TVC 2.0 is Great, But….

In the HBO series Silicon Valley, there is a scene where the group of software programmers and engineers are sitting around the office "complaining" about their boss, Richard. They like him and are extremely loyal to him, but they recognize he has a lot of flaws. In the scene, they share their concerns with each other, but they start each complaint by stating, "Richard is great, but ya know..." After several times, one of them says they should just save time by saying the shorthanded "RIGBY" instead of the whole phrase. This is to just say the obvious up front, I ride or die with TVC, but ya know...


For me, this is probably the worst thing about TVC2.0. For the OT, Hasbro has been rather unkind to the main characters. A few exceptions include the 3 Lukes originally from the Jedi Destiny 3-pack and VC280 Darth Vader (Death Star II). But since the relaunch of the line, almost any figure based on the main characters has been a tragic disappointment. Some manage to be decent despite themselves, but the majority of offerings of Luke, Leia, and Han have been poor. In Luke's case, along with some big missteps with his OT figures such as VC151 (Yavin), VC198 (Endor), even the post-OT versions have been badly flawed such as VC264 (Imperial Light Cruiser), VC131 "Exile" and VC146 (Crait). Leia and Han also have several subpar figures, and frankly, I'm too lazy to link all of them. In these cases, Hasbro took several shortcuts when they refreshed or repurposed existing tooling. Some tooling goes back over ten years. This simply isn't acceptable for Star Wars royalty. Aging parts, missing articulation, or weird accessories (like Endor Luke's helmet being permanently attached) have been the norm for the OT mains.

STOP TREATING THE MAINS LIKE TERTIARY BACKGROUNDERS!


Hasbro likes to re-use tooling to make the most profit from their investment. This is completely understandable. But it is frustrating when they continue to milk some sculpts, even beyond the point where a significant upgrade to that base figure has already been announced. Most notably, this occurred with the clone troopers based on the poorly aging VC45 sculpt. Even after a new Clone buck was pipelined (which eventually became VC269) Hasbro continued to cram release after release based on VC45. I'm not a great judge of numbers, but by my count there are at least...462 basic figures in TVC 2.0 based on VC45. Even the craptastic army builder 4-pack was released after we already knew a better figure was coming soon. Other examples include the VC234 R2-D2 and VC260 R2-SHW, which unearthed the now horrible VC25 BAR2-D2 sculpt, even though much better astromech parts exist.

STOP GIVING US CRAPPY SCULPTS WHEN BETTER OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE!


TVC is the world-building scale. As such, we expect - nay, we demand that our figures have partner characters, ships, or environments so that we can display them as they should. Despite this being one of the core qualities of the 3.75" scale, Hasbro manages to provide us with figures that have no context. In almost all of these cases, I would have preferred Hasbro save their tooling efforts for something that could help build out an existing world. A prime example is VC155 Knight of Ren. It's almost like Hasbro had thrown in the towel on this one when they named it so generically. What were they supposed to call the follow up figures that never came? (Other) Knight of Ren, followed by (Yet Another) Knight of Ren? This guy will forever have no purpose in my collection. While many people feel they can safely skip this guy because they thumb their noses at the ST, a figure that seemed to be universally well received suffers the same problem: VC123 Stormtrooper (Mimban). This guy is pretty great, but has absolutely nothing to do on my shelf besides look cool. He's got nobody to fight. To be fair, we didn't actually see any Mimbanese on screen during the battle, but we did at least see plenty of Mudtroopers that could add depth to these Imperial Ranks. Then a few retools could have given us Woody Harrelson's crew to boot. Whatever.

STOP GIVING US FIGURES WITH NO CONTEXT!


This one's a weird one for me. While I have no interest in the packaging itself as far as my collecting habits go, I do have an OCD interest in maintaining a proper catalog for our review menus. Hasbro has missed the numbering on MANY occasions. Leia (Yavin Ceremony) was originally released by mistake as VC164 before being corrected to VC150. Din Djarin and Incinerator Trooper are both VC177. VC188 was missed for over a year and a half before finally being addressed. The Mandalorian and Elite Squad Trooper are both VC211. As of this writing, there is no VC271, but Fat Bib Fortuna from the Throne Room set is a duplicate of VC276, along with Clone Commander Colt. After watching so many NFL head coaches botch their time management at the end of games (Andy Reid was the King of this when he was with the Eagles), it's no wonder that some teams added someone to their staff whose sole job was to make sure the HC knew how much time was left and whether or not to use time outs. I suggest Hasbro hire a Vintage Collection Numbering Czar to their team.

STOP MESSING UP MY CAREFULLY CURATED WEBSITE MENUS BY BOTCHING THE NUMBERING!


Despite the missteps mentioned above, most of those figures still turn out pretty good. The vast majority of TVC figures these days are borderline works of art. But every once in a while, a total irredeemable pile of plastic nonsense makes it through to retail. VC146 Luke Skywalker (Crait) has my vote for worst figure in TVC 2.0. Poor articulation is rendered even more useless by terribly executed clothing - and it's Luke! Another terrible figure is Captain Rex. While Luke is Luke, the fact that his figure is a context-less ST figure means I can live without an update. But Rex was simply a straight repack of the dreaded Black Series 2015 figure - which itself was dead on arrival because it was crushed by the 4 year-old VC54 ARC Commander. (Interestingly, that figure was based on the now hated VC45, but the paint, kama, and accessory loadout completely masked the warts and turned it into a legendary release.) The Rex figure is trash, and needs a proper update based on VC269.

STOP WHATEVER THIS IS!


Already the internet is rife with complaints about the overly large removable helmet on Sabine Wren. Along with another egregious miss with Axe Woves, it's supremely frustrating that Hasbro does this when they have the answer: Swappable heads. But I'll have to see for myself as I don't have the Sabine figure in hand yet. And let's not get started on the 8D8 nightmare...

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