Pulse Con 2022 Follow Up Q&A Coming Later This Morning

At 8 AM ET, I will be participating in a Q&A with the Hasbro brand team. I hope to be able to post a video of a recording shortly thereafter (actually, I'm in the same session as Tim from Bossk's Bounty, so hopefully I can be really lazy and just embed his upload). In the meantime here are the questions to which we'll hopefully get answers.

1. Fans of the Vintage Collection get frustrated when they ask for a figure, and the response is “what other figure would you take out of the line?” This is confusing to us as consumers. We assume that TVC figures are sold for profit, so it’s bewildering when fans asks for more, and the response is that we would have to remove something else from the line. As consumers, our expectation is that businesses would be thrilled to sell as many profitable items as possible. If we want a new Episode IV Luke, why must we then sacrifice another planned figure from the line? If both would make money for Hasbro, why can’t we have both?

2. Hasbro was recently asked why new media figures are better represented in The Black Series as compared to The Vintage Collection. The response was that TVC tilts towards the OT, but this doesn’t seem to make sense. Aside from Lobot and the Bespin Security Guards, every recent TVC OT figure also exists in TBS. TBS also has the Ewok Village Leia, which TVC desperately needs, so this is really only a net difference of 1 figure. Meanwhile, as just one example, TBS has the entire Bad Batch crew which is 6 figures. Any TVC OT bias can’t explain this discrepancy. Is it more accurate to say that TBS simply has a much larger budget?

3. The quality of the newly tooled Vintage Collection figures in 2022 is incredible, but this presents an inconsistency in our collections. We have outstanding figures of a relatively low visibility character such as The Mythrol, but figures of cornerstone characters such as Episode IV Luke and Leia are lackluster in comparison. Do you sense any pressure bringing these critical figures up to the current standards?

4. The concept that certain figures “should always be available” is popular in the TVC community. The most often cited example of this is the OT Stormtrooper as something that fans should always have access to. This is currently exacerbated by the fact that the Walmart O96 Stormtrooper has well underserved demand. From a factory and resource allocation standpoint, is it even feasible to have certain figures continuously available?

5. Can you provide some more details on the recently pipelined Episode VI Darth Vader? Will the portrait reveal be accomplished via swappable heads, or a removable helmet? Will it have interchangeable hands like the recent Dark Times Darth Vader?

In the event that one of the above five gets asked by one of the other participants, this is our alternate question:

6. It’s great to see the pipeline reveal of some of Jabba’s Palace repacks. Fans need access to these figures because the secondary market prices for most of them are astronomical, but once again these are all TVC 1.0 and TVC 2.0 figures. TLC figures were, for the most part, just as good as TVC 1.0 figures and there are two Jabba related figures from TLC that are even more inaccessible to fans. They are Nysad and Giran. If these recently pipelined figures do well, can you please look at re-releasing those two figures as well? Fans are virtually begging for them, and other TLC figures.

---

comments powered by Disqus