The Lack Of New Tooling Is Starting To Drain My Enthusiasm For The Hobby

I’ve really been dreading writing this article, but I knew I had to write it as soon as the Celebration livestream concluded. I had a similar sinking feeling in my gut as I did following the Toy Fair 2020 presentation. Seeing figure after “newly tooled from the ground up” figure shown for the Black Series was rough when the Vintage Collection only had two newly tooled figures announced to go along with Reva which was revealed the previous Obi-Wan Wednesday.

The Black Series got all of the Obi-Wan Inquisitors. We got one.



The Black Series has all of Clone Force 99. We have Hunter pipelined.

This isn’t fun for me to collect. World building isn’t just about vehicles, play sets and environment pieces. A wide, wide breadth of figures is essential. Getting one or two figures from a source simply doesn’t do it for me. I would love to be able to set up a Fortress Inquisitorius display, but I can't. I have an incredible Ahsoka Tano (Corvus) figure that can assume all sorts of dynamic dueling poses, and absolutely no figure with which it can duel. No Morgan Elsbeth or any of her henchmen. No HK-87 droid. The figure is largely useless to me for the way I collect and display my figures.



Hasbro says that the reason for the lack of new media figures is because of the Vintage Collection’s focus on the Original Trilogy, but this is hard to follow. Aside from exclusives, which Hasbro says are extras on top of the line (and also never include all new tooling), Lobot is the only OT figure in TVC that isn’t in TBS, and they have Ewok Village Leia, which I would kill to have in updated in 3.75”. If Hasbro reduced the amount of newly tooled OT figures (which is one by my count in 2021) in order to focus on new media, I would personally quit the hobby. ALL of the A New Hope “mains” need the all new treatment, and those are just the core characters.

I'm tired of playing this Sophie's Choice game. I want an all new Episode IV Luke AND Cad Bane!

The real reason why TBS is getting so many more new media figures is that it clearly has a much bigger tooling budget. Here’s the thing we all need to come to grips with: it has a bigger budget because it’s a better investment for Hasbro. Business is business. Hasbro isn’t going to increase the Vintage Collection budget out of the goodness of their hearts. It has to make business sense. While the budget has clearly been increasing, it’s not happening quickly enough to satisfy most of us. The backlog from when 3.75” was essentially put on hiatus save for a handful of Walmart exclusive figures dug too deep of a hole. Six years later, we still don’t have the full main crew from Rogue One, and new media is coming fast and furious making the problem worse.

Again, Hasbro is only going to increase TVC’s budget if it makes market sense. Since they are not, we can safely assume that it does not. You can sit there from your uninformed position and call them “stupid” for not investing more in 3.75”. Or you can trust that the people with MBA’s who manage a Fortune 500 company with a $11.5 billion market cap know what they’re doing with their budgets. I’m going with the latter. Sure, they might not know Yoda from Yaddle, but they know the best way to spend their money to make more money.

It is what it is, BUT that doesn’t mean we have to like it. As the title of this article suggests, I hate it and it’s making me lose my enthusiasm for the hobby.

 But there is a solution. At this point I need to remind everyone that the community wide petition was for more new tooling for 3.75”. Not for just “more” period. New tooling. Hasbro isn’t willing to take on the risk of a significantly higher tooling budget for TVC, and by the transitive property, this likely means that retail isn’t willing to take on the additional product. So, Hasbro, I’m begging you to open up HasLab to figure packs. Let the fans fund this. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to keep the engagement alive. We need more new tooling!

There will be much more on this subject coming from a number of different sources. 

I will be joining Tim from Bossk’s Bounty, Jayson from Yak Face, and Mr. Miko from the Star Wars The Vintage Collection Facebook Group for a livestream tomorrow afternoon at 4PM. I’m sure this subject will come up. Please try to join us. I will embed the livestream here on Bantha Skull, but you can also bookmark it HERE.

---

comments powered by Disqus