the vynsane asylum

Ran wrote:It just occurred to me that I don't need the new vintage Wedge figure since I have the Wedge figure that came with the X-Wing from Target.

Has there been any signs of new figures shipping to any stores? The newest things I've seen were the "lost" wave at KMart and Toys R Us.

Not much from what I've seen, though there are still the occasional scattered reports that have been happening throughout the year. Some smaller stores - ie, basically anything aside from Walmart, Target, and TRU - are still occasionally getting in non-TPM, non-lost-line waves, but that's pretty hit-or-miss. The lost line figures seem to be selling through pretty well, so hopefully stores will work their way backwards through the rest of TVC . . . though given that there's not much time left in the year, I bet Hasbro will just sell them online or through discount stores.

HasbroToyShop.com has been getting in more individual TVC figures lately, though, so you might check there now and then. The Lumat wave is now shipping from online stores, though the only place I know of that's selling the figures individually is Amazon, and I'm not sure if theirs are in-stock yet.

And the Wedge isn't the same from the Target X-wing, but it's not THAT different, so if you're not a completist or a carded collector you can probably skip the TVC one.

It appears I've been hit in the head too many times. I bought Wedge from Amazon back in September. HTS has Nikto. but the Navy Commander is sold out. Besides those two, I think I still want Lumat and the Royal Guard. BBTS has both of them as part of a case, but not individually. I'll probably wait a bit to see what shows up in stock at HTS.

TRU has the Ewok/Pilot sets at $30. I got the pilots, but they were out of the Ewoks.

Yesterday we ended up going to the mall. I don't think I've been there since before last Christmas. Anyway, we ended up going into the Disney store. There was a small section of Marvel toys. That made me wonder...Since they own Star Wars now, what kind and how many of toys they are going to carry? The toys they carry from the Disney princesses and Marvel lines don't appear to be exactly the same as other stores.

HTS has free shipping, no minimum. I ordered Evazan. Sad thing is, I couldn't remember if I had any of the skiff guards who've come out this year, so I passed.

Evazan arrived in the mail yesterday. The box was not sealed--not that the tape had been removed; it had never even been taped. The bubble was smushed and the card bent.

And this is what you get when you order from the manufacturer? Jeez.

Went to Walmart last night, and saw a couple Dewbacks. I ran it through the price scanner and it came up at $14.50. The lines were insanely long, so I decided to go back this morning before work. Like most WMs here, its open 24 hrs. So, I get there this morning and ran it through the scanner just to make sure. "See Sales Associate" came up. Crap. Didn't have time for that. I went back after work and ran it through the scanner once more. Still had the same message, but I couldn't find anyone to ask.

I might try again tomorrow.

Never went back to get that Dewback, but my wife said it was still there when she went this weekend. She said she was going to try to find the price for me, but the lines were too long.

Today, she went to a different Walmart (they are all over the place here). She bought me an ESB 4-pack from the Blu-Ray release. It was marked down to $15. The box is a bit beat up. I'm debating opening it to take out the mini-poster.

The one near me had a Dewback, but no longer.

They have a metric fuckton of cherry candy canes on clearance. Unfortunately, my wife made me promise before Christmas I wouldn't get a year's supply... again.

Stopped at a WM today and was surprised to see the pegs had stuff on them. They had the stuff I hadn't seen in a while like the Gammorean Guard, Lorgray, Rebel Trooper, some EU guy, Dr. Evazan, Bom Vidium. Didn't buy anything.

Ran wrote:...some EU guy...

Nom Anor?

Fourteen years ago, Lucasfilm kicked off a multi-year book series where extragalactic aliens invade the galaxy and royally fuck things up, killing a lot of major characters (and a few dozen worlds, and billions of civilians).

In 2012, we finally got the sixth figure based on this.

Sixth.

Oh, and five of them were really tough to find. Two were in the TRU EU wave, and two were in a comic pack together. NJO Luke was a mediocre figure in a mediocre Evolutions three-pack, and I hardly even count he existed.

I'm mostly burned out on SW, but I'd kill a nun to get a nice army of Yuuzhan Vong soldiers, and some of the more prominent missing EU Jedi to fight them.

Yes, that's the guy.

anarky wrote:

Ran wrote:...some EU guy...

Nom Anor?

Fourteen years ago, Lucasfilm kicked off a multi-year book series where extragalactic aliens invade the galaxy and royally fuck things up, killing a lot of major characters (and a few dozen worlds, and billions of civilians).

In 2012, we finally got the sixth figure based on this.

Sixth.

Oh, and five of them were really tough to find. Two were in the TRU EU wave, and two were in a comic pack together. NJO Luke was a mediocre figure in a mediocre Evolutions three-pack, and I hardly even count he existed.

I'm mostly burned out on SW, but I'd kill a nun to get a nice army of Yuuzhan Vong soldiers, and some of the more prominent missing EU Jedi to fight them.

Even when they were heavily making EU figures six or seven years ago, they really didn't dip into the novels that much. Aside from book covers and reference art, there isn't nearly as much visual imagery associated with characters from novels (obviously). So this shouldn't be that surprising.

We also got the YVH-1 as a build-a-droid.

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.

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.

The comic pack was Kyle Katarn vs Yuuzhan Vong. They were based on a NJO story in Star Wars Tales.