Is A Perfect Peg Warming Storm Coming To The Vintage Collection?

I was thrilled to find the "Princess Leia" wave at Target earlier this week. Seeing modern counterparts to four of the original 12-backs in a store was an instant childhood callback for me (which further confirms my "old" status). I'm "small head Han" old. But that's not the only reason I was happy about this find. As I've written about several times now, I think good performance of TVC as brick and mortar is important, and this wave is completely free of any potential peg warmers. Sure, a few will hang around for a few days to maybe a week, but they will all sell. If there was one case that stores could risk stocking six at a time, this is it, and therein lies the problem. Summer is typically the season when stores order the lowest volume of toys.

The most brick and mortar viable wave of the Vintage Collection is hitting at the nadir of the toy commerce year. As we all know, the peak season strikes from Black Friday through Christmas, and the inventory to supply that season is usually en route in late October. We have two more waves of TVC this year that could potentially fill up those orders. The first is the Acolyte wave. There is a lot of newness in it which is good, but the show has only had a lukewarm reception with fans. Side note: I recently binged the Acolyte, and while it's very far from great, I don't think it's nearly as bad as the hue and cry on the socials, but what else is new. That wave consists of:

• 1x TBD
• 1x Osha Aniseya
• 2x Mae (Assassin)
• 1x Jedi Master Sol
• 1x HK-87 Assassin Droid (Arcana)
• 2x Dark Trooper

There are probably going to be some problematic sellers in the assortment, lead by the 2x case of the previously peg warming Dark Trooper. That case will probably start hitting in a few weeks from now, so it should be cleared before the big holiday rush. That leaves wave 20 as the likeliest candidate to be heavily stocked come this December, and oh boy, are there some potential turkeys in that case. These are the known figures from wave 20:

• 1x The Mandalorian (Imperial Base)
• 1x Bo-Katan Kryze (Plazir-15)
• 1x Grand Admiral Thrawn (Ahsoka)
• 1x Jetpack Trooper (Jedi Survivor)
• ?x Ahsoka Tano (Peridia)

There is nothing 100% newly tooled in that list. It's all minor/marginal retools. Even though the Mandalorian has been done to death, as a bonafide "main", I'm not worried about it longterm. The Jetpack Trooper is an unknown for me. As a trooper, I'm inclined to think it will do fine. I'm worried about the Ahoska series based Thrawn if this case hits heavily. The Rebels Thrawn was carried forward into the first wave of 2024, so the year will be book ended by similar figures of the same character. Thrawn is hugely popular, but I'm not convinced that the brick and mortar shopping public will have the appetite for a marginally tweaked figure from what is probably considered a secondary source by the normies.

The Corvus / Ahsoka series Ahsoka is currently in the "problematic" zone. I would say that it's because the same figure is now on its third release, but that doesn't explain why the original release has just hit $5 on Amazon (via a third party seller). It the poor performance is due to character fatigue, it might mean slow sales for Ahsoka (Peridia). Then there's the marginal tweak to Bo-Katan. I can almost guarantee that one is booked for per warmer status if wave 20 ships too heavily over the holiday season. The original 2022 release is still on Amazon for $10.45 (also via a third party seller). There are two unidentified figures from Wave 20, but one of them is likely to be another repack (if you follow the rumors).

The stars are aligning so that perhaps the least desirable case assortment of the year will be shipping when stores do their most ordering. I hope one of two things happens, and the first may actually lead to the other. I hope either Hasbro shows restraint, and cuts down the production run of this case, or wave 1 of 2025 gets fast tracked into the end of 2024. Remember when that used to happen? It was awesome. If the all new Episode IV Luke is in that initial wave of 2025, and it gets blocked from brick and mortar due to peg warming repacks/retools, I'm going to be grumpier than Obi-Wan when Anakin uses the Force on CGI pears.

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