General News

It’s a question that has occupied the Star Wars fandom ever since The Force Awakens was released, and even more so after The Last Jedi: how much do people, and here we include all people, i.e. not just the hardcore action figure buying demographic, like the new Disney Star Wars movies? Some believe almost everyone surely hates the movies. Others claim that only a vocal minority dislike them whereas most regular people like the movies.

Well, let’s try to settle this debate once and for all! Rasmussen Reports conducted a representative survey in the US among adults in March 2023 and asked them the hard question: do you like the Disney Star Wars movies better, about the same or less than the original movies made by George Lucas?

On top of that I will also try to once and for all settle the question about how many male vs female Star Wars fans there are. And I will also use another survey to shed some more light on which age groups in the US are the most avid Star Wars fans. Younger people? Older people? How many Gen Z kids like Star Wars vs people who watched the original movies almost 50 years ago?

The results may surprise you!

Click through to find out how popular the Disney Star Wars movies really are and how different age groups and genders view Star Wars!

Do people like Rey? Do women like Rey?

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You probably never really pay attention to it anymore, but before each and every Star Wars Disney+ series we get this short Lucasfilm Star Wars helmet montage. The entire sequence is very dark, helmets all flash by very rapidly and as mentioned, chances are high you barely pay attention to it anymore.

Now each and every series does have its own slightly different version of this helmet montage, i.e. the sequence of the helmets and even the helmets included in the sequence slightly differ between series like The Book of Boba  Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, The Bad Batch or The Mandalorian.

Until now The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor and The Mandalorian had one thing in common: the inclusion of BB-8 and Kylo Ren featured in the short intro sequence (The Bad Batch only has helmets from the Clone Wars era). Not anymore though. Click through for more!

Vader from the Lucasfilm Star Wars intro

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Merry Christmas to all our readers around the world! We hope your day is fun-filled and packed with at least one Star Wars goodie! 

As 2022 draws to a close it’s probably the perfect time to look back at 2022. What was your favourite new Star Wars action figure you bought in 2022? To make things a bit easier and to open it up a bit more the figure doesn’t necessarily be from 2022, so if you anyone bought a mint carded vinyl cape Kenner Jawa in 2022 and is extremely happy with it, post that. Also, feel free to include any manufacturer or scale, Hot Toys, Funko, SH.Figuarts and of course Hasbro TBS & TVC. And if a playset is your favourite Star Wars toy of the year, you can include that as well. And since this is not an actual award feel free to also post your most favourite non Star Wars action figure you may have acquired in 2022.

Boba Fett Throne Room version – one of the Black Series figures released in 2022

It’s yet another weekend! Time for some entertainment! Today I want to feature an older YouTube video titled “Obi-Wan Has PTSD”. It’s one of the more popular fanmade Star Wars videos on YouTube with about 15 million views. So chances are some of you may have already seen it. It’s also not particularly new, it was released six years ago.
But if you don’t know it and think it may be yet another funny meme video you will be surprised, it’s anything but a funny meme video.

The reason why I feature it today is that I think it’s a perfect companion piece to the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+, where Obi-Wan’s PTSD was also a focus early on. However, I feel the fanmade edit does a better  – more subtle – job at explaining why Obi-Wan would suffer from PTSD and how deeply it affects him. And it’s all achieved by editing and splicing existing footage from the movies, combined with some new music. So if you have five minutes to spare check out the video after the jump!

Obi-Wan has PTSD

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JTA wishes everyone a safe and enjoyable Fourth of July! Celebrating America the Beautiful!

With the release of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+ a new debate about canon has come to the forefront. Some fans feel Obi-Wan Kenobi violates and breaks canon too much, a young Leia meets Obi-Wan Kenobi while in A New Hope she acts as if she merely knows him as some Clone Wars general who served for Bail Organa. Darth Vader meets Obi-Wan in the flesh even though the dialogue in A New Hope heavily implies that the last time they met was on Mustafar. Other fans however just enjoy the ride and don’t bother too much with those details. So today I want to talk about canon, its importance, its limitations and whether or not canon should be the most important thing in a franchise. Click through for the discussion.

“We finally meet again….”

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It looks like we are getting a weekly product launch similar to Mando Mondays with the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series. The first launch kicks off on May 25th. Click here for complete details on the official site, and check the official Obi-Wan Wednesdays site each week starting on the 25th for new product announcements.

Each Wednesday, fans can head to ObiWanWednesdays.com at 10 a.m. PDT / 1 p.m. EDT for the latest drop of new products, with select offerings available for pre-order on Thursdays at 10 a.m. PDT / 1 p.m. EDT.

Happy Star Wars Day from your friends at Jedi Temple Archives! There’s going to be plenty of news and product deals today, including a Hasbro live stream and lots of Attack of the Clones reveals from Hot Toys. Stay with us and scroll down to catch all the fun!

Adam Savage’s (former Mythbuster) Tested YouTube channel received their Razor Crest a while ago. A thorough unboxing video was released the day they got their hands on it, now you can see how Adam Savage and his co-host Norm custom paint the Razor Crest and give it a much needed weathering and more metallic luster. It’s a 40 minute video, so maybe take your time to watch it, but for customizers it may be interesting to see how a pro approaches custom painting the Razor Crest. And this is most likely not the last Razor Crest video on Tested since co-host Norm already said that he will definitely add LEDs to the ship, so stay tuned for more to come! But for now you can see how Adam and Norm paint the Razor Crest to make it look even better! Click on the screenshot below to watch the video! Will you customize your Razor Crest or will you keep it like it is?

Click to watch the video

It looks like visiting Toy Fair during blizzards might be a thing of the past. The Toy Book is reporting that starting next year, we will get “a reimagined Toy Fair New York at the Javits Center in fall 2023”. Click through for the full report.

Toy Fair was set to kick off on February 19th, with more than 700 vendors still set to attend. As of yesterday, the event is officially cancelled. 

The Toy Association, producer of Toy Fair New York, the largest toy, play, and youth entertainment marketplace in the Western Hemisphere, has announced the cancellation of Toy Fair New York, originally set to take place, February 19 to 22, 2022 at the Javits Center in New York City.

Happy New Year to all our readers, contributors, staff, and followers! 2022 is sure to bring lots of new Star Wars content with Kenobi, Andor, The Mandalorian, and the rest of The Book of Boba Fett! 

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.

We hope you and yours have a very Merry Christmas! There’s room for everyone on the Nice List!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers, fans, and sponsors! We are thankful for each of you for taking the time to visit us daily and be a part of our community, and supporting us over the years! Everyone have a great Holiday weekend!

Let’s all have some fun! Yes, maybe the HasLab livestream today did not get the reaction Hasbro would have hoped for. Yes, maybe quite a few collectors are either angry, sad or disappointed now. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some good old fun! So let’s all watch the HasLab Rancor backer counter fall below 5,000 tonight and let’s make bets if it will fall below 5,000 to begin with and when it may do so! At the pace the counter is falling it could be mere minutes! So place your bets! The winner gets 10 plush porgs, 200 Rose Tico 5 POA action figures and 50 banana visor X-Wing pilots from The Force Awakens 5 POA toyline!
Join in the fun in the comments section and let’s have a party!

UPDATE: Friday’s livestream may go down in history as one of the most disastrous Hasbro events ever. The Rancor HasLab has lost almost 320 backers since then and there is no end in sight.

Still counting down…

Hasbro completely ignores Star Wars Visions, the anthology series showcasing different takes on the Star Wars universe by Japanese anime studios. Whether you liked the shorts or not, you certainly won’t deny the fact that various character designs or even smaller things like the different lightsabers that more resemble traditional katana are visually striking and would make for excellent (action) figures. But this is a world where Marvel’s “What If” animated series can get a dedicated figure line in Marvel Legends (by the very same company that also has the Star Wars license), but Star Wars Visions gets nothing and things like The Bad Batch and even The Mandalorian get the bare minimum. Japanese toy company Banpresto is now the first to offer at least something for fans of the Visions aesthetics. You can buy three vinyl statues, the main characters from the short “The Twins” and Ronin from the episode of the same title. Why is the support of new Star Wars entertainment by Hasbro so lackluster and seriously lacking in almost any respect? Check out the Visions statues after the jump and let’s also discuss the appaling lack of support for new Star Wars series and movies by Hasbro.

Ronin vinyl statue from Banpresto

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Holy smokes! Check out the AWESOME VINTAGE KENNER 2022 CALENDAR on Amazon. It looks like someone who designed this got inspiration from our Vintage Kenner Research Droids Reviews! Aside from an awful Disney logo, the calendar set is gorgeous. Check it out. I just ordered mine. Special thanks to friend Alientek for the alert!

Head over to check out this week’s Bring Home The Bounty products, featuring a bunch of Hasbro stuff that you can’t actually order anymore. You just can’t make this stuff up! 

Many of you will know GTP Toys, the maker of Space Walls, which is one of the most popular modular diorama sets used by toy photographers. When GTP Toys acquired the official Star Wars license many thought that GTP Toys had finally hit it big. With an official license GTP Toys could finally make official Star Wars diorama sets. And GTP toys did reveal the Tantive IV hallway with LEDs lighting up the wall panels. But then Covid caused several factory closures resulting in serious delays and on top of that extremely disappointing sales for the Tantive IV set put an end to all of it. GTP Toys no longer has the Star Wars license (the contract with Disney ended on September 30th). The owner has posted a long newsletter that explains the situation. And it reveals a few interesting facts about how it is to work for Disney as a Star Wars licensor. One might call it a cautionary tale. Click through for the full story!

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Funko and Macy’s unveil a new Grogu-themed Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade float. Yahoo! has the full story!

Jedi Temple Archives would like to take a moment and remember the 2,977 innocent people that died and the 25,000 injured on the 20th Anniversary of this evil terror attack. Our lives are forever changed by this event, and we wish peace and love to the families directly affected by this.

JTA reader Jon M. found some impressive-looking Star Wars masks at his local Walmart. As we approach Halloween season again, it’s interesting to see the focus once again on George Lucas-era characters. Star Wars masks are often second-rate, especially at a Walmart price point ($31.88), but look at the details here, especially the Tusken Raider. These are pretty impressive. Click each thumbnail image below for a closer look!

It’s extremely rare when we post non-Star Wars news, but a momentous announcement like this forces me to break format. I remember in 2008 how excited I was for the new The B-52s album that came 16 years after their last studio record. But how about waiting four decades for an announcement like this one? The “Supergroup of the 70s,” ABBA, have just released two brand new songs today (I Still Have Faith In You and Don’t Shut Me Down), announced a new full studio album entitled Voyage for a November 5th release, a new Christmas song release, and an avatar “tour” which features the band live in a modern way thanks to ILM! Let me say, every previous music industry announcement pales in comparison to this news. ABBA is being praised for “saving” 2021, and I can’t agree more that this is the joy many of us need about now. Listen to the songs. Go ahead, “lower” your standards. They’ve barely changed at all. NPR has the full story.

If you couldn’t roll your eyes more vigorously about the ridiculousness of Disney Star Wars, this might give you convulsions. Slave I is no more. It is now called the Firespray (which is really the MODEL of the vehicle and not its real name.) While this isn’t a universal transition, it’s expected to become commonplace in the Star Wars universe. Who else can’t wait to see what’s next on the erasing of Star Wars’ history?! Screenrant has the full story.