It Looks Like Another Toxic Repack Is Coming To The Vintage Collection

Yup. I'm continuing to gripe about the repack selections for the 2024 TVC lineup, but for good reason. First, I need to reiterate what is becoming boilerplate in these articles (and apologies that this was just stated yesterday):

• We understand that the need to make the early 2024 lineup repack heavy was probably out of Hasbro's control due to shifting media schedules. We are not holding it against Hasbro.
• That being said, we are being critical of the specific figures Hasbro chose to repack.

Most of you know the following, but in case some readers don't, we need to set the stage. During the 1/23 Fan Stream, Hasbro pipelined a repack of the Mandalorian Dark Trooper:


That will be a repack of the Deluxe Dark Trooper except it will come as a basic carded figure minus the charging station. So we're getting less this time around, but it will come at the mainline price of $16.99 instead of the then deluxe $27.99 price point, and it will be on the iconic 6" x 9" Vintage Collection card. Then this past weekend, Target offered that 2022 Deluxe Dark Trooper, which they still have in-stock in 2024, for the deeply discounted price of $9.44:


You may notice that screen shot above says "50% off", but that's not telling the whole story. It's 50% off the existing sale price of $18.89, which was already 33% off the original MSRP of $27.99. Target has been sitting on this stock for over a year, and couldn't move it at 33% off, and they are not alone. Amazon is still searching for the bottom price of the Deluxe Dark Trooper:


It needs to be reiterated that these two primary market retailers are still working through their original stock from 2022, and it doesn't end there. Fan Channel members Entertainment Earth, Big Bad Toy Store and Hasbro Pulse all still have stock of the Deluxe Dark Trooper with Pulse joining the deep discount trend offering it for $15.74. What does all this indicate with glaring clarity? Hasbro oversupplied the demand for the Dark Trooper.

I used this line in the comments yesterday, but I like it, so I'm going to use it again in this context: one of the cheat codes for destroying a line is re-issuing a figure that well oversupplied demand during it's initial run to the point that it's still available on the primary market for a fraction of the cost. Yes, carded collectors will be eager get the Dark Trooper on a standard card for their display, but carded collectors alone are not enough to single-handedly sustain a release. No segment of the community is, which is why Hasbro needs to be cognizant of the needs of both in-package and loose collectors with every release. No loose collector who is good with money is going to buy the carded re-release when they can still get the boxed release for less than the main line MSRP.

This repack is so ill-conceived that I honestly feel like there's probably a factor that we're not aware of. I'm seriously wondering if the media shuffle left Hasbro with so little time to adjust that easy access to the tooling needed to become a priority when choosing repacks over more market based decisions. In these cases, there's often more to the story that we're not aware of.

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