As part of Hasbro's new weekly Q&A session, Rebelscum passed on 3 of your burning questions and now we've got the answers for you. Keep in mind, these questions were submitted before Comic-Con.
Rebelscum: Why do you keep re-tooling the TIE Fighter? First the engine detail, then the wings, and now you re-tooled the hatch! Why didn't you just re-tool the whole ship from scratch instead of doing chinese torture on collectors, where you re-tool bits and pieces of the TIE Fighter on every random release? A new cockpit interior and proper gunwells would be next on the horizon for the next 'new' release of the TIE Fighter of the future methinks?Hasbro: Dan - the TIE releases are not "random" as you indicate. They are purposeful re-releases. It starts with our strategy of wanting to get an everyday priced $20 TIE fighter out there for kids and collectors in our Starfighter Vehicle Asst. We could have taken the existing version, but we wanted to make it new, rather than a straight repack. In addition to deco, we wanted to affect another aesthetic change to the hatch change. We didn't have a lot of tooling dollars to use (we were saving those for the new 2007 vehicles) but we could afford to update the hatch. This was a nice aesthetic change that we were able to execute.
Rebelscum: As 2007 is the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, will we see a larger percent of Original Trilogy characters who have never been made before, compared to previous years? Characters like CZ-3, Hermi Oodle, Yarna Gargan, Tonnika Sisters, etc, would make great 30th anniversary presents!Hasbro: Tough one to quantify, but I think that collectors will be very happy with the selection of new OT figures next year, including at least two that you mentioned.
Rebelscum: Are there any plans to release some of the upcoming tin set figures individually carded for a later release? Several of the new or retooled unique figures from these sets are considered army builders (ANH Sandtrooper with removeable helmet, ESB Snowtrooper with removeable helmet, ROTJ Scout Trooper with removeable helmet and ROTJ Endor Rebel Soldier). I know that many fans and collectors would like to aquire multiples of these figures to add to their collections. Having them only available through the tin sets is a bit prohibitive.Hasbro: There are no plans right now to release them down the road on individual cards. We do realize that there are some troop builders in there that in the future would be great to bring onto the 6x9 format, but we're planned far down the road with other figures.
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