How Do We Put Better Focus On Backgrounders For Fan Polling?

Boring

I've heard that comment a lot about this year's Last Figure Standing finalists.

It's mostly main characters and troop builders.

Heard that too. It's usually followed up by something to the effect of:

At least Arleil Schous made it.

The thing of it is, it's somewhat of a fluke that he made it at all. He had never placed very high in previous fan polls. He was 125th last year with only 24 votes. This year he rocketed into the top 12 (how high will have to wait until the finale on November 2nd to be revealed). The reason that happened is obvious. By showing a prototype for the Cantina HasLab, Hasbro focused a large swath of the fanbase onto the character like a cat to a laser pointer. The community backed a singular horse, and it had an impact. We may not have that in future years without some form of intervention by the community.

Main characters are going to have a natural advantage if they are candidates in this type of polling. We don't need Hasbro to focus our attention on these characters. The plot does that for us. Of course the only reason they are candidates in the first place is the state of the line. The tooling budget is still limited. This means that updates to core characters are falling way behind. There was a time when promoting main characters in fan polling was unthinkable. The constant refreshing of core characters was a source if irritation back in the line's heyday. Not so anymore. Despite what some people on social media will try to get you to believe, the overwhelming majority of the 100% newly tooled figures each year go to the Disney era media. When we only get twelve or so 100% newly tooled figures per year, and three quarters of them go to Disney era media, the core characters from legacy media find themselves getting left in the dust. Thus their high placement on wish lists.

More importantly, there are simply fewer core characters than backgrounders. Background characters are essentially extras, and in a movie such as Star Wars, the extras are going to far outnumber the main cast. This is perhaps the most limiting factor in tertiary characters placing higher on fan polls in the currently environment where the Vintage Collection is perpetually playing catch up, and seemingly falling further behind each year. The backgrounder votes simply get spread among too many candidates, and that's where the community can do something. I'm going to lift the veil a bit on some of the down ballot candidates to explain it. There were three Jabba's Palace related characters that were all grouped together in the 30's of Last Figure Standing. They were Amanaman, Shasa Tiel and Fozec. If fans had focused their efforts on just one of those characters, it would have easily cracked the top 12 even when accounting for those who voted for more than one of that trio.

I know it's suggesting a lot. Grass roots efforts in the fan community tend to fizzle. But it would work if there was an effort to focus the fans behind a single backgrounder next year. I don't want to have Bantha Skull lead that effort because it could be seen as us putting our thumb on the scale. I just know that backgrounders still need a presence in the line. The Kenner line will be held in reverence in the toy community for as long as toys exist. It's legendary, but through the first twelve figures, it was just another toy line. It didn't become magical until the next eight figures with all those wonderful weirdos.

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