Who Do I Have To Bribe To Get This In The Vintage Collection?

Yesterday I received the latest A New Hope Retro Collection multipack from Hasbro Pulse. It's another case of me hating the Retro Collection until all those times that I don't. If Hasbro makes Retro Collection versions of the 20-backs, I'm getting those too. Sue me. But as I looked over the completion of the Retro Collection 12-backs, it suddenly became bittersweet. On one hand, I was happy that I acquired an affordable facsimile of a perfectly white Kenner R2-D2 with a pristine sticker (it's increasing difficult to find a real Kenner one in this condition). On the other hand, the realization hit that it only took four years to accomplish the 12-back set in the Retro Collection.

All twelve had to be 100% newly tooled from the ground up, but that was no impediment. Six of them didn't even have to wait for their turn in main line. They were banged out in one fell swoop as a Hasbro Pulse/Shop Disney exclusive. Meanwhile, in the on-again, off-again fourteen years of the Vintage Collection, we've only managed to get six of the 12-backs on the debut cards, and a seventh with C-3PO on an Empire Strikes Back card. Only two of those figures were 100% newly tooled, and both of those came during TVC 1.0. There were the aforementioned VC06 - C-3PO (2010) and VC93 - Darth Vader (2012). In the five years of TVC 2.0, Hasbro hasn't seen fit to invest new tooling dollars in a single 12-back figure. That's insanity. We've did get three repacks of 12-back figures with VC141 - Chewbacca, VC149 - R2-D2, and VC161 - Jawa, to go with two retools which were VC199 - Tusken Raider and the outstanding VC231 - Stormtrooper. In fairness to Hasbro, the latter is so outstanding that we can perhaps give them credit for 2.5 newly tooled 12-back figures.

The Retro Collection's lifetime exists entirely with that of the Vintage Collection, yet it managed to cross off the entire 12-back subset while TVC is just over 50% of the way done. Granted, some of this is due to the fact that none of those figures existed within Retro, whereas multiple versions exist in the 3.75" scale, but that alone doesn't explain the disparity. Also, I know that 5POA tooling less expensive than TVC tooling, but it's not like the former is free and the latter requires a multi-generational loan. If we look at the respective price points, we can deduce that Retro tooling is around 70% of TVC tooling. 70% of twelve rounds down to eight. If Hasbro had made just half of that investment in 12-back new tooling for Vintage Collection, fans would be thrilled. According to NASA, half of eight is four and four means:


And we'll take them all in a box set so they don't interfere with main line. Just like Retro.

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