The Legacy Collection is turning out to be a great year for fans looking to see the remaining vintage figures redone in the modern line: B-Wing Pilot, Silver Death Star Droid (via a Build-a-Droid), (rumored) Imperial Dignitary Sim Aloo and Jabba's Palace Guard Klaatu (Wooof).

That's not too shabby. Throw in rumored Bespin Guards (hopefully this time in African-American and Disco Moustache varieties) and Hoth Echo Base Rebel Troopers and you're looking at the list dwindling down to just Ewoks.

Never pass up carded figures if you have the cash.  Never.  I've collected since 1977-1985/1995 to present and it's my one Golden Rule of Collecting.  You never know what will become HTF.  Great find!

I have followed this rule as well - it's a great rule to live by. Sure you might see the figure again, but ALWAYS grab yourself the "sure thing" if it's there in front of you. This has helped me MANY times with Star Wars figures - Ephant Mon, the first release of the McQuarrie Stormtrooper and entire POTF2 EU wave of figures. Those are all figures I only saw at retail ONCE.

Since there is a socket hole in the side of the German Motorcycle, I can guarantee that tools were produced for mass production of a side car at some point in the future.

This is another excellent candidate for release via HTS shipped in a plain white mailer box.

There are plenty of German Solider on Motorcycle sets out there right now. It would entice folks to buy a second Indy w/Horse too (granted the Indy is wrong, but it's the best Indy to put on the motorcycle).

I think at this point, the only reason we've seen the second RotLA wave is 'cause even though it's slated for "early 2009" that really means "holiday season 2008" so that wave should be hitting in December which is why some retailers are picking it up as a last ditch effort to see if the line sells.

If Hasbro didn't have any sales for that second RotLA wave, then we wouldn't have seen them at SDCC.

If you take their answer re: the card back art for TLC Wave #2 back when those figures were supposed to be part of TAC and the fact that they don't want to show it simply because it will never be used (which just seems crazy to me, you already paid the artist, why not sell a set of cardbacks for these figures?) - so no purchases  from retailers for RotLA Wave #2 = that slide getting deleted from the SDCC PPT deck.

It's also the same thing with the coins for the Force Unleashed figures - you already made the tools for them. Take pre-orders for a set of Force Unleashed figure coins on HasbroToyShop.com for a couple of months, use it to gauge interest, if you get enough sales of them, produce them, if not cancel everyone's pre-orders. But I doubt that product costs more than tooling so why not just make as many sets as you presell. Same thing with the cardbacks for the TLC Wave #2 figures. But anyway, I digress...

The four different Indy figures and two different Mutt figures are what really hurt this line. They could have cut the numbers for both characters in half, slotted in some more characters up-front like Toht or the German Mechanic or Marcus Brody (for the RotLA) and Marion or Oxley or Mac (for the KotCS wave) and then collectors would have probably bought MORE figures. Let me explain....

As it stands now, if you get one of each you got:
Indy w/Fertility Idol
Indy (Streets of Cairo) w/Whip Action
Indy w/Bazooka
Indy w/Crystal Skull
Mutt w/Sword
Mutt w/Snake

That's a total of six figures.

If instead they had used those same six slots to release:
Indy w/Removeable Hat, Jacket, satchel, working holster, fertility Idol, whip clip, 2-whip versions & gun from RotLA
Toht
Indy w/Removeable Hat, (no jacket torso), satchel, working holster, Crystal Skull, whip clip on belt, 2-whip versions, bazooka & gun from KotCS
Oxley
Mutt w/Cloth "Leather Jacket", sword and switch-blade
Marion w/Snake ('cause she was in that scene too)

That's still six figures, but if they took the time and made the heads swapable between the two Indys, that would mean a total of EIGHT figures sold.

The Indy w/Bazooka figure would work JUST FINE if you wanted to make a streets of Cairo version of Indy if you could just pop the head from the RotLA Indy onto that body. But you can't 'cause the heads are not compatible. Same thing with making a Jacketed Indy figure from KotCS. Just take the spare body you have now and combine it with the older Indy head, now you have a KotCS version of Indy in full garb. They would have doubly sold each Indy figure.

Now before you start saying "but they saved on tooling by having four Indy figures" - sure they did, but not by much. The Streets of Cairo Indy figure has a mechanism that had to be tooled and does not share any parts from other Indy figures. It's head isn't even compatible with the Fertility Idol Indy figure. Sure the legs on the two KotCS Indy figures and the Fertility Idol Indy are the same and the two Jacketed versions share the same arms (although they did give us a second left hand for the KotCS Indy - I would have much rather had a handless version of the crystal skull) - the Jacket piece that goes over the torso is DIFFERENT between the two Jacketed figures only because the RotLA Indy has a working over-sized holster and the KotCS Indy has a smaller non-working holster. They should have just gone with a a holster that was somewhere in between - working but not oversized to accomodate the flap and "button".

Collectors also have the ability to "pass" on certain versions of the same character so even if you aren't like me and would have been compelled to buy two of each Indy figure so you could perform a head-swap. If you're collecting purely based on one of each character, you loose the liability of the jacket-less Mutt and then gain the extra sales of the Toht, Oxley and Marion figures.

Some other things that they could have done? Skip the Marion & Cairo Thug 2-pack - just released two versions of the Cairo Thug 2-pack, right off the bat.

They appear to have no problem shipping the Toht figure with a second head INSIDE THE PACKAGE (which is something they say they'll never do with a Star Wars figure) - so why not package variant heads of Dovchenko, Irina, the German Soldier and Russian Solider in their packages? How many people are going to buy TWO Toht figures (if he comes out) anyway? I know I am, one to display with one head and one to display with the second head. If they had packaged a Irina w/Glasses second head in the package with her, I would have happily bought two of that figure. Same thing with Dovchenko - he has his hat on like once in the movie - each time he's fighting with Indy he's got no hat on, so why not make a version of his head w/o the hat. The variant Russian and German solider heads would have helped that sell even MORE than they did as well.

I really hope that the lack of retailer interest in the line for these last two waves ToD and RotLA #2 just means that they will easily be picked up from HTS. Which brings me to my next point. Start taking PRE-ORDERS for six-packs of the RotLA #2 wave - one of each figure except two of Toht. I know if it meant I was guaranteed all of the figures I need from that wave, I would happily place a pre-order for that six-pack of figures. Heck start offering a pre-order for a six-pack of the ToD figures too. Then also offer a pre-order for say a three-pack of Thugee soldiers too.

The tools are made for these figures, why not just try as many avenues as possible to get them sold?

One more thing - why are they saying "no" to stuff to readily? HTS seems to have no problem selling Cobra Commander in a Suit as a SDCC exclusive so why not give me a Professor Indiana Jones in a suit figure? Or a Donovan in Suit figure? Or a Colonel Dietrich figure? If they feel that collectors are the only driving force for the line, just keep offering one-off figures each year as SDCC exclusives. How hard could that be?

What would be the harm in them keeping the Falcon hitting the shelves from now until the end of the holiday shopping season?

It makes no sense to me at all to have roughly $250 of product come out now only to have a completely new set of $250 worth of product coming out for Christmas.

Can the collector community bare the burden of this much product? Perhaps, but I think the size of that community is definitely pretty small. How many kids are going to get more than one $100 - $150 items? Not too many.

They should let the BMF and AT-TE sit on shelves as long as possible so that their sales numbers can benefit from the holiday shopping season. Let the Death Star and Juggernaught be the big items in 2009.

I hope this wave isn't as elusive as the Last Crusade wave.

Grabbed the Thugs the other night too. No sign of the Mutt w/Motorcycle figure. I guess someone came in and snatched them all up or the WM where I found them got in cases where there weren't any Mutt w/Motorcycle figures in the ratio. I had thought the thugs were only packed at 1 per case while Mutt was at 2 per case. Since there was easily 8 - 10 Thug sets, does that mean that this store sold through 16 - 20 Mutt Williams figures in two days?! That seems highly unlikely to me considering how poorly the basic Mutt figures sell.