#FightForTVC:  Reflecting On Phase 1 And There’s More Work To Be Done

If you haven't seen yesterday's Fan First Friday Monday presentation yet, you can watch it HERE.

At the very onset of the presentation, the grass roots fan outlet TVC (The Vintage Collection) campaign was mentioned. It was mentioned during an official Hasbro event. If you all are not proud of the fruits of your efforts, you ought to be. That honestly gave me goosebumps. Perhaps even more important was Patrick's response during the Q&A to a question about the impact of the campaign:

Based on the support we’ve seen over the past several weeks, we’ve made some changes and you’ll see a bit more product coming in 2021 and we expect a bit more after that.

HOT! DANG! This was my literal response to hearing that:



We were also introduced to Emily who is the Senior Product Designer for The Vintage Collection. This also feels like a big little story. Has TVC had dedicated Senior Product Designer since its return? She has the awesome responsibility of carrying on a line with a forty-plus year legacy. But we need to consider how that line even achieved that status in the first place. The Kenner Star Wars line did not become a cultural phenomenon because of Luke, Leia, Han and Vader. It became a phenomenon because of Hammerhead, Greedo, Sanggletooth and Walrus Man. Those figures made us realize the world was truly unlocked in the Kenner lineup. Those type of figures have largely been missing since TVC's return.

My friend John from the TVC Facebook group has been compiling breakdowns of figure sources, and since 2018, TVC has been heavily tilted toward troopers and main humans, much more so than in the past. But TVC's soul lies in background world-building aliens. In fact, Steve Evans literally said that was the reason TVC was brought back during a Victoria's Cantina / JTA SDCC 2017 interview:



The Vintage Collection needs to explicitly earmark allocations in the line for these exact sources. Even if it's one or two figures a year to start with. That is where we need to go next with this campaign, and we will hopefully do this again as a community. If yesterday's presentation shows us anything, it is that when the community's oars are all paddling in the same direction, big things happen. And Hasbro is listening!

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