Box In A Box?  IT ROCKS!

As you should be well aware of by now, the Jabba's Palace Adventure Set includes carded samples of Han Solo in Carobonite and Ree-Yees. This is a "WOW" moment. By doing this, Hasbro managed to get two "Original 92 (96)" re-releases onto Vintage Collection cards for those who demand such things, while not only offering value to those who don't care about cards (i.e. CJ) via the environment pieces, but also avoiding gumming up the mainline. BRILLIANT! Lets face it. When speaking of the "Original 92's", there are some real duds out there (Rancor Keeper anyone). So this immediately got our minds running of what other sets Hasbro could do, and no, we're not pitching anything with the Rancor Keeper. The first one might make you wince at first, but then I think you'll realize that I'm smart and you're dumb.



You winced, right? Let me guess:

Emperor Palpatine should be in the mainline BRAAAAA nerd rage

Agreed, but did you think of this: An Episode 6 Palpatine is a pretty lame figure without the throne itself, and that obviously can't be incorporated into a carded figure. See? I told you I'm wickid smaht. And I didn't go to college or nuthin'. Selling the throne separately just won't work through brick and mortar channels, but bundling them together in this way will work. Furthermore, Sim Aloo is highly requested, but would peg warm mightily if released in the mainline in any serious numbers. This is the perfect vehicle to check off many diverse collecting boxes. The only question is whether or not Hasbro would be willing to do newly tooled figures via this platform. But if they are...



This is basically the above pattern on steroids. Both figures are "Original 92's", but both have dubious brick and mortar mainline viability. Both are essentially useless without some large accessories that simply wouldn't work on a Vintage Collection card. EV-9D9 needs both her stool and datapad. 8-D8 needs his branding device. This once gets kicked up a notch because a "Jabba's Dungeon" play set was released in the vintage Kenner era, but obviously the spirit of this proposal is different. Including the disintegrating device, with a partially disintegrated protocol droid as well as the Power Droid on the business end of 8-D8's branding would put this set into the stratosphere. The final two figures would not need to be carded.



Editor's Note: Since Chris was too lazy to make more vintage cardback mockups, he was loathe to mention a few more:

Keeping within the theme of the main hall in Jabba's Palace, a couple of ideas could greatly expand upon the one revealed at Toy Fair.

A large alcove to accommodate the existing Jabba's dais, to include the rotisserie, and packed with a Jawa with the palm fan and Fozec

The main entrance archway, along with the computer gamer station and packed with BG-J38 and Sgt Doallyn.

The Palace gate, with the security droid eye, packed with Bib Fortuna and Gamorrean Guard (or B'Omarr Monk).

All of these should interlock in various ways, along with the droid torture room mentioned by Chris above.

Summary

Is it perfect? No. Obviously buying two play sets to get a carded and open Emperor Palpatine is sub-optimal. But if it's that or nothing, I'll take that. To be perfectly clear, I have no information that suggests that dilemma exists. These are just my Toy Fair afterglow ruminations. But the "box in a box" concept has numerous possibilities. Also, EV-9D9 and Sim Aloo offer POTF '85 cardback repack opportunities since they were never released on episode cards during the Kenner line. Other "Original 92" figures that could work in this platform would be the aforementioned Rancor Keeper, the Bespin Guard, Lobot and certainly the 20/21 back cantina aliens. The point is (and I swear I've never used this):

I hope the Knicks choke on Kyrie Irving!

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