Hasbro’s Listening But Not Hearing On The Troop Builder Packs

During the most recent Fanstream from last Wednesday, Hasbro pipelined a 4-pack of X-Wing Pilots:


I immediately started celebrating. A pilot trooper builder pack is something I called for just over a year ago in THIS ARTICLE, so I was eager to start cheering it's fruition, but in my glee, I missed an important detail. I glossed over an important word in the introduction:

We have a few multi-packs to share with you today as well. The first is a troop builder 4-pack of grunt X-Wing pilots.

In my excitement, I initially missed the word "grunt" in the description. Once that settled in, some of my enthusiasm waned. I feel like this is an overreaction to the hue and cry over the inclusion of the specific character Enoch in the Night Troopers multi-pack. Obviously many fans want more than three Night Troopers and only need one Enoch, but ordering multiples of the 4-pack isn't cost effective due to accumulating unwanted extra Enoch figures.

In Hasbro's defense, this overreaction may be due in part to poor messaging by the community as pointed out by my buddy Tim in his latest Ask Bossk's Bounty video. In general, the community tends to over-emphasize and speak in absolutes, which all too often ends in unintended consequences. "Everyone would buy the Walmart Black Series 3.75 inch figures if they were on TVC cards" was at least partially responsible for the 2018 launch wave. Fans uttering some variation of "no more named characters in troop builder packs" could have fueled this overreaction.

The issue is not named character in these 4-packs, it's mixing named characters and troop builders in the same set.

Named characters are absolutely fine in 4-packs, so long as all the figures are of specific characters. Adding Captain Anitlles to the Rebel Fleet Trooper set and Enoch to the Night Trooper set is the type of thing that caused collector angst.

With respect to X-Wing pilots, I will buy a set of generic grunt X-Wing pilots, especially if it contains multiple blue squadron pilots from Rogue One, but I really would have preferred 4 named pilots. All of us need a Theron Nett figure, which I think is the only Battle of Yavin pilot with an in-cockpit shot to never get a figure (despite having his astromech). Many fans need a Garven Dreis since the Scramble on Yavin battle pack is inaccessible on the secondary market. A never-before-made Theron Nett and updating Garven Dreis to the newest pilot buck would have been a great start on an X-Wing pilot 4-pack in my opinion. Add in Farns Monsbee and Vangos Grek from Rogue One, and now you've really got something. If Hasbro went the extra mile and committed some tooling funds, replace one of those male Roque One pilots with Jaldine Gerams and they'd be cooking with gas (plus we'd then have a female pilot buck).

I'll get the a 4-pack of generic X-Wing pilots as diorama fodder, but I'd be a lot more excited if it crossed some figures off my want list instead of giving me figures I never asked for.

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