Chris And Bret React To The 6/13 Fan Stream Reveals

TVC only had two reveals yesterday, but they were both top notch in my opinion. Additionally there were two bits of very welcome news that were dropped. Let's discuss. -Chris

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Chris:

Pour a cup of coffee and dig in. We're going to be here a while. There are two sides to me as a collector. There's the selfish side as an individual collector that just wants what he wants, doesn't care what his fellow collectors want, and doesn't care about the overall health of the line so long as my personal collecting nest is feathered. I try to stuff that guy deep down in a sack, and give him as little sunlight as possible. Then there's the community conscious collector who tries to be mindful of what other collectors want (so long as it also promotes the health of the line), and who puts the overall health of TVC first and foremost. That's the guy I try to show here. He's the guy that says that Pong Krell should be made even though I have no personal want for that figure. He's also the guy who twice wrote articles saying that the next legacy media vehicle Hasbro should tackle is Anakin's ETA-2 Jedi Starfighter HERE and HERE.

That's been my "what's best for TVC" pick for two years now. But my individual pick has always been Darth Vader's TIE Advanced x1. Luke is my favorite character in the entire Star Wars universe, and it's not even close, but Vader is by far my favorite character to collect. Does that make sense? Despite this, I do not currently own a Darth Vader's TIE Fighter. I sold my POTF2 one years ago because I was never satisfied with it between the garish play features, and the minuscule cockpit window that was the equivalent of a porthole on a mid 20th century Gloucester fishing trawler. The greatest villain in the history of cinema deserved better.

The reason I collect 3.75" is because of vehicles. I have been hooked on Star Wars vehicles for almost as long as I can remember. I can still recall the day I bought the Kenner Landspeeder with my own money because it was the day I learned about sales tax. But there's always been a frustration with them. In order to make them viable in the 1:18 scale, Kenner and then Hasbro have always had to make concessions. This has led me to often collect two versions of my favorite vehicles. I have one that has understandable inaccuracies so that it can interact with our beloved 3.75" action figures. The other one will be in a smaller scale, but is 100% accurate to its on-screen counterpart. I own the Legacy AT-AT for my figures, and the Star Wars Miniatures AT-AT for accuracy as one example.

That ends with the Vintage Collection Darth Vader's TIE Advanced. This makes no pretense at being a toy. This is a prop replica that can interact with our figures. That's almost a dream come true for my five year old self. Chris Reiff comes from a prop building background. He has been bringing those talents to bear with Vintage Collection vehicles, and it shows here. I too initially winced at the price. I was expecting $125. But considering the hyper-accuracy of what we're getting, the extra $15 isn't going to slow me down in the least. I also partially suspect that the price reflects a reduced production run (pure speculation on my part). Therefore I will be logged in at exactly 1PM ET on Monday to order a pair of these. I'm not getting May the Fourthed on this one. I would actually like to get one AFA graded as a capstone piece to my collection.

Now that you've all TL;DR'ed this article, I yield the floor to Bret. Don't worry. I'm done with the tome-length reactions after this.

Bret:

Well, I'll take a cue from Chris. I also have two personalities on this site; there's Selfish Bret and there's Community Bret. However, I'm not nearly as good as he is at keeping them separated. I mean Pong Krell is stupid to both versions of me. Selfish Bret wants Pong Krell to die in the Hasbro "parking lot" of ideas, while Community Bret wants Hasbro to make Pong Krell just so he can be a peg warmer or rot on Amazon for $3.87 2 years after it was released. Maybe that's not actually Community Bret's thoughts. That could be New Yorker Bret just being a general a-hole, like he was properly raised to be.

As a general rule that applies to things other than main characters, I'd much rather see something completely new to the line, so as for the TIE Advanced, Selfish Bret had no interest in ANOTHER Vader TIE Advanced to add to my collection, which already includes 3 (absent a 4th version that I somehow missed along the way). While it's an iconic vehicle, I never looked at my stuff and thought, "Man, I really need an update to Vader's TIE that you see on screen for 8 seconds." Community Bret realizes that a lot of fellow collectors have been asking for a new one. I have no idea why, but I generally support stuff getting made if it makes a lot of people happy (except for idiot Pong Krell). But with TVC 2.0, I've often been surprised at how much better an update can be than I thought was possible. It probably started with the Tatooine Skiff. I had zero interest, until I saw the new one (and the price was surprising low at the time). Now I'm not sure how I could have possibly been happy with the POTF2 (actually Kenner) sculpt. I've also felt the same way about Greedo (and the images of the Cantina figure look amazing), the landspeeder (until I realized how much better the seating arrangement is) and Hammerhead (I don't have mine yet, and I'm honestly not that excited about it, but that's just Selfish Bret).

So what do I think of this vehicle? Again - "meh" for Selfish Bret's initial reaction the news that it exists and also "OK, cool" from Community Bret. But after seeing the livestream, I think it's great, so I'm in. Would I rather have something else that's completely new? Yes. But I like what I saw. And I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I never noticed the wing damage in ANH, until I just watched it a few minutes ago. I'll never stop learning new things about a movie I've seen hundreds of times.

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Chris:

BO-RING. This is set was old in April. Kidding, of course. It's not Hasbro's fault that someone put early samples of this set up on Ebay and two jerks with a website bought one to review. Even if that didn't happen, most fans assumed this troop builder set was inevitable. Why wouldn't you? This is the perfect utilization of the expression. You get four Snowtroopers and save thirteen bucks off the single-carded price. It's a home run. As for me, I might have gotten carried away with that single carded release, so I'll be passing on this. Well, I'll probably get one. I might get two.

Bret:

Good set. Good execution. Should sell pretty well (unless you already army built the crap out of the mainline release.) It was more exciting prior to opening our eBay sample when there was a chance that it included some awesome variant figure. But still overall a win, even if the thunder was stolen.

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Chris:

I think part of every collector enjoys owning something rare that not everyone has. But for me that only comes when it's something like a very high grade vintage item, or a rare modern variant (i.e. the Canadian Yoda). I get no thrill owning something that is supposed to be widely distributed, but isn't for one reason or the other. I empathize from the bottom of my heart with my fellow collectors who missed out, and get irritated seeing preorders being scalped on Ebay for 3x MSRP. I've been on the outside of those situations many times during my collecting career, and it's miserable. So even though I secured the Stormtrooper 3-pack and the the Cantina Adventure 4-pack earlier, I felt sick for those that didn't. I'm ecstatic for everyone to get a chance to secure theirs. Here's hoping the supply meets demand.

Bret:

I'm one of the many collectors that missed the 14 minute window of availability, and got May the Fourthed. I've so very rarely missed out on something over my 25+ years of collecting that I was more shocked than angry. Selfish Bret and Community Bret both have the same reaction as Chris, while New York Bret is usually fine with all of it, as long as I get mine. But this time, I didn't. I didn't freak out about it, because I always assumed these would come back in stock. But I was definitely starting to get nervous. So I'm glad there's another opportunity for many collectors to get these sets.

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Chris:

We all have egos, and no one makes a decision thinking it's the wrong one. So sometimes complaints about unpopular decisions are met with resistance and doubling down. Shoot, look at every movie that seems to fall flat these days. The studios don't blame themselves. They blame the audience. Hasbro could have done that here, and explained all the reasons why 7" x 9" was the right decision, and blamed us for not being sophisticated enough to understand that. But they didn't. The listened to the fans, and are making the right call for on-card collectors. Now I just need to get Momaw Nadon on a 6" x 9" card.

Bret:

Selfish Bret doesn't give a flying flip about card size and yawned through the entire skit. Collector Bret is very pleased with this decision and is happy for everyone else. New York Bret is still devastated about the Knicks, and says, "Fudge You and Pong Krell." [Editor's Note: Only he didn't say "Fudge"...]

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Well, that's what we think. What about you? Sound off below.

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