Are We Heading For A Long Winter With No Vintage Collection?

Tomorrow is the first day of winter which will stretch until March. It's the coldest, darkest time of the year, but at least we will have our beloved Vintage Collection hobby to keep us warm, right? Maybe, but maybe not. Let's look at where we stand right now. We recently completed our reviews of the last of the 2023 Vintage Collection product (almost*), the last of which sequentially was VC306. That's the Jedi Knight Revan that came in the HK-47 & Jedi Knight Revan 2-pack. Thanks to the cross sell being nixed from the card backs, we now have better insight into upcoming VC numbers (because Hasbro now shares images of the card backs with the product reveals). We know that the next sequential figure is Count Dooku (VC307). Dooku is projected to ship in May:


Could it ship sooner than that? Of course. The estimated ship dates tend to be pessimistic, especially on Hasbro Pulse which is the source of the screen shot above. But what would that mean? April? That would still mean that winter 23-24 would pass without any new Vintage Collection product, at least from a basic carded figure standpoint. Alternatively, could the chronological releases not follow the numeric sequence? Sure. It's happened in the past and not just when Hasbro accidentally skips over a VC number (like the currently unassigned VC271). However, this most typically happens with store exclusives. VC275 - Boba Fett (Kenner Colors) jumped the line a bit this year. Most of us had that figure in hand before we got our mitts on VC268 - Hunter (and his wave mates).

Other than unforeseen delays of waves, such as the Dr. Evazan wave being delayed from 2011 to 2012, I'm struggling to come up with a case where one wave leapfrogs another. I have a vague recollection of it maybe happening once, but typically the wave sequence follows the VC number sequence. If that pattern holds here (along with estimated ship dates), it's going to be a long wait until our next Vintage Collection figure. The one thing that gives me hope is that main line waves now have different channels. That Dooku wave is fan channel only. We don't know what the first "all" channel wave will be. Perhaps if brick and mortar is asking for product, we could potentially see a wave jump the line and get at least something this winter. All I know is that since we entered the reveal/preorder/pipeline pattern, we're at our lowest backlog of revealed figures. It sits at six at the moment: VC307 - Dooku, VC308 - Finn, VC309 - Clone Trooper (Phase I), VC??? - Huyang, the deluxe Jango Fett, and the VC130 - Captain Cassian Andor repack (plus the Clone Trooper 4-pack):


We had a similar pause earlier this year. It was roughly three months between wave 1 of 2023 (the Admiral Piett wave) and wave 2 of 2023 (the Death Star II Vader wave). I personally find these long breaks between product boring. I start to lose a little enthusiasm for the hobby. Worse, we tend to play catch up at some point, which can be budget breaking. We all remember this past September/October. If we could some how get a wave every nine weeks or so, I think it would go over big with the community.

One last thing, there is an upside to the relatively low backlog of revealed figures. It also means we don't have as much product on preorder. Preorder backlogs were starting to get out of control. We currently have 11 pipelined figures. Maybe some of those will get revealed a little closer to their "on shelf" date.

* We somehow managed to miss the regular release of Krrsantan. We're going to have to photograph that, and by "we", I mean Mr. Nomadscout.

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