Opinion On The Deemphasis Of Pipeline Reveals Going Forward

Supposedly Mr. Stevie expressed his opinion that he was not a fan of having a lot of pipeline reveals because they can be anticlimactic. I can't find the exact source of this, but I have heard the news anecdotally from people I trust implicitly, so I'm comfortable covering the topic without having read/heard it myself. This has been discussed a lot in the community, and I wanted to weigh in too. In general, I'm all for this, but it's not a simple "yes" or "no" situation.

I'm not opposed to pipeline reveals in and of themselves. I think there's value to them that I will discuss in a bit. This includes one scenario that I consider very important, and I hope Hasbro doesn't lose sight of it. Having said that, I do think the practice lost its way. I may be wrong, but I feel like when they started, pipelines were used sparingly. It gave us an occasional peak into the future of the line, but it was used with restraint. As I said, I may be remembering it incorrectly, but that's the way it felt to me. In the current implementation, it feels like everything has been getting a pipeline reveal ahead of its actual reveal.

To me, this started to have a cooling effect on the excitement. You could almost predict what the reveals were going to be for any given livestream or event. All you had to do plumb the backlog of pipelines, and you could guess fairly accurately what would be shown. There were no surprises anymore. The pipelines were the only new news, but a name and a picture of the character lack the impact of seeing the actual figure. It's like separating the sizzle from the steak, and I can't help but wonder if it impacted sales. Case in point, I look at the upcoming Episode IV Luke Skywalker.

That Luke was first pipelined on June 7th as part of the Cantina Fan Stream. The actual figure wasn't revealed until three months later as part of Pulse Con. That's a lot of time to build up expectations. I know I was dreaming of the flawlessly perfect A New Hope Luke Skywalker. That leaves a lot of room for disappointment. When the figure was revealed, and the head sculpt was a total misfire, the community was, you guessed it, disappointed. I guarantee it had a negative effect on sales. I know my planned order was halved upon seeing it. I wonder if Luke was announced and revealed simultaneously, would the disappointment have been less? Conversely, the Snowtrooper is approaching "globally sold out" status. Is part of that due to the excitement of the surprise reveal?

For these reasons, I'm happy that pipelines will be taking a backseat, but I hope they won't go away completely. I don't think they will. There are two scenarios where they have value. The first is when it will aid sales of a complimentary item. Hasbro is aware of this scenario. An example of this would be the E-Wing and Lt. Callahan. The E-Wing wouldn't have sold as well if fans were left wondering for six months whether or not they would be able to place a pilot in the cockpit. But there's another scenario where pipelines still need to be used, and I hope Hasbro realizes it. It's when unmet demand reaches a boiling point, but the figure can't get slotted for a while. Can you imagine if fans still didn't know that Baylan and Shin were coming at this point? There would be open revolt within the community.

There are probably a couple of prominent PT Jedi that are reaching this point. I don't want people reading into that comment. It's just a statement. Not a prediction.

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