The thing is that for some reason they won't stick with a great super articulated base figure once they have one. Take the new CW Commander Stone, they had a few good superarty CW molds, but for some reason they redesigned the entire sculpt and made it less moveable that these versions. I don't know that I have ever seen them do that with a Joe figure. I sure wish you could get those folks in the same room.
I know they keep Star Wars and GI Joe design teams separate at Hasbro, and while I love the 25th Joes, I like the SW figures a little better overall, quality wise. It would be great to see Hasbro do a cheap "army builder" set with this type of 25th style tooling (and the easy same-size ball head necks!) someday. It's obvious that Hasbro has assumed and forced re-use in the GI Joe line since 1982. It's been a major factor in the bottom line of the entire line. Star Wars is quite different in that it requires a lot more sculpting and new parts.
I think the big failure with Hasbro and a lot of these figure and articulation issues is threefold: the employees, the design money, and perceived market.
The perceived market: Since AOTC fans have been buying troopers at an alarming rate. In 2002 Hasbro grossly underestimated the demand for the clone troopers. Four years later they really stepped up the amount of clones in the basic line. Since we as fans have been buying in large amounts every clone that they put out, and paying a premium online and at conventions for them, what does this tell the marketing department? More clones. Or, they'll buy any clone we put out no matter how bad. How can they get us to keep coming back to the well? By making slight improvements. If they make a new clone with better wrists or ankles, then we'll re-buy that army to get the new, better ones. Then next year, they can make better shoulders, hips, and we buy them again. If you look from 2002 to now, it's been eight years since AOTC and still no real definitive Clone Trooper body.
Hopefully the Clone Wars line will recify this line of thinking (they see the profit of getting a good body, and reissuing it to all hell, and how we're still buying 2 years later, with minimal complaints.)
The Design Money: I think there are a number of very lazy sculptors and engineers at Hasbro who are milking their salaries as long as they can. In any other design job, you lose your employment when you do bad work. It seems at Hasbro, they're content to dump a large budget at some projects, and minimal cash into others. It's kind of crazy to think that since 2004 Hasbro has dumped a ridiculous amount of time and money into a figure like ROTJ Luke, but still hasn't hit the mark. They totally could have made the 2009 figure in 2004 or 2005 and called it a day. Instead they wasted millions on one character and it still is not right. It's a clear sign of entire brand mismanagement.
I think if you were to go through all the figure released between 2004 and 2010, you'll see how many have been re-done to death, and how much money has been wasted by Hasbro. If only they listened to their fans a little more, rather than just give us pretty useless Q&As and contests.
The Employees: What it all comes down to is the people who make these things. My grandfather was an industrial engineer for a major mechanical company in the 1940's and 1950's, designing machine parts, molds, and other parts for various industrial and home machines. In the 50's he got into model railroading in a major way, and would mold his own parts, mix his own plastic. In the early 80's he would remold my Joe weapons, so when I lost them, he'd make me a bunch of new ones out of this great (and probably deadly!) plastic compound he had created.
One thing that always stuck with me was some of his stories from the 70's of his design firm, and how lazy people can be. Once a lead designer mis-measured a gear in a sewing machine they were making by fractions on a millimeter. When this guy was told by an intern that his drawings were off, he got very defensive and passive-aggressive, insisting he was right. Everyone, my grandfather and his partners included, all trusted this employee's measurements (even though he had a rep for being lazy.) Six months later and the prototype is tested, and this was a very anticipated device in their company. Needless to say it didn't work and actually spit out a bit of metal that cut my grandfather's arm up a bit. It made everyone look like an idiot, it cost the firm millions (when millions were millions!
) to re-do the part in time for the client.
A few weeks later the intern confronted my grandfather in the office about the situation. So they pull the guy into his office. The designer (who was freelance) explained that it
didn't really matter what he did, and that it was better if he did it a little bit wrong, as then the firm could get more design work to fix it. So basically he was messing it up the first few times, in the expectation that he would be paid to fix it again; thus getting paid two or more times for the same product.
Sounds a bit like the saga of our AT-AT driving friend, right?
Needless to say, the guy was fired on the spot and worked as a school bus driver until the late 1990's.
Sorry to go all over the place, Spudafett, but it drives me nuts that I've been collecting modern SW since the 1995 relaunch, (and vintage since 1993 i don't count what I had as a kid to be collecting) - and they still use the same straight-up lies and excuses that they used in 1996: It costs too much to tool, it wouldn't sell, no one will buy it. Well take a look Hasbro. Your arrogance is costing you millions. In 2004 with the Vintage line, fans said they wanted every figure to be like that, especially at the $5-7 price range. Now look how much tooling from 2004-2007 you can *actually* re-use for 2010's SW product. Not much, huh? And if you do re-use that old tooling, we won't buy it. Take a look at 2004's OTC line and tell me which of the main characters could actually pass by at retail in 2010. And look at your 2009-2010 product: almost all SA. It took you 5 years to catch up with the fans, why not start the decade off good, and give fans what they want: fully SA troopers.
I guess Star Wars fans really have two options:
be patient and wait until they make a version you find satisfactory,
or be bad ass like Spudafett and make your own.Again, your work is inspiring and you should be really proud!
