anarky wrote:Okay, seven.
I can understand that they weren't looking forward to potentially repeating the Shadows of the Empire fiasco. Still, it was a big disconnect to have all the books in this series for years (even the prequel-era books tied into the NJO at the time), and very little to show for it. Even now, when various Yuuzhan Vong routinely place well in figure polls.
Well, SOTE and NJO are completely different beasts. By "they," I'm not sure if you mean Hasbro or Lucasfilm, so let's look at the situations behind both.
SOTE was treated like a big event, with a novel, video game, comic adaptation, soundtrack, trading cards, and things like that. It was basically a movie release without the movie, on a somewhat smaller scale. But the important part is that it still had visual media where the characters were seen, not just a novel where the reader had to imagine the look of the characters (aside from any depictions on book covers). On Kenner/Hasbro's end, they really didn't do all that much - they only released five basic figures (one of which was really a new ROTJ figure - Boushh Leia - plus some movie repacks on the purple card), two comic packs (with only one character that hadn't yet been made in the modern line - IG-88), and three vehicles (one of which was Boba's Slave I). That was all planned ahead of time and released around the same time. (The closest comparison would probably be the 2003 Clone Wars push, with novels, comics, the micro-series, and Hasbro products all released around the same time.) So while there was a novel, there was also the visual media of the comic and the video game from which people could recognize the characters. And since 1996, we've only gotten two SOTE figures - a Xizor resculpt and sexytime Leia.
Quite differently from SOTE's multimedia push, NJO encompassed 19 novels released over a four-year period (1999-2003) and . . . nothing else aside from some magazine stories and material in reference books. No comics, no games - nothing visual, which, again, is the key to the equation. NJO might have "mattered more" to the overall SW story than SOTE, and comics about the Yuuzhan Vong invasion were eventually published from 2009-2011 (though they weren't straight novel adaptations), but the fact remains that they don't have anywhere near the visual reference as SOTE. Hell, the Jacen and Jaina figures are based on artwork that wasn't even officially released in the United States. Had Dark Horse published a comic adaptation at the same time as the novels, I don't think there would have been as few NJO figures.
So the dedicated SOTE figures (that weren't also from the films) we have are:
*Prince Xizor (x3)
*Dash Rendar
*Luke Skywalker in Imperial Guard Disguise
*Chewbacca in Bounty Hunter Disguise
*Swoop Biker
*Leia Organa (Nightgown)
The dedicated NJO figures are:
*Luke Skywalker
*Jacen Solo
*Jaina Solo
*YVH-1
*Nom Anor
(Who are the comic pack characters? There weren't any dedicated NJO comic packs since there weren't NJO comics, so I'm drawing a blank.)
I'm having a hard time finding previous fans' choice poll results but I don't remember any Yuuzhan Vong characters other than Nom Anor ever being on any of the lists. There are typically some EU choices but are usually from Heir to the Empire (which, despite starting out as a three-novel series, got a comic adaptation and thus was easier to fit into the comic packs line) or SOTE (Dash and Guri both made it in 2009, at least). So I don't know where you're getting that claim.
Shit. I can't think of a good signature.
