There Is A Way To Mitigate The Risk Of Bringing Arleil Schous To Market

As we all know, the Cantina frustratingly failed to unlock its final tier. I don't find it frustrating in the sense of "I didn't get my toy" or because there weren't enough backers. It's frustrating because a combination of factors conspired against the campaign to keep it from reaching its full potential, which I believe, in my heart of hearts, was in excess of the required 17,000 backers. I'm not assigning blame for this. Just merely stating an "it is what it is" situation. Obviously no one chose to have the launch delayed. Something happened that necessitated it, but that delay caused a domino effect of consequences that stunted the final backer total. Of this, I am convinced.

As a result, an outstanding figure, that has already been designed and sculpted, is at risk of ending up on the drafting room floor:


It's gorgeous. Even though the figure has been designed and digitally sculpted, Hasbro hasn't cut the steel tooling, and that is the costliest part of the upfront R&D for a figure, and thus the biggest source of risk for Hasbro. They have to sell a lot of a given figure to cover the cost of that tooling. That is why backgrounders are so risky. They might be too niche and not sell enough units to justify the tooling investment. As I've written previously, I'm no longer going to stump for figures like Velken Tezeri since the Court Denizens 4-pack still hasn't sold out.

But if tooling can be reused to make other figures, it reduces the risk. Each figure wouldn't have to sell as many units individually. They can make up for it in aggregate. If only there was a second Cantina character the could reuse Arleil's tooling. Oh wait. There is! The YouTube channel, sampoerna quatrain, did a great "Cantina Compendium" series as the HasLab campaign was taking place. In Chapter 6 of the series, he covers every single Cantina customer. There is a third, unidentified Duros in the Cantina (designated as Duros #3). He's seated in an alcove over Greedo's shoulder during the "macklunkey" encounter:


That Duros is wearing the same ski jacket as Arleil:


Arleil's lower body sculpting isn't an exact match, but that doesn't matter to me. If they just painted Arleil's boots black, I would consider it close enough:


Hasbro sculpted a new generic OT-era Duros head for the X-Wing Pilot 4-pack. All they would have to do is reuse the Cad Bane hands, and Hasbro could get two figures out of one set of tooling. If they put them in a 2-pack, the could justify that tooling investment. Hasbro would only have to sell half as many units of that 2-pack as a single carded Arleil. With nearly 15,000 Cantina backed, that seems doable.

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