestly think this one is better than Skeleton Crew.  I have a feeling both are going to have the same let down of an ending.

The biggest problem with Acolyte is they basically lied to us as to what the show was about.  It was supposed to be about the Sith, which seemed quite incidental to the plot.  It did show the arrogance of the Jedi and showed how Palpatine was able to bring them to ruin.

I guess we have to assume Vestara didn't say anything of significance to Yoda, otherwise, Yoda kept the existence of the Sith hidden from the rest of the Jedi.

My guess is that some of this will get told through the books/comics since that is where Vestara came from.  I'm terribly behind on the books so I'm still only in the second chunk of High Republic stuff currently.