Is The Vintage Collection In Its Death Rattle?

Mr. Nomadscout has been knocking out the daily content recently, and for that, I am eternally grateful. I desperately needed the break. But the flip side is that my penny pencil has been sitting idle. Itching. Waiting for its opportunity to vomit words upon the virtual page. Unfortunately for you, dear reader, that means a wall of text awaits. If you just want to skip this today, I don't blame you. Nomad will be back on Monday with another dopamine drip via a Vintage Collection review. If you're still with me, let's walk down this very, very long word salad path.

If you watched the finale of the Last Figure Standing, you've probably noticed that I was at a low point. I’m pretty depressed at the state of the vintage collection right now. You may have also gleaned this from my comments yesterday on Mr. Nomadscout's Mandalorian (Imperial Base) review where I noted how TVC has been getting eaten away at the margins for a while now. It’s a pattern that we’ve seen in the past and it often leads to what would best be described as the apocalypse.

I should say now, that I really don’t hold Hasbro accountable for the state we’re in. The economics of 3.75" simply do not make sense anymore as Hasbro has publicly stated that it essentially costs the same to make a TVC figure as it does a TBS figure. In that light, if you were the business owner, would you do anything different? If one customer was offering to pay you $25 for an item, and another customer was offering to pay you $17 for the same item, which would you choose? If you're being honest, you would choose the former. That’s all that Big H has been doing.

I can't fault them for this at all. The only earthly motivation for making adult collectibles is profit. This isn't insulin or some other life-saving drug. It's not basic sustenance. Despite how we carry on at times, no one is going to die if we're deprived of super articulated 3.75" Star Wars figures. It's the ultimate frivolity. As non-essential as non-essential gets. If you complain about "corporate greed" in this instance, you're just replacing corporate greed with personal greed. You want a company to take less profit so you can more affordably feather your personal collecting nest. Gross. If Hasbro is to take less profit, I don't want it to be for the benefit of adult man-children. I want it to be for sick kids in the hospital or some other act of benevolence, which incidentally, they're already doing.

Again, I need to repeat, the economics of 3.75" no longer make sense. The dirty secret in our hobby is that our toys were largely being assembled by unpaid labor for years. Those $8 TLC figures were at the cost of someone else's misery. Labor conditions have gotten better, and no decent human can be against that. Chinese labor is no longer inexpensive, and that's a good thing. People shouldn't suffer so we can accumulate things on the cheap. Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted the cost of Chinese labor:


Labor is now the most significant cost, and the material cost is secondary. It costs the same to assemble a 1:12 figures as it does a 1:18 one, but Hasbro can charge much more for the former. If you want one answer for the state we're in, that's it. There is no need to dig any deeper. It's why TVC has to suffer reduced paint applications, as highlighted in THIS EXCELLENT ARTICLE by John Miko. It's why we have to suffer frustrating inaccuracies like the boots on the Aldani Cassian or the upper arms on Peredia Ahsoka.

The only thing I will hold Hasbro accountable for in this instance, is the utterly uninspired repack and repaint selections for this year‘s Vintage Collection. But I don’t know that I can hold Hasbro singularly accountable for this since the licensor, who by all indications wields a heavy hand, is probably a big factor. Hasbro probably does not have free rein to repack whichever figures they want. The distribution of the blame pie, however, really does not matter in this case. Whether the fault lie with Hasbro or LFL doesn't impact that fact that the morale of the 3.75 community is at its lowest that I’ve seen in a long time. Something has to give. We're getting less and less quality in each release, and it's apparent.

Regressing quality is a formula for disaster. My grandparents lived through the Great Depression. It permanently informed their world view. In absolutely no way am I drawing a straight line between that real world misery and this hobby. I only mean to highlight that the down times tend to have the most impact on us. In the context of this hobby, late 2015 - 2017 were definitely the down times, and have similarly informed my collecting world view. As such, I am keenly aware of the conditions that existed in the ramp up to that disastrous era, and regressing quality is one that stands out. There is no better example than this:


The figure on the left is 2011's ARC Trooper Commander, and the figure on the right is 2015's Captain Rex. They are essentially the same base character, but in every objective measure, the predecessor is the superior figure. It's not supposed to work like that. Figures are supposed to get better with time, not worse. When they do, it sinks morale. That's where I see this hobby now. I fully believe that TVC peaked in 2022.

Again, something has to give. TVC can't continue along this path of boring repacks/retools, lessening quality, and inaccurate reuse of tooling on main characters. The obvious answer is that the MSRP needs to go up. It would incentivise Hasbro to make more TVC and retailers to buy more TVC. If you want to know why TBS is pegwarmer-proof, it's simply because there is more margin. It mitigates the risk of having to send an item to clearance. With TVC, if there is any margin (and I'm not convinced of that), it's razor thin. Things simply cannot afford to not sell.

The problem is that a one dollar increase is almost pointless. TVC doesn't draw meaningfully closer to TBS, and the fans would get annoyed at the price hike. If a price hike is going to draw the ire of fans, it needs to be impactful in terms of improving the state of TVC. A token increase does not help anyone. But increasing the MSRP to the point that TVC becomes good business for all involved, like TBS, could potentially alienate too many TVC collectors. I don't have an answer. I just know that we can't continue along this path. Someone smarter than me will have to solve this conundrum if it can be solved. I'm not convinced that it can be. It might be time for this light to go out of the universe.

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