Hasbro Brand Team Q&A With Fan Sites
7/15/2021 Hasbro The Black Series The Vintage Collection
The Hasbro Star Wars Brand Team met with fan sites this morning to answer questions about recent reveals and up-coming Star Wars figures for Star Wars: The Black Series and Star Wars: The Vintage Collection. Here are the JediBusiness.com questions and answers paraphrased and shortened, with the full interview video for you to watch below.
Q: You revealed the Hasbro Pulse Con exclusive figures for this year, including the Black Series Cantina Showdown 3-pack. Is Ponda Baba's arm removable or will there be an extra arm included?
A: The arm cannot be taken off. The arm is a re-use/repaint of the Black Series 6" Luke Skywalker Ceremonial figure.
Q: Could you share more details about the Black Series Cantina Showdown set please? For example, if somebody would purchase multiple sets, could the distillery pieces be plugged together to make a longer display? Are there plans to expand on the cantina display and will the cantina bar pieces be offered separately outside of the set?
A: Two of the sets will make a full race track bar area. The round section of the bar is separate from the straight section and the backdrop piece (distillery) is designed so that you can nest two of them back to back. The bar pieces themselves can be reconfigured to create the race track shape. So you basically need two sets. There are no plans to offer the cantina pieces separate outside of this multipack currently.
Q: The Vintage Collection Republic Trooper won the fan vote and will be re-released with a photo real update next Spring. We have not seen the card yet but you mentioned that it would be updated to bring it up to code. Does that include a logo change from the Expanded Universe logo to a Star Wars logo? Currently we don't have the Expanded Universe logo in the Vintage Collection.
A: This is still unclear, we are still working through that. More in the future.
Q: This next question was shortened because Victoria's Cantina already asked a very similar question, you can watch her talk about it roughly 23:20 minutes into the video below.
I was hoping you could address the pre-order issues that we've been dealing with. There are five different issues.
a) Retailers don't have enough units, we had a Retro Collection Boba Fett sell out in under one minute on the Target website
b) Not enough time between announcement and pre-order time (TVC Bad Batch multipack Amazon)
c) Pre-orders get announced on a specific date/time and then are not made available (Walgreens TBS 212th Battalion Clone Trooper)
d) Retailers take pre-orders and then cancel them later. This has been happening with Target and Walmart. So then people have to re-order product.
e) It's pretty tough to be online on 3 or 4 different websites at the exact same time, can this be spread out?
From the question talking points A and E were actually asked.
A: The goal is to make figures available for more than just one minute and we will likely not see a quantity like we saw with the Retro Collection Boba Fett figure again. We are aware of the kinks with pre-orders and are working through them where possible. In terms of spreading things out, I don't think we'll see pre-orders at 1pm, then 1:30pm and then 2pm, that could get confusing. But we are looking at spreading things out by maybe waiting a month before revealing another figure and making it available for preorder, so we are looking at it in that way.
Q: With the Cantina Showdown set in the Black Series line we now have a total of 33 figures with the Lucasfilm 50th logo on it, versus only 6" figures in the 3 3/4" line. Without giving away specifics, are we done for The Vintage Collection and the Lucasfilm celebration or will this continue for TVC later this year?
A: There are more figures to be revealed throughout the year where the packaging will feature the Lucasfilm 50th logo. This goes for Star Wars: The Black Series and Star Wars: The Vintage Collection.
Thank you to Patrick Schneider from Hasbro for making this interview possible!