In Praise Of Themed Waves

The value of themes in today's collecting landscape cannot be overstated. Hasbro is currently taking a low volume shotgun approach. We get a smattering of figures from disparate sources throughout the year. This flies in the face of they way collecting works.

CJ would say something like:

My figures need the context of their companion pieces. Absent of that, they are of little value to me.

Mr. Nomadscout would say something like:

I've got a super articulated Han Solo, but I don't have a super articulated Qi'ra, Becket, Val, L3, etc, etc, etc. It's very frustrating. It reminds me of the story "The Puppy Who Lost His Way"...

They're both right, although at no point in Mr. Nomadscout's rambling, incoherent response was he even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. So let me settle it for you. Themes generate excitement. It removes the risk for the collector. The world-building conscious collector doesn't have to worry if the companion pieces will eventually be made. They are available at once. Given the low volume of new super articulated action figures combined with the high volume of new media, this becomes a more immediate concern. Furthermore, collecting core characters over a five year period simply isn't fun, and it's problematic from a business standpoint. The collector who has the young Han Solo figure might lose interest before a Crimson Dawn Qi'ra gets released. Meanwhile the new collector might be frustrated that a young Han Solo figure isn't accessible when that same Qi'ra gets released.

Once again, with today's volume of figure releases (which stinks, by the way), themed "waves" might not be possible. In an era when "collections within the collection" is the prevalent collecting paradigm, theming the infrequent waves would leave too many subsets off the table in a given year. But the out-of-the-box product thinking shown at Toy Fair shows that theming across the entire product catalog is possible.

In researching some of the 2009 figures from The Legacy Collection that we've recently revisitied, themed waves were the norm, and I discovered another benefit to this. It allows for a protracted buzz cycle for Hasbro. Hasbro used to announce the wave themes without any specifics. This got the community buzzing and talking about the product. Then later, when the wave specifics were announced, a new buzz cycle started. It was a very "NFL" news cycle approach, whether intentional or not. Fans were constantly talking about the product. This is a good thing.

Ewoks were the original "divisive" characters in the Star Wars universe. Despite this, the product has never failed to sell. I contend that this is due to the fact that Hasbro released that particular large "collection within a collection" as modern super articulated figures in a relatively short time span from 2010 to 2013. If a collection can be realistically completed, collectors will complete it.

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