STAR WARS HIGH-END COLLECTIBLES UPDATE GALLERY

As many Star Wars collectors know, Hasbro is not the only big kid on the block. In the past decade, other licensees have emerged to offer the option of high-end collectibles based on everyone's favorite galaxy far, far away.

This year, Lucasfilm Licensing moderated a panel that included top team members from your favorite high-end collectibles companies. The panelists included: Barry Jones of eFX, Ashly Powell of Gentle Giant, Frank Supiot of Kotobukiya, and Brant Bridges of Sideshow Collectibles. Chris Spitale of LFL moderated.

The panel included trivia giveaways from pretty much all of the participating companies. But that's not what you're hear to read about. You wanna know about the product news that was shared!

EFX
eFX's Barry Jones showed off the latest prototype from their new Precision Model line: the Millennium Falcon, as seen in The Empire Strikes Back. It looks phenomenal and highly-detailed. Teaser images were shown of their Luke X-Wing Helmet (which will be from A New Hope) as well as several other products. New announcements included not one but three TIE Fighters in their standard FX Model line! In development are models based on A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back... and the TIE Interceptor from Return of The Jedi!

GENTLE GIANT
Ashly Powell presented a DVD video showcasing a behind-the-scenes look at Gentle Giant's product design, development and production process. One new product teased was an early design sketch and early sculpt of Darth Vader descending a staircase similar to the Bespin Freezing Chamber. Ashly's main point during the panel was iterating that her focus will be on improving Gentle Giant's record of making release windows for their products going forward.

KOTOBUKIYA
Frank Supiot of KOTO U.S. was on-hand to show off very early production designs for PVC statues of Darth Vader from the end of Return of The Jedi (complete with translucent helmet showing the ill effects of Sith lightning) as well as an accompanying statue of Palpatine doing the evil dead. A real surprise announcement was their idea of a possible new product line based on Japanese Ukiyo-E wood block art prints inspired by artist Katushika Hokusai. The first concept art shown was that of fan-favoritre Darth Maul.

SIDESHOW COLLECTIBLES
Sideshow's delightful Operations Manager Brant Bridges presented a slew of in-development product news for 2010, including:

1:6 Scale Line
- Commander Cody, including 3 swappable heads (Clone Wars helmet, Revenge of The Sith helmet, and an unhelmeted sculpt of Temuera Morrsion as Cody)!
- A Gamorrean Guard, utilizing a new roto-cast vinyl body!

Premium Format Figures
- Jedi Luke from Return of The Jedi
- C-3P0 from A New Hope

Dioramas Line
- Luke & Leia on the Death Star bridge from A New Hope
- The Rancor
- Anakin's attack on the Tusken Raiders from Attack of The Clones

Legendary Scale 1:2 Busts Line
- Darth Maul
- Asajj Ventress
- Count Dooku
- Tantive IV Leia
- A New Hope Obi-Wan

1:1 Statues
- EP3 Clone Trooper (still in very early development, but it's coming!)

As you can see, Sideshow has a slew of great future product in the works. And this was just the tip of the iceberg!

Be sure to click the link at the top of this article to see Dave's photos from the panel and we thank the folks from these fine companies for a sharing a glimpse of the future of high-end Star Wars collectibles with us!