Posted by Chuck | February 22, 2010 at 07:58 PM ET
The first post-Toy Fair Hasbro Q&A is here, albeit with pre-Toy Fair questions... Click through for the latest answers to JTA's questions!
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.
You can also check out our Q&A Round-up, as well as our exclusive Headline Report over in our forums!
Q. We have all seen the first four vintage figures and it makes a question a few things. First, since we already received a Luke Skywalker (Bespin Fatigues) in the 2007 VTSC line, we were wondering if you were going to release the new figure on the second card back from the vintage line (the light blue background that shows a bigger picture of Mark Hammill’s face. We also wanted to know if this will be true for the others as well that may see a second release in the modern vintage line (for those that have multiple vintage card backs of course). It would really change things up a bit for carded collectors – and we imagine a whole new group of people will become carded collectors again – we love vintage!). Also, since the vintage Ewoks were always packed one per card, how will you handle this in the new vintage line since it is your approach to include two Ewoks on a cardback now? Will the new vintage Ewoks also be one per card or are you not releasing them into the line?
A. By now, you have seen the answer to the first question. In hindsight, it
would have made sense to update the card back to make a unique collectible
version that would have been a nod to the past Kenner line. Instead, we
decided to use the original card back. If we could go back, we would
change it but we are too late for that now. When we do have some figures
re-released (such as Vader), we are planning to change up the movie logo
so there is some freshness and reasons for fans of the Vintage cards to
pick up the variant. As for Ewoks, going forward we will be doing Ewok
single packs (not doubles) although we are looking to include more
accessories with them to plus them up.
Q. The recent announcement of the AT-AT Commander figure at the UK Toy Fair and the Vintage Collection as a whole seems to indicate that completing the modern resculpts of the Kenner vintage line is a very real consideration for Hasbro's Star Wars team. Case in point, we also recently saw one of the remaining ewoks made in the form of Warok in the BATTLE ON ENDOR battle pack.
So at this time which characters from the Kenner vintage line does the Hasbro Star Wars team consider undone? Which of these character are a high priority to get done? And considering how few of these characters are left, would you care to speculate on how long it may be before all of the Kenner vintage figures are reproduced in modern form? We put together a special report right here talking about the figures that remain to be made. Can you comment on our own list of "yet to be made" figures?
A. We do not have a specific time frame to complete updated sculpts of all of
the (actual) vintage Kenner figures. Systematically, we plan on getting
to them but some like the Imperial Dignitary (Sate Pestage) keep getting
pushed out indefinitely in favor of other more interesting characters.
The time will come, however, probably within the next 3-4 years where we
will deliberately want to wrap up all of the vintage resculpts to put some
finality to it. However, that, in our opinion, is only one of the "update"
milestones that should be looked at. Another equally valid update would
be the issue of a modern-standard sculpt on a Vintage basic figure card.
That is a much more ambitious plan, and since we will have released 30 or
so high-quality figures of the original Kenner run on Vintage re-issue
cards by the end of the year, with some more planned for 2011, it does beg
the question of whether long-term there is a possibility of re-issuing
vintage versions of the Kenner run. A lot of that depends on exactly how
long the modern vintage line will run, and balancing core characters with
obscure ones, and OTC vs. Prequel Trilogy, but if Vintage does have a long
life this will be a fun checklist to try and complete. It's fun to
speculate on what could happen...but whatever happens, we're glad you are
here to tell us what you'd like to see.
Check back in a few weeks and we'll post the next round of Questions (and answers) as soon as Hasbro offers them.
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