Welcome to our next Q and A of the Day post! This column will be published daily, weekly, monthly, or just based on how many questions I get emailed – but no more than one a day. Feel free to send in your questions and I will put them in the queue. Click through for Q and A of the Day: Day 13. (With visual stimulation today!)
Q: Paul - Everyone remembers the frustration over Hasbro's warning label shenanigans during The Vintage Collection basic figure run! More precisely, how they printed the warning indication right over the lightsaber of the classic hero Luke & Leia icon pose image and even a fragment of the corner went over the "R" in "Wars"? Remember Hasbro's answer to the issue was that the warning label has to be an exact size for legal reasons? I was looking at my new Disney Build-A-Droid astromech packaging and the warning label is much smaller than TVC warning. Maybe Disney's requirements are not the same? Maybe U.S. retail is more demanding in child safety? What are your thoughts? Thanks. (Scott K. (Warsaw))
A: You'll find that discussions with Hasbro will yield very different answers depending upon who you talk to. On one occasion at a recent Toy Fair in NYC, I spoke to two (2) different Hasbro reps about 10 minutes apart from each other where I asked when the 2013 "Yoda" basic figure lines were coming. The first person told me that reatil was days from receiving them. (By the way, I CLARIFIED the words "basic figures" because the Class I sets had already arrived.) Then the second Hasbro rep told me that no basic figures were going to be released in the "Yoda" packaging. That was the SAME day. Sometimes I think Hasbro thinks of a quick answer off the top of their heads so they appear to be "in the know".
Their reasons for the warning label definitely seems like a similar situation. But keep in mind there are a few factors that we don't have answers to. Does the basic figure line at retail fall under the same saftey guidelines as a theme park exclusive Droid Factory figure? I don't know. Does the reduced size of the Droid Factory crd back mean that a smaller warning label can be applied? I don't know. So you see, there are some things we just probably will never know. You have already pointed out these points and I think that is a big part of it. It might be comparing apples to oranges here. We should check TVC against TBS for a more accurate comparison perhaps.
I personally feel that the warning labels could have been applied with slightly more grace than how they were. TVC is all about the packaging and it seems that they could have done something a little bit more differently to make them a little more aesthetically pleasing to a collector's eye.
