Questions for Comic Con, 2005
Q&A Archive

It never fails, take a couple days off of work and spend the next week and a half trying to get caught up. Now that I’ve had the time to rummage through my mental notes, here are the last few Q&A highlights from Comic Con. Again, I’d like to thank everyone from Gentle Giant, Code 3, Master Replicas, Hasbro, and all the Star Wars exhibitors; it was great meeting with you and talking about the cool stuff that’s out now and coming up. I’ll certainly look forward to seeing you all again next year!

On with the show:

[Gentle Giant Studios]
A number of readers have been asking when we’ll finally see some Revenge of the Sith items from Gentle Giant. What’s in store from Episode III, and when can we expect to start seeing it?

We had a number of pieces already lined up for 2005 (Clone Wars Maquettes, Biker Scout Statue, Leia Boushh, and Han Solo Busts…), as we begin to finish those up and release them we’ll start to talk about what’s coming next. We do have a few new items in our display (Fett Statue, Darth Maul, and Luke with Tauntaun), we would have liked to have included some of our Revenge of the Sith pieces but they are still in the early stages of development.


[Gentle Giant Studios]
Hasbro has made some significant changes to their Unleashed line, which is fairly close in size to some of the statues Gentle Giant currently produces. Is there a chance we might see Gentle Giant produce more stylized Star Wars statues to sort of fill the void in this popular theme?

We’ve recognized that there’s a fine when it comes to taking creative license with our Star Wars pieces. We hear from a lot of fans that are quick to point out where this or that detail is not entirely movie accurate. While it hasn’t kept us from doing things like our Scout Trooper statue, which was never actually seen in that particular pose, we understand it takes time for some fans to get used to the idea. As more fans come around to that idea, we’ll certainly take a look at other interesting ways to present the characters, but we don’t have plans for anything like the Unleashed figures at this time.


[Gentle Giant Studios]
You’re still showing your Episode II Clone Trooper Bust-Ups as part of your display. We’ve been seeing these since you premiered the line, when can we expect to finally see them available for purchase?

Well, we have Series 4 (ROTS) coming up, and we just announced our Series 5 (Hoth) line up, the Clone Troopers will likely follow that as Series 6 or possibly 7.


[Gentle Giant Studios]
You’re showcasing a clear Headless Nick Mini-Bust as part of your Harry Potter line, is there a chance we might see this treatment carried over to the Star Wars line for a Jedi Spirit or Hologram effect?

The Headless Nick piece is in a very early stage and still pretty rough. As we fine-tune it we’ll certainly look at the possibility of doing something similar in the Star Wars line.


[Code 3 Collectibles]
Initially a few fans expressed concern that the Falcon showing up at Wal*Mart may hurt the value of their collection. So far the price has remain close to the original offer, was this intentional?

We worked closely with Wal*Mart to ensure the price was consistent with previous offers and protected the Falcon’s value as a collectible; we’ll do the same with any other pieces released in this fashion.


[Master Replicas]
I’ve been a big fan of Master Replica’s Signature Edition props, but you seem to have gone away from that model recently. Is there any chance we’ll see MR come back to that line in the future?

We did move away from the Signature Editions for a while there, but in a way we’re restarting that theme with the second edition AT-AT. For the product we had lined up this year it was too hard to get some of the actors we would‘ve liked to have sign. Ewen was busy, Hayden was busy, Ian McDiarmid was not available… We have some things we’re looking at for ‘06; the Phil Tippett signed AT-AT will get the ball rolling in that direction.


[Master Replicas]
The Borders exclusive ROTJ Luke Skywalker F/X saber was recently announced, can we expect to see an improvement in the ‘neck’ area of the saber between he hilt and emitter?

No, unfortunately not. Because of the thickness of the blade we use on our F/X line there was nothing we could do address that part of the design.


[Hasbro]
You’re showing the Galactic Heroes mini vehicles, which are just starting to show up at retail now, what are the chances we’ll see more movie-based vehicles added to this line? How about a Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter?

The Galactic Heroes line has done extremely well for us, but the vehicles haven’t preformed as well as we would have liked. At this point we don’t have any plans for more movie-based vehicles, though if we were to add to the line Vader’s TIE would a good one to do.

[Hasbro]
We’ve seen a number of figure variations this year, most notably Palpatine #35. We know from StarWars.com that the Palpatine/Windu duel changed quite a bit over the course of filming leading to the blue and red saber variants; is there a chance we’ll see a third variant reflecting the final saber hilt Palpatine ended up with on screen?

At this point the figure is far enough along that we won’t be going back to change that detail, there will only be the blue saber version that originally shipped and the corrected red version shipping now.


Until next time...


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