Hasbro 01/29 Fan First Friday Follow Up Q&A

We would like to thank Hasbro and Litzky PR for inviting Bantha Skull to participate in this interview opportunity. As always, it was great getting to interact Patrick Schneider (Senior Manager, Global Brand Development & Marketing, Star Wars). Eric Franer (Associate Product Designer at Hasbro - Star Wars) was also part of the Q&A, but since our questions were entirely Vintage Collection related, we didn't get to actually speak to Eric (hopefully no offense was taken). I would like to thank both for taking time out of their day to chat with us. We were honored to participate with the following outlets:

Jedi Business
The Star Wars Underworld
Kastor's Korner
Star Wars News Net

There are more answers you'll certainly want to read or listen to from their portions of the Q&A.

Disclaimer: The following answers are paraphrased and condensed for clarity. These are transcriptions of a conversation and are not meant to be verbatim quotes. Anything in brackets was not said by Hasbro, but represents Bantha Skull's interpretation of pronouns or non-verbal communication. Any inaccuracies in these answers are the result of unintentional errors on the part of Bantha Skull during this process, and do not reflect upon Hasbro.

As mentioned above, all of the questions were answered by Patrick.

And without further ado, on with the questions:

1. Patrick, can you clarify this statement, “We have, for the Vintage Collection, more new figures hitting the shelves in 2021 than in any year since the Vintage Collection has relaunched”?

Does that mean since the 2018 relaunch, or over the history of The Vintage Collection since 2010? And by “new” do you mean “new tooling” or “new characters” or just newly numbered figures which may or may not be repacks?

So like you just said, since the relaunch in 2018. I think we’ve said in the past, I don’t think we’ll ever get back to the levels of 2010 - 2013, and that’s true in all of our lines.

It’s a good point. There’s a lot of different ways to count this. It could be newly tooled figures. It could be new figures counting repacks. It’s definitely not referring to “new tooling”, that’s why I specifically didn’t say “newly tooled figures.” I meant the latter including repacks. But I did go back, and there’s a chance that this is true (Editor’s note: Patrick emphasizes “chance”), that we will [also] have more non-repacks in any year since 2018.

The goal of this was to keep fans excited about what’s coming, but not putting anything concrete because that could create frustration down the line [if plans change].


2. It feels as if Hasbro and the collector community still do not see eye to eye with respect to repacks. We do not object to repacks as a concept, we object to the specific repacks that populated the early return of TVC. There are no less than a dozen repacks from TVC and Legacy collection that fans would celebrate as much as a newly tooled figure. There simply are not enough mainline waves per yer to slot these in. In short, can TVC get a true collector-focused Archive line?

Good question. A lot to unpack there. You mention the Archive Line. Obviously that’s in Black Series. The goal of that is the same as the specialty waves in the Vintage Collection [i.e. Fan Channel]. It’s targeted for getting those figures from the past for new fans and casual fans. You will see in the Archive Line, it’s more of the main characters that are better known to [newer/casual] fans that we want to bring back to help them build up their collection if they came into the hobby later. Same in the Vintage Collection.

One other piece of this is that there are development timelines. It’s 12 to 18 months for a figure, but it’s also that timeline to make changes to the way we structure the line. In recent years including 2019, we did too many repacks and probably not always the right selections, and so you’re exactly right, in 2020 we clawed that back. And we got the feedback that we can have more [repacks than we got in 2020] as long as they’re the right ones. So those adjustments are taking place for the future. I don’t know if we’ll always delivery the exact items that a specific collector might want. There’s the whole community to consider. But I think we will see some changes there. You will see a little more, but we are trying to dial in on the right ones. Those slots in mainline make sense for the existing fans. That’s who they are targeted at. So I think you will see some of those changes come. Fan sites have article and comments talking about some of these repacks, and that’s something we certainly pay attention to.

Bantha Skull rebuttal: You did allow TBS Archive to have fan voting so you did open up that line to existing collectors and not just new collectors.

Absolutely. In one of our other sessions was got a question about fan voting, and that’s something you could see in Vintage Collection or The Black Series.
[Patrick acknowledged the point].


3. We know that Walmart exclusives are a necessary evil, but the collector woes don’t stop at the difficulty with pre-ordering. Without a hint of exaggeration, Walmart’s packing of these items borders on willful damage. If the packing weren’t an important part of the collecting experience, The Vintage Collection wouldn’t even exist. Can we somehow get an assurance that these figures will eventually be available to Fan Channel as well, as such retailers tend to handle items properly for those who also collect carded figures?

We fully understand that packing has such a history in the Star Wars brand, and we’re very aware of that. It’s important for the Vintage Collection especially, but also for some of our Black Series expressions like the 40th Anniversary and The Phantom Menace card backs, and even honestly the new mainline Black Series packaging.

Just know that whether it’s through Hasbro or the retailer, we’re never taking the attitude that if the product gets there intact, it doesn’t matter what happens to the packaging. Just know that when we hear these frustrations, we don’t just say “we hear you” and then file them away. We are actively having meetings and discussions to figure out ways to work within the process to rectify some of these things. I know it can be a slow process, but I know looking back three or four years ago, things, in many different areas, are in a better place today than they were then. So know we’re aware of it. We’re working on it, and we’re partnering with everyone in the supply chain to bring improvement to these areas.

To answer your specific question as to whether these would be available to the Fan Channel as well, these are exclusive to the retailers we mentioned on the livestream. There’s no current plans for them to go anywhere else. So that’s the home [of these items]. As we’ve said before, [these items] would not exist if it were not for these retail exclusive slots. So it’s not that they’re taking something away from mainline. They are truly a bonus.


4. You announced three figures for the Walmart 50th Anniversary Vintage Collection exclusives. Are these part of an assortment, or will they be individual? The AT-ST is an army builder and is going to sell more than the other two. Walmart must be sure to order extras or else it will cause more collector frustration.

For exactly that reason, they are all individual solids. They are not an assortment. We’re working with all of our markets to make sure we get the right volume of each, and that’s the benefit of doing them as individual items.


5. Is Hasbro aware that the production runs for many newly tooled Vintage Collection figures are falling well short of demand? The demand for the Incinerator Trooper is massively underserved, as it is for the Armorer and Beskar Mando. As of the moment I write this, Entertainment Earth has a single (literally 1!) K2SO figure in stock.

(question shortened due to time constraints)

Absolutely. Yes. Without diving too much into the details, this gets to something of what we said earlier. Orders have to go in several months in advance. We had a good conversation with the Vintage community last year about what the demand is out there. Obviously, high level, we all want the same thing. We all want anyone who wants these figure getting them. We’re on the same page, so we’re working towards that in the future, and we’re already in the process of that for upcoming figures.

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