Hasbro's Questions & Answers #53

     Don't forget, you can submit questions in our forums and we'll try to get as many as possible submitted to Hasbro. We can send only three questions per week, so make sure they are good ones! Now, on to this weeks Questions and Answers directly from Hasbro.

Q. Now that Cade Skywalker is going to have two basic figure releases is there any chance to see Ben Skywalker or any of the Solo children as basic figures?

A. Cade Skywalker is only going to have one figure - in the comic pack with Darth Talon.  There is no other Cade figure planned.  As for the other Solo children or Ben Skywalker, they are a long shot since there is no comic reference.  However, they are candidates for the (precious) slots in future EU-themed basic figure waves.  We would say that long-term, they stand a good chance of getting in somewhere; short term, the odds are not as good due to the few EU-themed basic figures in the 2009 line.

Q. The response to the electronic features on the AT-TE at Toy Fair seem to have been very positive.  I also noticed that there were a good number of buttons for electronic features on the recently leaked images of the pending Millenium Falcon (very nice, I must say).  Are we trending back somewhat toward electronic features?  Has the technology improved enough to make electronic features more viable?  Does the improved state of  LED lights and sound chips make onboard electronics more feasible?  Also, is this something that would probably be limited to larger vehicles?  And could we eventually see some like say....a Target exclusive Gold 5 Y-Wing that says "STAY ON TARGET" at some point in the not-too-distant future?

A. In general you will not see them added, say, to our $20-$40 vehicles because the "fixed" cost of electronics is a much higher percentage of the total offering and in most cases would necessitate a price increase above the retail price we feel the vehicles need to be at in order to be successful. We look to add electronics to make sure that our offering is as complete as possible for higher-end vehicles, where the cost of the electronics is a smaller percentage of the total vehicle.

Q. Why did Hasbro decide to make their Clone Wars figure line incompatible with the rest of the 3.75" figure line? When it comes to play-patterns and the ability for Hasbro to reuse body-parts/components from previously released figures, this move seems like a huge gamble. Has Hasbro thought of the possibility that many collectors will pass on the figures in this line (like they did for the previous cartoon Clone Wars-inspired line) because they do not conform with the other line that has been running since 1995?

A. We did not decide to make that decision ourselves - it was a collaborative decision reached with Lucasfilm in order to best match the on-screen entertainment to the toy line.  For the vast majority of kids who will be enjoying the new entertainment, this will be the relevant figure line.  Since the kids will vastly outnumber the collectors this Fall, especially for Clone Wars, this is a decision we felt was the easy one to make.  However, as discussed previously, collectors did contribute to our thinking.

Check back in a few weeks and we'll post the next round of Questions (and answers) as soon as Hasbro offers them.