I’m Excited About The Return Of Special Action Figure Sets

On Tuesday, it was announced via Collider that the Amazon exclusive Mandalorian Shriek-Hawk 4-pack would be released in the "Special Action Figure Set" expression:


That set goes on preorder today at either 11 AM ET or 1 PM ET depending on what the source of truth is.

UDPATE: You can preorder the Shriek-Hawk set early courtesy of THIS LINK from Yakface.

These packs are an expression that have deep ties to the vintage Kenner line:


Those vintage 3-packs are some of the rarest and most valuable in-package items from the Kenner line today. Part of the reason is that they were largely ignored by the collecting community at first, so high grade samples became scarce.

The Special Action Figure sets came back heavily during TVC 1.0. They were all Target exclusives, and they were, once again, largely ignored by the collecting community. Part of the problem is that Hasbro at the time seemed to be married to mirroring only the 3-packs that existed in the vintage Kenner line. This limited the options, and often resulted in sets that included figures that were either just released in main line, or were older, out of date sculpts. Every single one ended up on clearance at the Bullseye (not uncommon for Target exclusives). Even the last two, the Villain Set and the Droid Set, headed to the clearance ailse despite being the only two TVC 1.0 sets that contained some newness. As is often the way, because these sets were ignored, they are now some of the more collectible TVC 1.0 items. Crazy how consistently that works out.

For the early TVC 2.0 days, it seemed the Special Action Figure set was the default for SDCC exclusives:

• 2018 Doctor Aphra Comic Set
• 2019 Luke Skywalker Jedi Destiny Set
• 2020 501st Legion ARC Troopers

In 2019, there was also a Target exclusive Cave of Evil Special Action Figure set, which lacked any newness, and thus, ended up on clearance. Of note, the TVC 2.0 Special Action Figures sets broke free of the stricture of having Kenner counterparts. After 2020, the expression seemed to rest in favor of either the white-boxed troop builder sets:



Or carded multi-packs:


This leaves a gap in the product offering in my opinion. There are figures that don't fit into a troop building theme, but are not important enough to demand being singly carded. I think that Escape Order 66 pack above is a perfect example of the latter. That Ahsoka has already been carded with VC202 - Ahsoka Tano (Mandalore), and I wouldn't have held my collection in any less regard if those astromechs were not on-card. Exclusives have a lower production run resulting in a higher per unit cost. The 4 figures in that set averaged $17.50 apiece, which is $0.50 more than the standard MSRP of $17.

I couldn't bring myself to pay over MSRP for an Ahsoka repack and three build-a-droids. If that set could have been done as a Special Action Figure set like the Shriek-Hawk pack, it could have come in at $65 due to the cost savings from not being individually carded. I probably would have bought one for that. The price per figure would have come under MSRP that way at $16.25. I know moralizing over $5 is very silly, but this entire hobby of ours is a silly one to begin with. Very little within the hobby is sillier than the hobby itself, which is why I always smirk at collectors jockeying for the "better perspective" high ground within community. Tallest little person and all that.

I would like to kick off the festivities by suggesting the next Special Action Figure set: The Assault on Tantive IV. I would include the first ever Commander Jir in the line plus VC316 - Princess Leia Organa with a soft goods lower skirt, and VC334 - Darth Vader with the upper tabard painted flat black:


The only new tooling would be Jir's head and torso, the latter of which would get a lot of reuse for any Imperial Officer with a 4-square rank badge. That amount of tooling seems commensurate with the new tooling in the Shriek-Hawk pack.

Update from Tannith in the comments:

Also, Jir has the long black gloves that the Death Star Troopers have and also belt boxes, so he'd need new forearms and belt as well as the torso (which SHOULD have been sculpted for Imperial Cal)

As the saying goes, I would crawl a mile over broken glass to buy that Special Action Figure set.

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