Ok, just got done with the Team (same folks from the Pusle Livestream on Friday).
I warned them I was going to sound like a broken record, but what about the 3.75" line and lack of new decently articulated products? All the attendees were shaking their heads yes when I said that. It was nice for the team to see it was a major concern for all the fan sites.
I left the question feeling a lot better than I did on Friday. One, they stressed this line is not going away nor is the vintage line going away period. They do have new products planned for this. They didn't argue that the 6" line was their primary focus as that is where their business model says they should focus but they are aware of this line and are going to try and do a better job to prove it to us that is going to stay around for a long time. I really liked the guy and didn't feel like he was feeding me a line of bull.
Then came the what about the Clone Wars Line in 3.75"?
Have patience. They do know about the new season of The Clone Wars and how cool it is. He didn't come right out and say it, but I definitely left that question knowing there are at least things coming if not a dedicated line to it. We will be getting some The Clone Wars stuff!
Us 3.75" fans are starving for new product. Since new figures in 3.75" scale have become a rarity, how about some more multipack sets? Each set could come with 2 new figures and 1 repack army builder. Example - Moff Gideon (new), The Client (new), Death Trooper (repack with slight weathering).
They like this idea. There is a tooling constraint. They are also aware fans want this. Congnizant of some fans only wanting one figure out of the three, but they are thinking of releasing packs like this on indvidual vintage cards still in a three pack format. They kept saying they do like this format to get more figures of this scale out to fans.
I person from a European Collecting Site asked about the SDCC Exclusives and the announced Amazon exclusives.
They are definitely still gonna make those available (the SDCC Exclusives) even though there isn't going to be one this year. They are quite sure about when or the format (I think we all just assumed pulse here).
I then had a perfect chance to throw in the question about how can you ensure those great vintage carded figures show up decently shipped from amazon (everyone was shaking their head also at that one)?
They are going to share those concerns we have with Amazon to ensure we get good shipped products. They do not want those products to show up damaged. I felt good at least knowing they were going to make the attempt to improve the shipping.
Some other odds and ends from the other questions.
There were a lot of comments from non US Sites about getting product and continuing to get product. It sounded like they were definitely amenable to hearing their solutions and making sure they got the same access to these products like folks in the US. The barge came up quite a bit and how it really wasn't widely available to non US and Canada folks.
Somoene brought up a 12" line possibility. That seemed to get shot down pretty quickly about not having too many scales out there at one time.
Someone else brought up the need for more Clones in the Black Series Archive Line, that definitely sounded like something they were going to entertain. We all agreed folks would love to see clones, especially clone commanders show up there.
Someone else asked about getting certain figures on certain cards and while I got a bit confused about what they were talking about what I did get out of the team was that they were definitely willing to bring past iterations of legacy or saga figures out again in the current line.
Another person had a question about a lot of characters that have not seen life in the Black Series (TFA, TLJ, TROS) in basically the postquels. They said bascially that they try to spread that around to all the movies.
I also forgot yesterday someone asked if the amazon exclusive Han in Carbonite Slab is the same as the SDD Exclusive back in 2013. It is. This new Han in Carbonite will be the same offering from SDCC.
There was also a question about the new Prototype Fett helmet and if it will have any of the scarring on it that was seen back in the day and they said what we saw is what we are getting.
All in all I felt the team was very amenable and really did want to hear from us even if the questions were a bit tough. I just jumped right in, probably I was in a what the hell moment as I am sicker than a dog right now, and I figured I might get the ole stink eye or a what do you mean type answer, but it was nice to see the brand manager shake his head and acknowledge that he wished he had done a better job last Friday talking about that and putting our fears to rest. It was my first foray with him and I feel he really likes Star Wars and wants to get us the figures we want from this "historic" line. So, I wish I had a bunch of new figures I could say we were getting right now, but I do feel new figures will be coming and then we better buy the heck out of em (he did say let your wallets do the talking).
I am sick right now so I will try to do a better job of rehashing this later, but that was the gist of the talk. They were very nice. Hey I just found out I don't have Covid! Whew!
