As part of Hasbro's Q&A session, Rebelscum passed on 2 of your burning questions and now we've got the answers for you.
Rebelscum: Obviously we love the return of The Vintage Collection, and we're pretty excited about what we've seen in the line-up from Toy Fair. That said, there seems to be a disturbing trend (for some of us) that we'd like to give you an opportunity to dispel.
So far, it appears that TVC will be nothing but upgrades on existing characters, and that there will be very little "all-new" figures. This seems contrary to an answer from a Q&A session last year where you indicated that you'd be going more and more after the all new items, and less after the re-hashed subjects. But so far, that seems to not be the direction that you're going.
Looking at the line-up so far....out of the 11 figures shown for the TESB wave coming in August, only Dak feels "a little bit" new, the other ten are all straight updates on existing subjects (yet even Dak is an update from the POTJ Snowspeeder figure).
When we look forward on the line, we already know a number of the other figures planned:
ROTJ: Admiral Ackbar, Gammorean Guard, Wooof (Vintage Klaatu), Wicket, AT-ST Driver, R2-D2 w/ Pop-up Lightsaber,
AOTC: Zam Wessell, Count Dooku
ROTS: Anakin Skywalker, General Grevious, Clone Trooper (care to provide specifics?)
ANH: Dr. Evazan, Ponda Baba, Bom Vimdin (perhaps the one all-new subject we know of so far)
TPM: Darth Maul, Qui-Gon Jinn
So based on that list, it looks like we have almost the entire line-up coming that will be updates. Granted, some of them are SORELY needed updates (Ponda Baba and the good Doctor, for example), but we can't help but wonder where the "all-new" stuff will be. Obviously it makes sense to take advantage of the vintage packaging and release main characters on that packaging style, but at the same time, we need to see some "all-new" stuff to help keep the line fresh. Will there be any "all-new" figures in 2010, and then once we get through the six movie waves by early 2011, will we see more "all-new" subjects figure into the line-up once the mixed waves start in 2011?Hasbro: The strategy for Vintage is to ensure that we have ample representation of core characters, whether by repack or resculpt (when we feel there are improvements that can be made in previous versions).
For 2010, there are few new (and almost by definition, more obscure characters) as we are making sure that we have lots of great "core" characters out in the early waves of the line. This also means upgrades or redos to characters who have been previously released, even if a decade or more ago.
For entirely new characters, in 2011 you probably won't see that many more all-new characters as a percentage of the whole than you did in any previous line (the last two years of Legacy, for example). While these characters are in there - such as Cantina denizens, Jabba's crew, the occasional new
Padmé or Podracer, etc - we need to make sure in absolute number terms these characters don't hang us up by either eating up our tooling budget or forcing us to over-ship them to nail our forecasts.
Either one of these would be bad news for the line, so we continue to make sure that our hero quotient is solid first, before we tackle the more obscure guys.
Rebelscum: As for the 10 "Greatest Hits" figure repacks in 2010...we've already seen Boba Fett & 4-LOM, and you also mentioned Zuckuss, which it's assumed will fall into this category. While we naturally want to know the rest of the GH figures in this repack series, the most important question is this....can we please get a Wedge Antilles in this series on a single card? Wedge needs to have some respect, and putting him out on a Vintage-style card would rock! If you want to add some "newness" to him, a kit-bash of the Luke X-Wing body with the Wedge Comic Packs head would be a great "new" figure. Please? Hasbro: This Fall, you will at long last see a basic figure of Wedge on a Vintage card.
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