007-vf1 Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 Don't forget the little guys.. This models are around 1/200 in scale size... They are tiny...
Fit For Natalie Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 (edited) It's really a playset vehicle more than traditional vehicle, and they've done a good job of catering to the needs of both modes, as well as playability. Retailers are apparently ordering this BIG TIME, banking on it being the huge holiday seller, figuratively and literally. I hope Clone Wars has a bunch of Replublic ground vehicles for Hasbro to make into toys. My Rebels need ground forces, darnit. Edited April 30, 2008 by Fit For Natalie
Shaggydog Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 Good for them, I hope they sell a million. And I like the playset features. But the only feature that forces it to be obnoxiously fat, as far as I can tell, are the smuggling compartments. That particular feature is pretty meaningless to me personally, I'd much rather have a sleeker profile. I guess somebody must care about it...
eriku Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 The parcel post man just delivered my POTF2 AT-AT. I'm glad I never paid full price for this thing, because it's abit cheap and cheesy for what you pay for, and technically the 1997 version was the best of them all in terms of features and deco. Still, I mostly got it to display with the upcoming AT-TE (which now looks much more impressive). The 1997 AT-AT is the only SW vehicle I didn't get rid of (well, that and the N1 Fighter). Sure it's basically a redecoed vintage AT-AT, but it's a fantastic toy and everyone comments on it still. The best part was that me and a buddy scored a few of them back in 2000 or 2001 when TRU was clearancing old warehouse stock of Star Wars toys. Got the AT-ATs for $10 each and got a few 12" Han Solo w/ Tauntaun for $10 each as well. Could have easily made a killing on Ebay but it was far more fun to send them to fans in other states who didn't have TRU's nearby. Thems were the days. I haven't had that much fun with SW toys since then.
Chronocidal Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 My only real complaint about that AT-AT is the size of the head.. yes, I know it's so they can fit a figure in it.. but the crazy proportions of the head compared with the rest of the body make it look like a cartoon.
GobotFool Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 Good for them, I hope they sell a million. And I like the playset features. But the only feature that forces it to be obnoxiously fat, as far as I can tell, are the smuggling compartments. That particular feature is pretty meaningless to me personally, I'd much rather have a sleeker profile. I guess somebody must care about it... I was wondering why it was so fat again. If the removal of the smuggling compartment feature would give us a leaner bird, I'd be all for dumping it.
Fit For Natalie Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 Smuggling compartments (well there's only one, the other one is the repair bay from Empire Strikes back) are pretty famous, though.
ruskiiVFaussie Posted April 30, 2008 Posted April 30, 2008 (edited) I like the smuggling compartments. when i was a kid the coolest features of toys (GIjoes/cobra vehicles) was the fact you could hide figures and weapon stocks in extra compartments. (like the Hydrofoil *name?* and Night Raven) It's sleek enough. Edited April 30, 2008 by ruskiiVFaussie
Fit For Natalie Posted May 1, 2008 Posted May 1, 2008 Big red boat? Moray Hydrofoil. I was always amused that Han Solo was the drugs smuggler with a heart of gold. Hey, that's what 'spice' is.
Vermillion21 Posted May 1, 2008 Posted May 1, 2008 Isn't 'spice' the end all, be all energy source that enables space travel by powering spaceship engines?? The most fought after resource in the universe?? Found on a desert planet named Aarakaas (sp?) wit giant sand worms and fought over by ancient ruling houses??
eriku Posted May 1, 2008 Posted May 1, 2008 Sand worms?? Dude, you're totally thinking of Beatlejuice.
Fit For Natalie Posted May 1, 2008 Posted May 1, 2008 New pics of the Falcon from a Brazilian toy fair
gerwalk25 Posted May 1, 2008 Posted May 1, 2008 New pics of the Falcon from a Brazilian toy fair Looks sweet! It puts the old Kenner/Hasbro version to shame. Any idea how much the new Falcon will cost?
Fit For Natalie Posted May 2, 2008 Posted May 2, 2008 RRP is $149.99USD. Most store computers are listing it as $160-180, depending on the store.
Fit For Natalie Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 Bought an AT-AP today. Now I await the mighty AT-TE
Sam Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 been tempted a few times to get that as well, but always backed out lol. Does look pretty cool though!
Fit For Natalie Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 Its really quite out of scale, but since it barely appeared in the ROTS, best way for Hasbro to make it without spending too much dosh on something most people don't even remember seeing in the movies. Stupid prequels and their vehicle screentime-phobia.
Chewie Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 (edited) Only thing I don't like about the Falcon is that it's never in scale with itself: toys, pictures, databanks, with other ships, figures, people. When I can put the big, nice X-Wing toy inside the "cargo bay" I'll be impressed. All I see here is a mold enlarged and rehashed again. For some reason Hasbro thinks if they release a $400-500 "toy" no one will buy it and everyone knows they are wrong. There are few certainties in life. The ones that are that you will be born. You will pay taxes. You will like/love/hate Star Wars or know someone who does and you will die. The sooner the property holders get this through their heads more than once a year, the sooner I (and quite a few others) will be happy and start buying SW toys again. Edited May 17, 2008 by Chewie
Fit For Natalie Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 Enlarged and rehashed? It's a completely different design and a completely different tooling. They only way they're the same is that they're toys of the Millennium Falcon and both toys share the same Kenner designer. Hasbro is not a collectables company selling to a small niche of customers who can afford several hundred dollar items with relative ease. They are a multi-billion dollar company selling affordable, mass-produced products at brick & mortar retail outlets. In other words, they don't target 'that fat guy wearing the t-shirt that says "Jedis do it Force-fully"', but everybody they can get their bloody hands on. No way will the Walmarts, Targets, Toys R Uses, Kmarts of the world will bother stocking a gigantic toy that costs around $500, at least not in quantity that justifies the expense of the endeavour in the first place. They'd love to make gigantic, expensive things so long as there is the reasonable expectation that A. Retailers will put significant support behind the product, which is where Hasbro make their money directly, and B. the average consumer, *not* the collector alone, will buy the product, thus ensuring the retailer will continue to reorder the product. They're releasing their two biggest SW toys this year because 2008 is Clone Wars, and is a big kids-push year. Get kids and their parents excited aobut Star Wars again and you'll see AT-TEs and Falcons steadily moving off shelves faster than they would during the years where there is no Star Wars mass-market media.
Chewie Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 Enlarged and rehashed? It's a completely different design and a completely different tooling. They only way they're the same is that they're toys of the Millennium Falcon and both toys share the same Kenner designer. It's bulky, fat and looks almost identical to the Kenner/Hasbro versions. 2 1/2 feet long doesn't make up for someones lack of vision. Hasbro is not a collectables company selling to a small niche of customers who can afford several hundred dollar items with relative ease. They are a multi-billion dollar company selling affordable, mass-produced products at brick & mortar retail outlets. In other words, they don't target 'that fat guy wearing the t-shirt that says "Jedis do it Force-fully"', but everybody they can get their bloody hands on. No way will the Walmarts, Targets, Toys R Uses, Kmarts of the world will bother stocking a gigantic toy that costs around $500, at least not in quantity that justifies the expense of the endeavour in the first place. They'd love to make gigantic, expensive things so long as there is the reasonable expectation that A. Retailers will put significant support behind the product, which is where Hasbro make their money directly, and B. the average consumer, *not* the collector alone, will buy the product, thus ensuring the retailer will continue to reorder the product. I will agree to an extent. However, your "small niche" makes sure that items ranging from $5-25,000 sell out before they hit shelves, regardless of where they are supposed to be shelved. Be it an online exclusive retailer or Wal-Mart. There is a market for the items, everywhere. Not just the "fat guy". faster than they would during the years where there is no Star Wars mass-market media. With this I completely disagree. While my days of waiting for stores to open or standing around a 24 hour Wal-Mart at the wee hours of the morning every day to see if I could get a fresh case to find one figure are over, I still have my "connections". I can tell you with complete certainty that the items are still stupidly hot all the time. I still can't walk into one of our Wal-Marts, Targets or our Toys R Us and find any ships at all or any figures that aren't from 8 months ago. In fact, in the last 6 months the only ship I have been able to find was the Clone Wars Republic Gunship and it was on clearance right after Christmas and that was at ONE Target. The market is there, and they would do well, they just won't because they know damn well that if they release the good stuff once-twice a year we will suck it up like it the last drink of water in the Sahara.
Fit For Natalie Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 But how many of these high-priced items are sold? Hundreds? The low thousands? Hasbro deals with hundreds of thousands toys in an average run across a broad range of products across the world. While Star Wars has a historically stronger collector market than most of Hasbro's other toy franchises, an off-movie year still generally has a lower production run (and sales expectations) than what they would do during a year where there is some major mass media that helps flog the toys to the masses. A large, expensive toy will move more quickly when it does not have to depend mostly upon collectors buying them up. Oh, and I think a ridiculously large, accurately-scaled Millennium Falcon would be impractical, too expensive and less fun to play with if a child can't reasonably pick it up to fly around their room.
Fit For Natalie Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 And I care about kids having fun with toys, because I believe in toys being fun. We're not up to the point where Japan is now where they are simply running out of young people to sell things to due to their rapidly aging population. So far Hasbro does a good balance.
Chewie Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 In all reality I do too, but I also think that having such a huge (compared to other genres and/or 10 years ago) market for such items, they should do SOMEthing. Hell, I don't have to tell you what they are doing for Transformers and Star Wars is 100 times (in terms of size and fandom) the franchise.
Fit For Natalie Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 (edited) I think the reason Hasbro avoids collectory stuff is because generally other manufacturers provide that product, and whenever Hasbro attempts to do one of their own (see Unleashed, or that Vader statue of theirs), its compared unfavourably despite being more affordable. Of course, its also not their area of expertise. I assume that's why they sold off the SW 12-inch license to Sideshow - let somebody else who can give those sorts of product the time it deserves while Hasbro concentrates on what they're good at. Edited May 17, 2008 by Fit For Natalie
Uxi Posted May 18, 2008 Posted May 18, 2008 Hasbo has definitely done their nod and wink to the collectors market, usually with exclusives (hello Mandalorian sets). I would love to see something comparable to the USS Flagg done for this Star Wars line. It doesn't need to go to mass retail, either, but could be limited to the Star Wars shop or Habro's online store and maybe a single retailer exclusive. I was eyeballing the Ultimate Lego Falcon the other day at Downtown Disney and that thing is awesome. A Flagg-sized Falcon would work to appease the Collectors and they could gor the kids with another iteration of their underscaled and gimmicked version at the same time.
Fit For Natalie Posted May 18, 2008 Posted May 18, 2008 (edited) Yeah, but see, most companies that deal in mass production toys normally do not want to do exclusives unless they don't really have a choice or are directly requested to do so. This is why most exclusive toys are repaints or minor retools/kitbashes of existing toys, and it is a internet toy collector-created myth that companies do exclusives to explicitly make life harder for collectors. Hey, they like money, and if they could, they would sell everything everywhere. For products that are expensive to develop and manufacture, they want to be able to sell them to as many retail outlets as they can convince to stock them, to recoup their costs and make a profit. The more units they make, the cheaper each unit costs, and the cheaper the recommended retail price will be. This is why convention toys cost so much - there's only 4,000-5,000 odd units as opposed to hundreds of thousands in a normal retail run. Edited May 18, 2008 by Fit For Natalie
Shin Densetsu Kai 7.0 Posted May 18, 2008 Author Posted May 18, 2008 I would love to see something comparable to the USS Flagg done for this Star Wars line. It doesn't need to go to mass retail, either, but could be limited to the Star Wars shop or Habro's online store and maybe a single retailer exclusive. I was eyeballing the Ultimate Lego Falcon the other day at Downtown Disney and that thing is awesome. A Flagg-sized Falcon would work to appease the Collectors and they could gor the kids with another iteration of their underscaled and gimmicked version at the same time. The next big item rumored is a Star Destroyer.
Uxi Posted May 19, 2008 Posted May 19, 2008 That would be nice. Just for reference, the Ultimate Collectors Lego sets go for (MSRP): $300 for the Star Destroyer and $500 for the Falcon.
Fit For Natalie Posted May 19, 2008 Posted May 19, 2008 The next big item rumored is a Star Destroyer. I'd prefer the Tantive IV Blockade Runner, since an iconic battle scene from the very first Star Wars was featured on it, and would probably be more managable as a toy, and wouldn't look so ridiculously out-of-scale. They can then repaint it as the Ep III Tantive IV for fun scenes where Yoda, Obi-Wan and Jimmy Smits talk and talk and talk. Yeah, yeah, I know the Ep III Tantive IV was a different design. One of the Q&As asked about the feasibility of Hasbro doing the Juggernaut Turbo Tank. Hasbro said that they couldn't risk doing such a large vehicle based upon a cameo in Ep III that lasted a few seconds, so we better hope it appears in the new Clone Wars series.
Vifam7 Posted May 20, 2008 Posted May 20, 2008 (edited) At the Shizuoka Hobby Show - 1/144 scale Star Wars pre-built/pre-painted collectibles by F-toys Confect (the same company that released the 1/144 Chara-Works Macross Collection Vol.1 & 2). The placard seems to suggest that these collectibles are be based on a sculpt by Fine Molds. Edited May 20, 2008 by Vifam7
Fit For Natalie Posted May 21, 2008 Posted May 21, 2008 I'm thinking of using GI Joe ground vehicles as Rebel/Republic armour. Can anybody think of appropriately industrial/futuristic-looking GI Joe vehicles that would fit the bill? So far I've only thought of the Avalanche (for it looks abit like Yutrane-Trackata's tracked tanks) and the ultra-rare Blockbuster (reminds me of the Juggernaught Turbo Tank).
Chewie Posted July 25, 2008 Posted July 25, 2008 I JUST got home from Wal-Mart and they were busy breaking street date on a sh*t ton of new figures and Clone Wars toys and the new line of regular figures. They also had the new-box vehicles, the new legos AND the new Falcon. It's effin' HUGE. They also had the Clone Wars AT something or another. Damn I forget the name already. I took a bunch of pictures I can post last if anyone cares. I couldn't pick anything up myself but I was really wanting the '1st day of release' Clone War movie figures they had.
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