The nihilists might make for cool figures.  Walter needs someone to beat on, after all.

I saw figures of The Dude and Walter this past weekend at Toy Fair.  Looking pretty cool, too.  I think Entertainment Earth is carrying them.

Interesting.  I saw Page & Plant tour behind their Unledded project.  That was pretty solid, and the drummer they had was great.  Still, they had a much larger touring band than Led Zeppelin during their heyday, and Page really didn't handle much of the guitar soloing.  It was a good show, but it probably didn't compare to Led Zeppelin live in 1973.

Years later I saw John Paul Jones with his own band opening for King Crimson.  They brought down the house!  Jonesy played some obiligatory Zep tunes, and he actually sang, too.  He did a really cool version of "That's the way".  He ended up with this monstrous instrumental version of "When the levee breaks", and let me tell you, Crimson had a hard time following them too, and those guys are no slouches.

It's definitely intriguing to think of what a reunited Zeppelin would be like.  But then I think of what a powerhouse drummer John Bonham was, and it would be difficult for anyone to follow him.  As for his son?  I saw him in that show on VH1 with Ted Nugent.  The guy is in his mid 30's and he looks like a wreck!

I'll bet there must have been a display real estate issue, too much crap to show.

It certainly seems that way.  People were on top of each other trying to photograph everything on display.  Among the things that were MIA at the Hasbro booth?  Comic 2-packs, battle packs (general release or exclusive), 3" Titanium vehicles.  And most of the things that were shown were already known or photos had leaked already.

Quote from: speedermike on February 13, 2007, 10:19 PM

What stores?

Canadian stores....Nothing you should be worried about for the time being 

Give it 3-4 weeks.  Then let the whining about pegwarmers begin! 

For a ship that is on screen for a grand total of 10 seconds, the SI doesn't DESERVE a larger vehicle.

In a world where sometimes we have to make compromises, I agree.  The Sith Infiltrator is shown in a total of what, two scenes, and only one of those is in flight.  That flight scene is a transitional scene with no dialogue and no ship to ship combat.  Had the Sith Infiltrator been involved in some kind of direct pursuit scene of the Queen's starship, or combat with the Naboo starfighters it probably would have been manufactured back in 1999 or 2000.  There had been rumors that one had been designed and shelved for years, and looking at it's role in The Phantom Menace objectively you can see that the ship isn't really inherently important to the story.

Then getting into the business aspect of things, the costs of producing a larger vehicle go up.  Especially if there's no previous tool available for the ship.  And then, how to make it profitable?  Well, consider the fact that there is probably no room in WalMart's planogram for a vehicle like this that *might* sell for $39.99 in a less scaled down form.  A version of the Infiltrator at that price point would still be scaled down, but might satisfy more collectors.  But since it's a non-movie year and WalMart is Hasbro's biggest account, WalMart wins that argument. The largest vehicle that they're likely to accept that is not an exclusive is in the Assault Vehicle line and that retails for $19.99 - $24.99.

So can I live with this particular compromise?  Sure.  Because we're not likely to see a project come along from Lucasfilm where Darth Maul plays a prominant part as does his Sith Infiltrator.  We're not likely to see Hasbro say we made a mistake and it's way off scale, let's make it right.  And having seen it in person now, I think it looks alright.  The paint apps look dead-on.  The landing gear looked right.  It doesn't look outwardly deformed by being scaled down.  And having loved the vehicle line as I have since 1978, I'll be adding this one to my collection along with all of my out of scale X-Wing's, TIE Fighters, Falcons, Republic Gunships, ARC-170's, Y-Wings and Snowspeeders.

I saw the diorama pieces that Gentle Giant was showing as part of their Bust Ups line.  Morgbug's comparison photo was pretty dead on in terms of the size of these pieces.  They're quite similar to the Tomy mini-dioramas of a couple of years ago, and those aren't all that fantastic.