Did Bantha Skull Save The Sail Barge Campaign?

If you've jumped here from the front page or Facebook, we apologize for a "clickbait" lead-in, but we had to get you in here somehow. Does Bantha Skull really believe it saved the Sail Barge campaign? Of course not. That would be an insult of the highest order to the Hasbro team who did the real work. We were just along for the ride in a "12th Man" capacity. But there is a component of self promotion to running a web site, and truth be told, neither myself nor Mr. Nomadscout is very comfortable with that. A commonality in our backgrounds has taught us that staying humble is the best path. Nevertheless, we would be remiss if we didn't at least acknowledge what is, at a minimum, an amazing coincidence on the road to 5,000 and beyond. So these are the facts as we understand them:

• On 3/2, Bantha Skull suggested that the inclusion of a POTF Yak Face would assure the campaign reached its goal.
  
• On 3/21, Hasbro announced the inclusion of that same POTF Yak Face with the Sail Barge.
  
• Despite the campaign being at a near standstill, it took off like a rocket ship after the announcement.
  

Now, do we honestly think that Hasbro had taken our suggestion on 3/2 and then had turned it around that quickly? No. (Unless they say otherwise 😊). This seems unlikely. This was more likely just a coincidence and a case of "great minds think alike." Do we also think that the inclusion of the POTF Yak Face is solely responsible for the sudden change in trajectory of the Sail Barge campaign? No. Almost nothing in life is monofactorial. The sudden surge was likely due to a number of factors, to include the wide exposure via Entertainment Weekly as well as the release of the amazing painted prototype imagery. But we do think that Yak Face played a big role.

So what is the point? At a bare minimum, Bantha Skull is in tune with the 3.75" SA collector community. And it's not just Bantha Skull. A lot of fan sites are in tune with Hasbro's target audience for the Vintage Collection, as is demonstrated by this article from Jedi Temple Archives. What we hope the Yak Face success story shows Hasbro is that there is value in making the fan sites an even bigger part of the process than they are currently doing. Don't get us wrong, the outreach for TVC and the HasLab campaign has been phenomenal. However, news usually comes "post decision." If fan sites can become involved, even minimally, during Hasbro's decision-making process for such things as repacks and case assortments, it would go a long way to ensuring brick and mortar viability for the Vintage Collection. We will sign NDA's, if need be!

To put our money where our mouths are, we'll conclude with this prediction:

2018 is going to be a bit of a mess for The Vintage Collection due in large part to the repack of Jyn Erso, and, to a lesser extent, Jakku Rey.

If, come 2019, this fatalist prediction looks accurate, how can we put our prognostication power to its best use?

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