One Of Our TVC Requests Is Being Answered In TBS…Sort Of

TVC Community:

Certain figures should always be on the pegs, like the Stormtrooper.

This refrain has been repeated in the comment section innumerable times. As I do frequently, I need to offer a caveat fairly early into this article. This article is NOT intending to advocate for solid cases of Vintage Collector Stormtroopers to hit brick and mortar at this time. The Epic Heroes Stormtrooper is currently hitting hard. It would not be a good idea to have two different Stormtroopers in the same scale, at different price points taking up residency at Walmart and Target at the same time. That just confuses the general public. That is not the spirit of this article. The point is that we often say that certain figures should "always be available", it just so happens to be that the Stormtrooper is the figure most often cited (followed by the mains).

To move the conversation off of the Stormtrooper, I feel strongly that the Jedi Knight Luke is something that would regularly sell at brick and mortar, especially if it were upgraded to rocker ankles in the new style hips. I would also say the recent Death Star II Darth Vader qualifies. Beskar Mando would be another one, but Hasbro is effectively crossing that one off the list by releasing two different versions this year. Boba Fett, the Phase I Clone, the 501st Phase Clone and maybe the upcoming Princess Leia would all work, but latter gets a little dicier if overly produced. There are others, but they would have to wait for new tooling (* cough * farmboy Luke * cough *).

I think we all know that figures consistently selling well at brick and mortar is a great path to increasing the overall tooling budget. So it's frustrating when there are things that we're collectively confident would encounter little friction going from the pegs to the cash register, but there seems to be very little interest in making it happen. For the Vintage Collection, anyway. This exact concept has come to the Black Series:







That's six each of Black Series Darth Vader (A New Hope) and Mandalorian (Mines of Mandalore), which I believe are shipping in solid cases. If you think I can't count, there are two Vaders lying flat on the shelf toward the back in the second pic. This is part of the program to make core TBS figure more available. It's a little frustrating because it feels like the workplace comedy trope where the boss steals a subordinate's idea and promotes it as their own. It's at this point that I need to remind you to blame Walmart and Target alone for what product shows up in Walmart and Target. Getting upset with Hasbro over this would be misplaced angst. The brick and mortar behemoths are simply more comfortable taking on risk when it comes to figures with gigantism. But this concept would definitely work with TVC, and I dare say it would work better.

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