Q&A With JTA: Our First Column!

1. Could you tell me whether the green crossbow of Chewbacca which came with the early bird kit has a straight/angled bottom part or a curved bottom part. There is confusion about this. Some websites show the angled version (like rebelscum.com or last17-vintage.com), others a curved one (loresdelsith.net), most do not specify. Also from your site it is not clear to me. (Henk)

JTA: From what research we have done and the samples we have come across (and personally own), the green crossbow is only available as the sharply angled version. In fact, the crossbow with the more curved middle section has primarily been found in carded samples where the photo of Chewbacca changed (65C possibly?). This would also imply that they came with later samples of Chewbacca. There are of course exceptions to every rule, but we have never come across a green crossbow with a curved middle section. Here is an image taken personally by me which features both crossbows (black/blue on top and the "green" Early Bird Chewbacca crossbow on the bottom - our lighting unfortunately makes both look blue but see the reduced opacity in the bottom crossbow). Notice that both have angled middle sections and not the smooth curved style.

2. It's been a few years now since Sandstorm Luke and Han. I thought we'd be seeing at the very least Sandstorm Leia and possibly a Sandstorm Lando by now. Thoughts on these two? Lando would be good as it would be almost a refresh of Jabba's Palace Lando (with some sort of cape and goggles) and I'm not sure i've ever seen a full clear picture of what Leia was wearing, but i'm sure she'd rock too. (Matt)

JTA: Hasbro has been guilty for the last few years now saying that a Princess Leia Sandstorm figure will be coming in the "next" product year, only to never come. This has been happening since about 2008 (right after we got Luke and Han). But Hasbro seems more confident than ever that she may make it into the 2011 line. And once she makes the cut, Lando will certainly be next. This was most recently brought up by the fine folks at Galactic Hunter during their Hasbro Q&A session and we discussed it further in our headline report found HERE in our forums. We believe Princess Leia in her sandstorm outfit may just be closer than we realize. As far as what her complete outfit looks like? Well, that is certainly harder to confirm. The picture below is the only reference we can find of her in this outfit from the deleted scene.

3. As of lately I've been purchasing orange carded figures and all the weapons are the same. Is there a problem with the packing of different weapons in the orange packs and if you can tell us which orange pack figure has a certain weapon in that package. (jtrooper)

JTA: Your question is a little bit vague and we'll explain to you why. We know you are talking about Saga Legends, but the Saga Legends "color" for the most part has been orange since 2007's 30 (77-07) line. In the TAC, the figures came with a coin. In the blue 2008-2009 TLC line, the figures came with a locker of all the same extra weapons. These weapons included: DC-15 blaster, DC-15 blaster rifle, DC-17 blaster, droid blaster, blaster rifle and EMP launcher. The same weapon contents were included when The Legacy Collection changed to Legacy Collection and adopted a red line look for the 2009-2010 time period. Collectors and kids got quite a bit more pack-ins for the "Shadow Of The Dark Side" line look. Included in each Saga Legends figure "now" is a "mixed bag" of weapons (not identical for every basic figure), a die, a playing card and an action figure stand. So Hasbro decided to give collectors of the latest Saga Legends figures a little bit more of a variety.

4. I can't wait to add Slave 1 [from The Rise of Boba Fett Ultimate Battle Packs set - our Research Droids Review of it is found HERE] to my collection. I have a question about it. Looking at some of the pics from Comic Con I noticed an opening below the cockpit area, any ideas what this might be for? Future speeder bike perhaps? Just wondered if you had any ideas as you have had your hands on one. Your site is a daily visit for me, keep up all the great work. (Tony)

JTA: Thank you Tony! That space that is there when the front cockpit canopy opens up can house The Saga Collection's Han Solo carbonite block (and we suppose other prisoners if you are so inclined). You can bet that when Hasbro repaints this awesome Slave I to be consistent with its appearance in The Empire Strikes Back that this carbonite block will be included (hopefully fully frozen). See how good Hasbro is to us? Their micro-managed approach on how to design toys in a forward-thinking manner is nothing short of brilliant! We were shocked by how many readers were thoroughly disappointed with this vehicle. Shame on them I say!

5. What ever happened to the new Epic Duels game that Hasbro showed at last years Toy Fair? I can't even find any information about it on the web. I loved the first game and I was wondering if it had been cancelled. Thanks for your time. (Joe)

JTA: We personally spoke with Hasbro on this and they claim that this game was released in 2009 and is available at all the major retailers. We find this particularly peculiar since we cannot find one game on eBay except for the very expensive and out-of-print 2002 version. Whether it was an expansion pack or something else Hasbro was talking about, we are going to need to research this more until we can get to the bottom of this. But Hasbro did tell us that this game should still be available at Walmart, TARGET, Toys R Us and Kmart. If we find out more, we will post an update here.

6. Are there any plans to release E-3PO, from Bespin? I thought we would see him in the build a droid series. I mean we have seen 2 different K-3PO and 3 different R-3PO's. E-3PO had actual dialog in the best of all Star wars movies and definitely needs a figure! (Jason)

JTA: What is it with Hasbro and making figures from Bespin? They love making us wait! You are a man after our own heart Jason, but depending upon a certain point of view, E-3PO has "already" been made available to us. This of course isn't an entirely true statement, but the run of parts that make the Build A Droid figure U-3PO were originally cast in a "pure and shiny" silver color before they were corrected to the color that collectors now refer to as "champagne". Check out our photo gallery of U-3PO in our Research Droids Reviews HERE as we have an eight picture "side by side" comparison of both versions and you'll see that they can technically be considered as two different droids, U-3PO (champagne) and E-3PO (silver). But to accurately answer your question, we sure hope that E-3PO gets its own place in the basic figure line (and getting this droid in The Vintage Collection would make us ecstatic). But just in case Hasbro doesn't come through for us, try to locate those "silver" parts of U-3PO, they allow for a great substitute for the time being. (P.S. Make that three K-3POs now. A new one is coming in the November 2010 TARGET exclusive Battle Packs set.)

7. What ever happened to the Exar Kun/Ulic Qel-Droma comic pack? I never saw this or its entire wave once at retail - but now I see it and some of its wavemates on line retailers (usually sold out) for about $70. What is Hasbro doing with that - they are leaving a lot of money on the table I can tell you that. Why not order another run of these to satisfy the pent up demand and use it to reward either some loyal brick and mortar or even better as an online exclusive like the did with the other recent comic packs? (Robert)

JTA: Hasbro unwittingly (some conspiracy theorists claim intentionally) killed the Comic Packs line when they decided to release 5 [garbage] repacks that were readily available when they first were released in the very first wave in August 2009 (in the new red line look). The repacks rotted on shelves in the worst way possible and it severely delayed the second wave by 7 months. The new and totally awesome new packs didn't reach retail until March 2010. (Half of the packs were shown at 2009's SDCC for goodness sake with an expected ETA of Fall 2009!) Five of those packs shown were put together to create "wave 2" under the Legacy Collection and released in extremely limited supply to first Toys R Us, then TARGET second and then disappeared forever. We never saw them at Walmart and it is our belief no one did (but we don't have any conclusive proof of that). We are sorry to say that if you didn't get them including Ulic Qel-Droma/Exar Kun in March 2010 that they are history now. eBay may be your only bet at this point. And we think that there is less than on-tenth of a percent chance one or two pieces could show up at ROSS or TJMAXX down the road, however this is even unlikely. Hasbro may think that there is not a demand for these EU figures since the line effectively died, so be sure to voice your opinions in columns like this and in forums so Hasbro knows they need to get more of these out to us again. The "sort-of" good news is that Entertainment Earth salvaged the remaining unreleased sets (including at least one never previously shown) and are available for pre-order right now. If you think there are any figures in those exclusive sets that you may want, we recommend securing your order soon as they will be made in extremely limited numbers. And don't forget about the other exclusive sets at HasbroToyShop.com and Star WarsShop.com that were allotted for SDCC and CV. Those sets too are limited releases (per Hasbro) and have sublime packaging we must add.

8. I just tracked down a review you did on the 2 pack TARGET excl. Coleman Trebor/Jango Fett Arena Showdown figures. I am writing because I picked up that pack today only because I noticed that it is that box but Watto is inside instead of Trebor and the molded plastic is definitely the shape of Watto and he's not forced into a Trebor mold. So it is a total mix up at the factory. I then looked online to see that Watto is not included in any of the sets... so my question is: What is a mistake like this worth in the collector's market? But this seems like a pretty interesting mistake & I thought I'd find out through someone like yourself since you wrote the review I found online. (Brian)

JTA: Brian, we hate to tell you this but you have been duped. Thieves are becoming ever more clever in how they steal action figures in this day in age, including replacing plactic trays so that the wrong figure looks like it fits. We recommend bringing instances like this to the store manager as soon as you see them so that retail can be on the lookout for this type of scamming. Coleman Trebor was probably the most popular figure in the entire first series of The TARGET exclusive Geonosis Arena Showdown sets so logic dictates that this would be the "hot" figure for unscrupulous collectors thieves to steal. Replacing figures (stealing) seems like it hasn't slowed down at all and we find this very disheartening.

9. Is the new Walmart Jabba [Jabba's Throne] exclusive really as limited as it seems, only one out of the five Walmart's in my area even have tags on the shelf for it, and after I talked to a manager of the one with the tag he told me they have only received 1 case which is 2 pieces over the past 5 weeks. Do you know if this will be more readily available towards the Christmas season? (Eric)

JTA: The Jabba's Throne "playset" is limited in the sense that not all Walmart locations have it on their plan-o-grams, especially the smaller stores, unlike last year's exclusives that could pretty much be found anywhere. In our particular area (Philadelphia, PA) we have five Walmarts in a 15 mile radius and only 2 had shelf tags for the Jabba's Throne set. (Aside: They spell it incorrectly as "Jabba's Thrown" on the tag, check it out if you can, but we digress.) As far as how many units will get out? That is a horse of a different color. Recall back to August 2009 when Walmart's Droid Factory in the Legacy Collection packaging was released. It came, immediately disappeared for about 4 weeks, then clogged shelves where everyone had ample opporunity to buy them if they felt like forking over the ridiculous $17 each for them. Hasbro has factory minimums for the product they produce. While things can certainly have limited runs, Hasbro does not plan, design and manufacture their toys just for a few hundred units to get out. We bet you'll see Jabba again and in better numbers. It is currently out of stock at Walmart.com, but keep your eyes peeled in case it comes back into the warehouse. You can take advantage of Site to Store which will save you shipping costs. And if it doesn't become readily available due to distribution errors, well, you already know how that goes. Hasbro will seek other means to "dispose" of unsold product. Check those outlet places.... (Hasbro also has Jabba's Throne listed on their CV presentation as an October 2010 exclusive - maybe more will be coming then but we surmise much sooner.)

10. I have shifted my primary collecting focus to Darth Vader and Boba Fett. That said, I wonder if you can direct me to a means to get the Gentle Giant 12" [Jumbo Vintage] Boba Fett? All I have seen are eBay auctions which are ridiculously priced, and of course GG's site says "currently unavailable" [and you have to be a PGM to be eligble to order half their stuff anyhow]. Do you have any ideas or a way to hook me up? When's the Vader coming? (Tray)

JTA: Don't fret over Boba Fett's current SOLD OUT status. Both the Stormtrooper and Boba Fett (on The Empire Strikes Back cards) are convention exclusives. From what we understand, Gentle Giant, Ltd. is releasing these into the mainstream on "Star Wars" cards and in higher numbers so there will be ample opportunity to pick these up. GG hasn't announced even a rough release schedule on the rest of the figures yet, but you can rest assured that when Darth Vader and the other figures get announced that we will post it on our front page. We adore these figures!

So there you have it, our very first Q&A With JTA! Once again, please send in your questions so that we can do this again sooner than later. Thank you for your interest in our site and our columns. We are truly humbled!