Sandtrooper (Desert Sands Detachment) - Sideshow Collectibles - 1:6 Scale Figures (2011)
Star Wars Collectible News, Photos, and Reviews

6 Inch Black Series: New Life For Star Wars Collecting Or Not?

Posted by Paul | May 15, 2013 at 06:31 PM ET

Hopefully you were able to partake (or at the very least read the discussions) in our very "heated" debates about the 3.75" Black Series and Saga Legends lines coming out this Fall. The topic at this point has been rather exhausted, so now it's time to talk about the 6" Black Series line, perhaps the most controversial line of all. Introducing an all-new scale is a very dicey thing. With it comes more risks than anything else. To be fair, it brings collectors more details and articulation, but will it engage the amount of collectors it needs to sustain itself? Will four new figures at a time be enough to maintain interest? Will they expect to sell the same four figures for months on end? (Because that AIN'T gonna work.) Let's look at what's definitely coming and then for fun speculate on what might be coming. (more....)

Wave 1 will bring collectors:

1x 01 Luke Skywalker (X-Wing Pilot, Episode IV)
1x 02 Darth Maul (Episode I)
1x 03 R2-D2
1x 04 Sandtrooper

And let's not forget about the recently announced Boba Fett With Han Solo In Carbonite SDCC exclusive.

OK, so this is a fair representation of various Star Wars characters. Only one is a Prequel Trilogy character and the other three show us already that Hasbro is commited to manufacturing droids, heroes, villains and army builders. This is definitely an encouraging sign. But how will they proceed with this line? Obviously, because these 6" figures require all-new tooling, they are going to have to amortize costs somewhere along the way. Using this logic, let us speculate on what options Hasbro has for future waves and what OT and PT characters are likely candidates.

With the Sandtrooper sculpt, it's very likely that a plain white Stormtrooper character is on tap. And then even more likely are the Sandtrooper Sergeant and Sandtrooper Corporal characters. (Hasbro, please give us some breather room before you release those.) But with very little tooling a Stormtrooper would be the next logical army builder candidate.

We would have to all be idiots not to see that Boba Fett variants are more than likely. Between his appearance from Return Of The Jedi, The Star Wars Holiday Special, his appearance from Droids, the Prototype version, his Marvel Comics' appearance and the first test shots with "Jaig eyes", Hasbro has a lot of options with our favorite bounty hunter. We could expect to see any or all of these down the road.

Would any Star Wars action figure collection (no matter what size) be complete without Darth Vader? You can bet this character will be on tap very soon in the 6" Black Series line. There are existing rumors that his name was already slipped at Toy Fair. And we would extrapolate that logic further and educationally guess that Emperor Palpatine wouldn't be that much further behind. And since we're talking about ROTJ for the moment, we feel that the protagonist Luke Skywalker (Jedi Knight) would be a very safe bet too.

Boba Fett will need some company. So whether Hasbro attempts to bring bounty hunters, Jabba's Palace aliens or Cantina aliens into the line, you can bet that we'll see a few eventually. We think anything from Episode V will be a big focus for Hasbro in the future.

We also suspect that Hasbro won't allow that R2-D2 sculpt to collect any dust. Whether they retool R2 to make R3 and R5 units (or anything else), you can expect to see a few astromech droids before we get too far in the line. Hasbro seems to love R4-P17 lately, so she might be a logical choice as well as R5-D4 and really any other astromech droid from the Original Trilogy.

The Prequel Trilogy releases (in our estimation) will be much fewer and further between the OT characters. But it goes without saying that the Episode II and Episode III clones are inevitable. And we also expect to see a few Jedi sooner than later.

So what do you think? What will it take for your to become fully engaged with this line? Is the 6" Black Series just compleetely not for you? Let us know your thoughts! And let us know what you want to see in this new line!

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