Bantha Skull Turns 10!

Posted by Bret on 03/20/18 at 07:05 AM Category: Site News

Bantha Skull traces its DNA back to the forums of other collecting sites, where several of us had first "met" online. Besides the obvious Star Wars connection, we found we had other interests in common, and shared similar senses of humor. It seemed that most times when we got into any conversation about some action figure, it would quickly evolve (or devolve, depending on your point of view) into something else entirely, like sports or movies or Family Guy. We enjoyed the banter as much as we enjoyed talking about Star Wars. Obviously, this wasn't necessarily appropriate in a forum that needed to keep the conversations narrowly focused to maintain the discipline that kept most normal people engaged in the topic at hand.

We had formed a club within a club, of sorts. At some point, it seemed we were struggling to conform to the local decorum. One day in early 2008, Darth Dre, fueled by uncontrollable rage (or maybe it was just some beer) decided to start something different, and went off and launched a standalone forum called the Fighting 365th, in honor of our weird club. Dre's forum drew many of us to it because it offered more freedom of expression than we were used to having. Once we joined, some of us cranked it up a notch by organizing the free-wheeling forum to give it some cohesion. While almost complete freedom of expression was encouraged, we still craved some of that structure that existed in the forums in which we had first met. Chris suggested to Dre that we were having so much fun, we should actually go all out and start our own Star Wars website. Having an active news blog would give us the focus we needed to keep things together, while the forums would be a welcome hangout to chill out and discuss whatever nonsense struck us at the moment.

On March 20th, 2008, Chris registered Banthaskull.com as a domain, and thus, we were born. Originally, four of us ran the site together as co-owners. Over time the group evolved, with the 4 members coming and going, but always moving forward in some configuration. Today, Dre still lurks in the background, occasionally chiming in on front page news in Disqus, but more often can be found in our forums where he holds court and leads discussions on a range of topics. Sean has since moved on to other things. Chris and Bret are the current co-owners of Bantha Skull. We are grateful for the camaraderie and support of our current contributing staff, which includes Dustin, James, Jimmy, and yes, Dre, as well as some of the members and part-time contributors who have been along for the ride, several of whom were there from day one, or close to it.

Regardless of the hijinks and borderline chaos that used to define our forums, we have worked hard over time to establish a professional and enjoyable reader/user experience on our front page blog. Our content is constantly evolving, as is the site's physical appearance. We have had many recurring features over the years. Some worked well, some not so much. In the end we hope to nurture an open and friendly environment where people can share their experiences, laugh together, and learn about the hobby, because that's what makes it all worthwhile.

This site has never earned a dime, and likely never will. What little we do earn merely contributes to offsetting the operating costs, and comes via the passive ad revenue. This isn't to say we're opposed to earning money or condemn the fansites that do. We'd love to have a fat nest egg to reinvest into the site. We're just terrible at the business side. It's the only time maintaining Bantha Skull feels like "work", so we tend to blow it off (despite a lot of sage advice from our friends).

We do what we do because we love it, and for the access it gives us to Hasbro, makers of the toys that fuel our collecting passion. We deeply care about the collector-focused line and only want it to succeed. We often put aside our own personal passion projects if we think they will harm the line. For example, while Yerka Mig is probably Bantha Skull's most wanted cantina patron, we also realize this character's limited consumer appeal, so we've never really pushed for it...until now. Say, if there was one figure perfect for HasLab...

Anyway, we put together a little trip down memory lane, so here is a timeline of some events that helped shape who we are over the past 10 years. We hope you enjoy, and we sincerely thank you for sharing your spare time with Bantha Skull!

One of our early logos designed by "streams".

3/20/08: Banthaskull.com domain name is registered. It's alive..IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Reported first!

6/5/08: EE Mystery Set. While we didn't actually do anything much to dig up this news, Sean discovered this image in an Entertainment Earth catalog, and we seemed to be the first site to post it. This bit of breaking news pretty much put us on the map. It was an old map of the Babylonian Empire, but it was still a map, and we were on it now.

One of our stranger graphic themes as indicated by this...thing. It was animated, too.

6/13/08: Bantha Skull officially joins the community's Q&A program with Hasbro. Remember when Hasbro did a regular Q&A with fan sites? We requested to take part, and when we got the affirmative response, it legitimized Bantha Skull and made us an official part of the collecting community. Perhaps one day this will return, you know, to "keep the conversation moving."

Hip Hop Randy Bear was real, and I met him.

7/26/08: Our first event report for the Clone Wars (Legacy Collection) toy launch. Bret was on site at the (now sadly closed) Toys R Us flagship store in Times Square, to report first hand on the events of the launch to commemorate The Clone Wars, as well as a bizarre encounter with something called Hip Hop Randy Bear. Craptastically, the images appear to be lost to history. Trust me, Hip Hop Randy Bear was there.

The Gallery and Review feature has been the backbone of the site since the launch of the Legacy Collection.

7/29/08: First ever figure gallery and review, TLC Han Solo BD01. Our first review had all kinds of neat stuff. We opened it up to reviews by our forum members, with "Blue Knight" doing one for this figure. We also tried to do a little comic relief, putting the figures in some kind of silly situation, which we cleverly named "Silliness". We also linked the reviews to our forums for discussion, as prior to us adding the actual Disqus feature with which you are all familiar today. Seriously, you actually had to join our forums in order to talk about the figure. What kind of medieval nonsense is that? It was a pain in the tushie!

It was a fun feature, until it wasn't.

8/1/08: Our site's first unique recurring feature: Bantha Skull Strikes Back. We'd pick a topic, almost exclusively about the action figure line, and whine about how horrible life was because of whatever it was we were whining about. I'm pretty sure this is why we have a decent Wedge figure now.

Click to embiggen.

8/8/08: Stuff happened. People said things. And that's all we have to say about that.

One of several shirt designs from resident artist, streams.

8/14/08: Bantha Skull T-shirts! Long time forum member "streams" designed t-shirts for our forum members. They were a lot of fun. I still have mine. Chris got a grease stain on his.

First!

2/14/09: Bantha Skull Destroys NYTF09. We got our first crack at an actual Hasbro event, when Bantha Skull was invited to the 2009 New York Toy Fair. Somehow, we managed to get images from the showroom floor onto our front page several hours before most other large outlets. It was a team effort, and we felt that the speed at which images and news we reported on Bantha Skull changed the way fan sites reported on these events. We were able to repeat the feat a year later at NYTF2010. After that point, social media took hold, and fan sites were using Facebook and Twitter to rapidly upload images to the public. But before that, we did it with some ingenuity and sweat. We're pretty proud of our efforts, and several other forums were posting and discussing our images before they were found elsewhere. Sure, we refused to acknowledge social media for quite some time, but we were heroes, just for one day. Well, two actually.

Greatest. Figure. Ever.

2/20/09: "Khaan!" Captain Kirk figure is declared greatest figure ever, and the Official Action Figure of Bantha Skull.

Nomadscout fought his co-owners to death for the BAT-AT swag from Hasbro.

7/13/10: AT-AT video featured on io9. When Hasbro's PR firm sent us an advance sample of the BAT-AT, we made a ridiculous video showing off the features. We asked io9 to give it a shout out, and they obliged. Our little video got over 22,000 views, which was the biggest publicity push in Bantha Skull's history...up to that point...

Pagetti Rook. That's his name.

6/15/11: Bantha Skull breaks news via Hasbro's Q&A. Weequay Hunter (skiff guard Pagetti Rook, formerly known as Queequeg) was revealed in an answer to one of Bantha Skull's Q&A submissions. Here's an example where we used sorcery and wordsmithery to subtly coerce Hasbro into revealing a new figure that was as yet unannounced. News spread quickly, and Bantha Skull was king for a day.

Before Odell Beckham broke the internet with his catch against Dallas, Jon Favreau broke Bantha skull's servers with a tweet.

3/2/14: The Favreau Tweet. Chris did this gallery of 6" Slave Leia. In his review, he did a thing. Jon Favreau tweeted about it. This surpassed our BAT-AT video, and resulted in the single biggest day of traffic in our history - by a mile. We peaked in high school. It's been all downhill from there.

TVC came back, and so did we.

4/17/17: Well, not totally downhill. After a period of relative inactivity coinciding with the miserable state of the collecting line as symbolized by the horrific Walmart Black Series Debacle of 2015-2017, the glorious news of the return of The Vintage Collection jolted us out of our collective slumber and back into action. We fired up the power converters, and Chris gave the site a complete overhaul, including a new visual theme to reflect the lovely images of The Vintage Collection. And so here we are today, on the cusp of the release of Wave one of TVC 2018. What a time to be alive!