ATTN HASBRO:  You Have A Big Vintage Collection Problem Looming

As you're all aware, our friends at the #SWTVC Instagram Page are in the midst of their annual March Madness event. This process starts with fans submitting their top 25 most wanted figures, which are weighted based on the placement on the respective lists. This ultimately results in seeding similar to the annual NCAA Basketball Tournament. The higher the seed, the higher priority the characters received on the submissions. My heart simultaneously swelled and sank when the Episode IV renditions of Leia, Luke, Han Solo, and Ben "Obi-Wan" Kenobi were seeded 1, 2, 4 and 5 respectively. To have these four characters take four of the top five rankings is utterly astounding. Only perpetual fan request Count Dooku broke up the clean sweep of the top four.

Now, before moving on, I need to address the fact that I don't expect these four to advance much further now that we've entered the voting phase, but I also have absolutely zero respect for this type of open voting within fan communities. The equivalent of collecting hipsterism kicks in, and fans tend express how uniquely quirky they are, like wannabe Zooey Deschanels. Voting for Leia is “been there done that,” but voting for Hera is “fresh.” Also, vinyl is better than lossless digital copy, and dive bars are better than bars where they actually clean their taps. Please note, this is NOT meant to throw shade at all to the Herculean effort put forth by the #SWTVC team to put this event together. I'm throwing shade at the voters, not the event. I've privately told Tyler that the entire community should be in their debt for putting this massive talking point together every year. There are more days behind me as an active member of the 3.75" collecting community than are ahead of me, but I rest easy that the stewardship is in good hands with the #SWTVC gang and the Star Wars Vintage Collection Facebook Group.

With that out of the way, I do believe there is massive market insight with the initial 64 finalist and their respective seeding. Compiling a top 25 list requires some skin in the game compared to clicking a radio button in an online poll, so I think there is more "truth" in the initial seedings. That seeding shows that Hasbro is moving in the opposite direction of the community with respect to priority. Hasbro is favoring the flavor of the month, and the community is begging for the evergreen blue chips. Hasbro, search your feelings. You know this to be true. You know you're pulling away from the market. Why else would only the two most recent media figures from the latest wave be included in the Hasbro Pulse Warehouse sale:


Even at that steep discount, those figures did not sell out. This should be alarming. Brand new never-before-made figures from the latest media did not sell out at under $10 a pop. Woof! It should be noted that I am not opposed to new media figures, in and of themselves. But when the budget only allows for a handful of new figures a year, I am opposed to squandering those resources on a shotgunning of new media figures. One Knight of Ren is one thousand times worse than no Knights of Ren. I would much rather those resources go to furthering a collection that's decades in the making versus false starting a collection that will never be, and this is where the problem comes to a head. At $12 and $13, I tolerated buying figures that weren't at the top of my want list. At $17 a figure, I am so utterly done buying figures I don't want when Hasbro won't make the figures I do want. What should scare all of you is that the community was at this exact point in 2014. We all know what followed.

Hasbro, trickling these Episode IV CORE HEROES out over several years is going to lose you customers. An annual pace far, far, far exceeds collector patience. Without it needing to be said, we all assume that licensor oversight dictates that too much of the annual budget goes towards their latest and greatest. This is why I am once again begging you to let the fans fund the tooling for the ANH Big Four. Move the Episode IV Heroes to a HasLab figure pack. We'll foot the bill, and that tooling can later be used for "smart pack refreshes" so that collectors without access to HasLab can get those figures. It will work.

---

comments powered by Disqus