Random Vintage Collection Thought: Happy Days Are Here Again

Posted by Chris on 10/02/21 at 07:05 AM Category: Vintage Collection

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I'm feeling positive vibes across the Vintage Collection community lately. I feel we all sense it. Things are looking up, and we just have to rewind the clock to look at where we were just over a year and a half ago. It was the Hasbro Toy Fair Event in 2020. Toy Fair is one of the tent pole events for our hobby. Heck, it's the 2018 event where the most amazing thing in the history of the line occurred: the launch of the HasLab Sail Barge campaign.

So what did we get at the flagship event in 2020 for Vintage Collection reveals? We got a repacked Slave I, a repacked Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, and the Power Droid. That's it. To make matters worse, we would have to wait until August for the first of those two figures. It felt as if the Vintage Collection was practically dead. There was a pall over the community. Fans weren't angry. They were defeated, which is much worse.

Now let's look at the state of things just last month. We have a big Hasbro event, Pulse Con, coming up on the 22nd of this month, so when a Fan First Wednesday livestream was announced for the beginning of September, we cautioned everyone to set their expectations accordingly. Surely, with a big event on the horizon we assumed the mini-beat would only have minor reveals. Boy were we wrong. The community was buzzing over the reveals of Bib Fortuna, Lobot, and the Emperor, which all went up for pre-order the following day, plus the amazing announcement of the Stormtrooper army builder 4-pack.

BUT WAIT! September wasn't done. Three weeks later on a random Thursday, we got the bombshell announcement of the Droids carded figures. This was as close to a "break the internet" moment that the Vintage Collection has had since the aforementioned Sail Barge campaign launch. The excitement generated last month is inversely proportional to the disappointment stemming from Toy Fair 2020, and I need to remind you THESE WERE NOT BIG EVENTS. There were just minor stops on the way to Pulse Con.

We went from two figures at Toy Fair 2020 to two major weekday drops in one month in September 2021. My, how things are looking up. I can't wait for Pulse Con.