Really Digging Mr. Stevie’s Annual TVC Story Concept

I need to preface a few things before digging into the meat of this article. The first is that I am currently in Denver for a work conference. Terrell Davis gave the keynote speech, but I skipped it out of solidarity with the Patriots. Take THAT you Hall of Fame Super Bowl MVP who rushed for over 2,000 yard in 1998. You'll never get over this snubbing. My point of mentioning this is that I am absent of my usual tools for composing content, so for this week, the articles will have to be more text based and less image intensive. I will need to relying on the stock images already in our library. I apologize for this as I know walls of text can be off putting.

The second, and more serious preface is that the following is my conjecture based on the Bossk's Bounty Q&A with Mr. Stevie. Do not take anything that follows as gospel. I may have misconstrued something. I am only going to discuss my understanding of the current vision for the Vintage Collection. If I am correct, I think it's a positive step for the world building scale given the economic limitations placed upon it. I need to stress "economic". The budgetary constraints are not arbitrary. They are financial. In order for TVC to get a bigger budget, it needs to be more profitable. Nothing else will change that. Focusing too much on the limited budget isn't productive. Neither we, nor the brand team can change that (aside from pushing for highly sellable figures). Instead, we should focus on what can be done with those finite resources.

I've mentioned on more than a few livestreams that I find the scattershot approach to main line frustrating. "Word building" basically translates to setting up scenes in an adult collection. It also demands a reasonable amount of completeness for those scenes. Figures need their critical counterparts whether they be adversaries (Episode III Anakin and Obi-Wan) or teammates (Hunter and the rest of the Bad Batch) . Only getting one side of the equation is not satisfying, nor is completing a scene at a glacial pace. That latter is because if too many advancements are made during that time period, the figures that are meant to be displayed together can appear visually incongruous.

My understanding from that Q&A is that Hasbro will be telling an annual "story" with the Vintage Collection line (or perhaps stories). In other words there will be a theme among some of the figures in the line for a given year. Note that this does not mean that all of the figures will fall into that annual theme. The perfect example is that in 2025 where the story is "Return to Tatooine", but we are still getting Baylan and Shin which fall outside of that concept (and there are others). So this isn't an "all or nothing" thing. Don't worry if the theme falls outside of your collecting bailiwick (more on this later). There will be other products for you. As I understand this, it's just to give us one tight grouping within the overall figure slate for the year.

If I'm correct, I love this. This is how I want to collect. I would much rather have a lot of one scene than one or two figures from several different scenes. To me, that latter all too often represents a waste of tooling dollars (i.e. the lone Knight of Ren). But there is risk in this. The themes can't be too niche or narrow, otherwise you run the risk of too many collectors bypassing a large chunk of the collection in that given year. So, as much as I would love it, I don't expect a "Step into the Outlander Club" theme. The stories need to be somewhat broad, such as "Return to Tatooine" which so far includes a more niche character (Hammerhead) as well as figures with widespread appeal (the other 3 ANH heroes).

I really hope this is the intent, and I suggest "Trouble Brewing at the Jedi Temple" for 2026 (though that will probably be a year for The Mandalorian & Grogu). What are other themes that would work and have widespread appeal to the community at large? Let us know below.

Finally, in case you thought I was joking about Terrell Davis:

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