Hasbro’s Fan First Friday Livestream 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). This was also our first chance to talk to Eric Franer (Associate Product Designer, Star Wars). 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:

The Force Guide
Collector's Cantina
Star Wars Black Series Instagram
Jedi Business

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

Disclaimer: The following answers are paraphrased and condensed for clarity. They are transcriptions of a conversation and are not meant to be verbatim quotes.
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.

And without further ado, on with the questions:

1. Patrick you opened by saying you hoped we enjoyed the [Fan First Friday] livestream, and from the Vintage Collection side is was a bit of a gut punch. I know from talking to you guys at conventions that the Star Wars brand team knows the passion is there for 3.75”. Did anyone upstream from you, perhaps those that set budgets, happen to notice the high volume of follow up questions from the livestream that were 3.75” related? Did that get noticed by someone beyond the brand team by any chance?

Partrick: Are you saying we’re not the most important? So we’ll reiterate that the passion of the Vintage fans is amazing, and obviously fans of all segments are passionate. I’m not breaking any news here to say that the Vintage fans' passion is certainly unique and special. So we’re absolutely aware of that form talking to you guys at conventions, from talking with fans at conventions, from interviews and Google Hangouts like this. Hopefully you see that we’re increasing our engagement, and we’re doing what we can to increase that conversation, and keep it a back and forth street. In terms of senior management, they’re there to some extent at all events, at SDCC and Toy Fair. I will say the livestream was a great opportunity borne of the current situation. The silver lining is that certainly a lot of people tuned in who might not be able to make it to a panel. And I think, as always, every one was very excited and, maybe in some cases, surprised to see the level of passion, which is good.

Our line of Vintage Collection figures is alive and well. I know you didn’t ask this specifically, but I feel like have to take every opportunity to reiterate that any rumors that might be out there about the demise of the Vintage Collection are not true in any way. I can say with a straight face, and on the record here, that it is fully in our planning as far out as we plan. Obviously we were excited about that one we reveal. It was only one and we know that, and it was a package refresh, but that single item we’re excited about and excited to get it into the line. Obviously anything we haven’t revealed yet we can’t talk about, but we are excited about some of the Vintage Collection news coming down the line. I’m very confident that you guys will all be excited about what we’re revealing in the next several months even if he quantity isn’t there. But to your original question, our senior management is always aware, but this offered another great unique opportunity to bring awareness.

2. Any chance you can tell us the VC numbers for the recently revealed Vintage Collection figures: K-2SO, Commander Wolffe, and Luke (Stormtrooper)?

Eric: The planned VC numbers are:



For K-2SO it would be VC170
For Commander Wolffe it would be VC168
And for Luke in his Stormtrooper outfit, it would be VC169

Those are the planned numbers at the moment.

Note: Bantha Skull’s original question #3 was about the status of any hypothetical SDCC exclusives. That question was asked by our friends at Jedi Business. You can read their answer HERE. The team and Litzky graciously allowed us to ad lib a new question 3.

3. Patrick during the FFF livestream, you said that the Fan Channel was sort of the equivalent of the Archive line in the Black Series. I would say not really. I think the Fan Channel is great because I think of it more as an accessibility line where new collectors can get those core characters themselves without having to dip into secondary market, so I think it serves a purpose. But Archive is also a chance for long term collectors in Black Series to get the hard to find items that appeal to existing collectors. We have a lot of those in 3.75”. Is there a way to get those figures out there even from previous lines? They’re not necessarily main characters. The Fan Channel has been mostly main characters.

Patrick: I think that’s kind of the guiding strategy on both of them, with Archive and with the specialty waves for the Vintage Collection. We’re focused on those main characters, so that’s why in the Archive we’ve seen Luke, Anakin, Yoda and troopers. Honestly, when we’re deciding which figures will go into those [Vintage Collection] specialty waves, we take the exact same mindset and focus on those larger main characters that serve three purposes. We know that fans who got those figures originally are excited to get the Photo Real updates in Archive, and we’ve heard that from Vintage fans as well. It gives the fans who might have come into the hobby in the past couple of years the chance to add those main characters to their collection [editor’s note: this is important for the health of any action figure line]. If they have the droids and aliens, now they can add the main characters as well. And obviously the new fans that we want to pull into the hobby, that we want to pull into collecting, bring them those main characters as well.

It’s a good question for for both Black Series and the Vintage Collection. What about those characters that we released many years ago in both lines that aren’t main characters, but there’s still a desire for from fans? I’d say actually the Vintage Collection has a better route to that than the Black Series because the Vintage Collection has, for better or worse, that one slot in each mainline wave set aside for a package refresh. So definitely in whatever form is available, either through fan sites, in comments or at conventions, let us know which of those characters from the past you want back. Because that’s a place we could put them. Obviously those mainline waves are more targeted at the existing fans as well as new fans, so that’s a way we could bring them forward. That actually is something that exists in the Vintage Collection that doesn’t exist in the Black Series.

Follow up: It can be a pack refresh, so it doesn’t have to have already existed in the Vintage Collection, so it could be from Legacy Collection and past?

Patrick: Yup, and I think we’ve done some of those in the past since the Vintage Collection came back in 2018.

Follow up: Definitely from the 3.75” Black Series, but I can’t recall one going further back then that.

Patrick: Yeah, and this is where we tried to find the balance, and this is where feedback is really important. As we get to the Legacy Collection, and The Saga Collection, and the Original Trilogy Collection, obviously some of those [figures] were great at the time, but they're fifteen or so years old now, so it’s that assessment of whether a [figure] is up to today’s standards and worthy of bringing back in. Obviously, you’re aware of Darth Revan a couple of years ago, and we shifted course on that based on the feedback because that was the right thing to do. So yeah, let us know your feedback and we’re open to it.


4. I’ve expressed several times that I’m worried that the volume of product in the Vintage Collection isn’t enough to keep the fan base engaged long term. Patrick, you’ve repeatedly noted that 3.75” unlocks the world, but it’s hard to unlock the world with, for example, four figures form the Mandalorian. Is there any platform that’s not as grandiose as HasLab, but not traditional retail where we could get more SKU’s into the Vintage Collection for newly tooled figures where some of the risk is [mitigated] for Hasbro? Such as something through Pulse doing a guaranteed preorder where if it reaches a certain level the figure goes into production. I’m confident that 3.75” collectors would vote with their wallet if given the chance.

Patrick: A lot to unpack there. First of all, without trying to break any news, I’m pretty confident we will definitely see more Mando figures in the Vintage Collection at some point. Hopefully that will unlock the world a little more.

You’re right. I said on the livestream that Vintage Collection is my favorite segment. That’s kind of me personally as a fan. I’ve also gone on record saying I want a Black Series Jorus C’baoth, but I don’t see that any time in the future. So there’s my personal fandom and what makes sense for Hasbro.

We’ve got exclusives that we sell through different retailers, but we have HasLab and that’s that platform for what we call dream projects. And those can be large things, like the Barge, and they could be smaller things that are a little more niche. I can’t say too much about what’s coming down the pipeline.

Just know that we’re definitely aware of the passion of the Vintage fans, and I say that a lot. Obviously there are less Vintage products out there than Black Series. As we’ve said in the past, to some extent we have to do what the market is telling us to do, but we’re definitely talking about not locking ourselves into just brick and mortar retail, or just HasLab. We're thinking creatively about ways that we can bring more of the Vintage Collection to fans in ways that make sense for both you and for us. We’re not sure what will come out of that or if anything will come out of that, but we’re definitely exploring there, and as always give us your ideas. I’m sure there are lots of great ideas that might help us in the future. Obviously that’s how the HasLab Barge came about. The Barge had been a request from the fan community for years, and we were able to figure out how to make that happen.

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