For years going on decades, Star Wars toy collectors were led to believe that the Tonnika twins, two humans briefly seen during the cantina scene in A New Hope, were the only movie characters who were absolutely off-limits for toys.
Hasbro wouldn’t tell us if that used to be the case, but perhaps we can read between the lines when the Star Wars team’s Chris Reiff tells us, “Clearly, we’ve done them, and we’re just super-excited to have gotten to do them. It’s a lot of work to do all these projects and to be able to really deliver something special.”
Tiers in the Reign
Somewhat controversially, the crowd-funded cantina offered two separate tiers, a process that was at least partly research to see if fans preferred displays open for shelf display, or completist, possibly for tabletops rather than shelves.
“A ship – you can’t offer two-thirds of a ship,” says Reiff. “But in this case we could offer two-thirds that covers the core aspect of the cantina. It’s tough to say the price point of a HasLab is an entry price point, but it’s an easier price point for a lot of fans, and then the plus-up option for the deluxe to really want to blow it out if you wanna do that.”
“Who knows what happens with the future campaigns,” adds his colleague Jing Houle. “It also gave us a lot of information on what fans are looking for.”
Like a Death Star, perhaps? They both laugh, as we all know they’d never tell us at this stage.
“Good research for everything,” says Houle diplomatically. “We take all the information we can.”
Floored by the Answer
The cantina playset does not include a floor. Would they consider making a printable download for one? The answer is no and for two pretty good reasons. “We didn’t want to limit the layout for people,” says Reiff, “Keeping it modular like we did really let people play it out in different ways. Then, when we took our photos, referencing the movie photos and showing the potential of fan photography with this, we took a plain board and used it as the underlay to get a nice neutral tone under there, and I think it turned out amazing. You don’t even notice it in the shots. And I think that’s a great option for fans to just be able to pick a neutral tone sheet, of chipboard or anything, and put it under there.”
Will more cantina-related figures come back to stores to help populate the diorama? After the obligatory spiel that they can’t talk about anything unannounced, Reiff adds, “You have seen how we have continued to support HasLabs in the past in an ongoing fashion, and I don’t see any reason why that kind of plan changes for the cantina.”
Houle added that they even announced Momaw Nadon (Hammerhead) during the crowd-funding campaign, so fans understood they were on the same page.
Kicking up a Din
In addition to A New Hope, The Vintage Collection will be allowing fans to build out the world of The Mandalorian with a Blurrg, finally, and the Armorer’s Forge. And yes, that Blurrg will go where it should, with Reiff revealing, “We took the 3D files from Lucasfilm and we scaled them to the Vintage Collection scale for the Blurrg, and made sure it would fit in our Razor Crest.”
A new mando will also be designed especially for riding it. Deluxe Cobb Vanth also reveals the new packaging style for the future — where oversized Vintage Collection figures had been coming in boxes of late, they’ll now show up in extra-wide blister cards.
For The Acolyte, the team was somewhat blindsided, along with the audience, as far as which characters lived and who died. (Survivors Bazil and Vernestra were just announced, but will take a while). Says Houle, “Obviously, we worked with Lucasfilm closely on a lot of the figures that we did, and which ones to do, but for sure there were some moments where we went ‘Aaah! No way!’ along with the fans.”
Looking to the Horizon
The carded Archive Collection, while not officially “sunsetted,” has been taking a backseat to boxed rereleases, and fans can expect that to continue. “Doing the box figures in that new packaging that we did, that’s also very historic and nostalgic for us too,” says Houle.
Adds Reiff: “Archive was answering the ‘I want the figure’ request [and] not necessarily a packaging thing.”
All of which brings up the convention exclusive: Darth Maul on his Episode I Sith Speeder. Why confine such an A-lister to such a limited release? The devil is literally in the details. Says Reiff, “We are widely releasing Maul himself, but this variant of Maul with the soft goods and the speeder felt like the right way to celebrate with the throwback package for the speeder. And the Speeder’s the addition here, really. The soft goods are the way to allow that figure that is widely available to work better with the Speeder.”
Adds Houle, “Maul’s really popular, but having that vehicle that you can see at the con, and do the deep cut with the packaging and celebrate the [25th] anniversary, everything about it is great, and there will be some limited quantities available online after.”
What about the tenth anniversary of The Force Awakens next year? (Feeling old yet?)
Reiff is characteristically noncommittal about things not announced. “We’re still working on stories in our plans for things, so more to come on that as we go, but I think ten is not an unreasonable number to celebrate. Do we do it, or do we wait for something later? That’s a decision we make as we build out the line.”
Check out more from the Hasbro Comic-Con Star Wars display in the gallery below:
