Hasbro's Biggest Mistake re: wildly posed E2 figures

[yaddle yodas love pu]

There's two reasons why I think this widespread pre-posing is really going to backfire on Hasbro: 1) it is already clear that the collectors dont like it. Collectors are the base of the star wars figure hobby. A lot of collectors will simply end their star wars collecting now due to the massive shift in production to these wildly posed, cartoonish-looking figures. Boom -- Hasbro's base is gone. After the first 6 months that kids are interested in E2 and then move on to Pokemon 2002, who is going to be left to buy these ugly hunks of plastic? 2) Kids are not as stupid as you think. A lot of them can tell the difference between a figure that can't be posed, and one that has lots of articulaiton. Kids like articulation -- they like to pose their figures. Note that the highly poseable GIJoe ARH sells extermly well, while the unposeable Planet of the Apes figures were instant peg-warmers. Kids also will HATE IT when they buy Slave One only to find that the Jango and Boba figures are fixed in stances far to wild to allow them into the cockpit of Slave One. I remeber my then 6 year old nephew and his mother both being really upset to find that POTF2 Chewie and Han could not fit into the cockpit of the re-released Millenium Falcon.
My prediction: Die hard collectors will buy out of addiction, but their enthusiasum will be low. Casual collectors and on the border collectors will quit collecting star wars entirely. Kids will buy the first wave or two. Then by next Christmas they will just be interested in LOTR2, Pokemon or whatever the fad is then and they will stop buying star wars until E3 comes out. By that time Hasbro will be rehashing Jar Jar, Anakin and Jango Fett for the 15th time each and even die hard collectors will not buy those. Then who will buy the figures?

[bigbarada]

What's really going to hurt our position is the completist collectors. Here we are trying to get Hasbro to rethink it's strategy and make some changes and these people are buying up tons of figures that they hate just so they won't have any holes in their collection. If you don't want crap figures, then don't buy crap figures. Hasbro will never get the message if we keep throwing money at them.

I think the super-cool, 30 points of articulation, Spider-Man toys will be a big competitor for Star Wars when the movie is released just a few weeks before Ep2.

[Jayspawn]

Damn straight! Kids can tell then a figure is really cool by the many ways you can play with it. You can't play with it if it just sits there (like Episode II figures for example).

[jedibear]

These "wildy posed" Episode II figures we've seen shots of are NOT all there is.

Just remember how many different versions of core characters there were for EpOne....granted, I don't think Hasbro will go quite as nuts this time around, but I think it's a safe bet we'll see multiple (more posable) versions of Jango, Obi, Ani and more...

As for why those POTA bombed....where to begin...ugly garish packaging, ugly sculpts, no posability, and an uninspired movie.
Oh well....they could have taken a page from Medicom's book (they produced figures based on the original movie series)...while for the most part, they were unposable, the likenesses and detailing was top-notch along with the handsome packaging.

Getting back to SW....I think that based on the pics of the new unified card and the great detailing & sculpts that have graced the POTJ banner, we'll have plenty of good figures to look forward to....

[yaddle yodas love pu]

I've got to disagree with you Jedibear. I don't have as high hopes for E2 as you do. So far we have seen pics of about 10 E2 figures. Every single one of them is wildly posed and looks caroonish, and not a single one of them appears to have even the standard articulations that we as collectors and kids alike, enjoy and desire. The trend shown so far is that Hasbro's new philosophy is to make goofy-looking "hulkamania" posed figures, and there is not reason not to beleive that every other of the 50 or so figures that Hasbro has sculpted for E2 will not also be posed in these ridiculous stances. Looking back to POTF2, there were only a small handfull of wildly posed figures (e.g. Hoth Han, General Lando) and remember how we ridiculed these stinkers. Now 10 out of 10 preview pics of new figures have these wacky poses that collectors lamabsted in the past. If it were just one or two f the E2 pic that showed crazy poses, I might hold out some hope. But ALL of the pics show stupid poses, little or no articulation, and little sculpting detail. The trend is clear: all of the E2 figures are going to have these horrific poses and are going to suck and are going to lessen interest in star wars collecting.

[Lord Tenebrous]

There is hope for other, better versions. Like this, for instance:

[yaddle yodas love pu]

There were also really great busts of Jango Fett, Obi Wan, and Anakin, however real scan apparently is a total failure because all of the figure previews we've seen look ludicrous at best at total crap at worst. My hope for getting good E2 figures is gone...

[LTBasker]

The only good figure we've seen so far is the R2 unit. Shoot, look at the Padme figure and at the Real Scan bust of Padme it doesn't look like her costume is pasted onto her skin nor does it look like she's trying to be like a Baywatch Lara Croft. After the whole Theed Amidala situation and now this, I'm really starting to worry about Hasbro...

Directing a line towards kids and a seperate one at collectors is a waste of money which could've meant more and better figures. What do you think some kid is gonna be more interested in? An Obi-Wan that just stands there looking like a monkey or an Obi-Wan that can be posed to fight with Count Dooku and Battle Droids but also can be posed to hang from the droid pack-in?

Everyone's gonna get sick of the kid's line and go for the collector's line so the kid's line will become major peg-warmers and new figures won't be able to ship so the stores who are already cautious about ordering StarWars figures will have another reason to not order anymore and so we'll hardly ever see new and exciting figures.

[Unit-01]

WTF do they have the same damn legs? Is it too expensive to make different ones?

[Paul-Kenobi]

dont forget the economy is bad maybe hasbro dosent have enough monney to make them as good as the EPI figs

but then again i would like to tell a story,

As known i am a fan of Jurassic Park, there are three moives of it there are also three lines of toys made by Hasbro, allso the first line was the best with poseing ation's ect, the next line was allright but then when they came out with Jurassic Park 3 they came out with the first toy line that extreamly sucked, and it was wave one, they came out with whats called Re Ak Atack. They where smaller then the the first dinosaurs,WAY smaller and they where hard plastic, the JP fans didnt like them cuase of there size shape and mold, wave two came out it was alittle better i wanted a large ruber spinosaurs that could be posed will they came out with two the line got alittle better but not to much.

So my point is this is only wave one maybe wave two will be better EPI had 9 or so waves if they do the same with the EPII figs thall prob get better.