A Collector In Search Of A Crusade

There's a concept with professional sports teams: every day you're not improving your roster, you're team is getting worse. It's true. Trust me. The Celtics won the NBA championship last year. This year, they brought back the same exact roster without improving it. Now they stink. [Editor's Note: Sigh.] If I were to abstract that concept to life in general, one of the take aways would be to always keep striving. To never rest on your laurels. With respect to our hobby, that may come across as being ungrateful. But that's not it. It's just that every day the line isn't getting better, it's getting worse. (Hence me getting my back up against the drop in quality we've seen recently.)

Truthfully, there's a lot I have to be thankful for personally. Since TVC returned in 2018, I've been pushing for several figures in one way or another. I even threatened to quit the hobby if Hasbro didn't announce a TVC Emperor Palpatine HERE (note that every figure from that article has been made). Nearly two years after my deadline, Hasbro withered under the pressure. Take THAT! Over the course of the next four years, every other figure for which I've forcefully advocated has been made. I'm not trying to suggest that I influenced those decisions. As is usually the case, it's due to Hasbro being in touch with community demands, and tackling them when they can. I only mean to point out that those figures are now crossed off the list.

The net result of this is that I now find myself as a man without a crusade. One thing to point out here is that, in my world view, crusade-worthy figures are different from passion projects. Passion projects for long-term collectors such as myself, tend to be deeper cut characters. Tertiary characters don't always have a lot of market viability. In fact, in the current environment, they often don't sell well. If I am to put on my battle vestments and march on Pawtucket, I need to believe in my heart of hearts that it's for something that I think will do good business for Hasbro. And while I said it wouldn't be a "passion project", it does need to be something for which I feel passionate. I'm not good at faking it. It's also needs to be a figure that I think needs a nudge. By that, I mean it's one that the brand team knows the community wants, but it faces corporate headwinds for one reason or another. That leads me to me to the following basic criteria to qualify as my crusade:

It needs to be a main character, army builder, or wildly popular secondary character from non-Disney media.

I don't think Disney-era characters that meet this criteria need the aforementioned nudge. In fact, the skids are often too easily greased for those figures and have resulted in peg warmers. After the Episode IV Luke and Snowtrooper, I was planning to move on to Episode IV Han Solo, but Hasbro beat me to that punch having pipelined that figure during the launch of the Cantina HasLab. So this leaves me without a crusade. Here are the figures I view as candidates to take up that mantle:

• Episode IV C-3PO: This figure is desperately needed. I would seriously buy this figure as heavily as I would an army builder. I need it in so many of my scene set-ups. To that point, it's like getting socks for Christmas. It's something I need, and need badly, but it's not exciting like a new Nintendo.


• Bespin Luke Skywalker: The figure from 2010 simply does not hold up anymore. We need a much better figure as a companion piece to the new Episode V/VI Vader we got in 2023. I just don't know that I want this to become an exercise in the "next Luke up".


• Episode V Boba Fett: It's great that we finally got a definitive Episode VI Boba Fett, but it could be argued that that Episode V Fett is more prominent. Fans assumed that the Ep 5 Fett would be hot on the heels of VC186, but four years later, it's been nothing but crickets. To that point, it's been so long that a minor retool wouldn't suffice. We'd need the new barbell hips at a minimum. But...see the comment about my crusades becoming "the next Luke up" and apply it to Fett.


• Episode I Darth Maul: This...this one feels right. I never liked the 2012 version. It was lacking even then. I think this checks all the boxes, and I don't have any "yeah, but's" for it. More thinking I will do, but I'm liking this.

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