Council of Collectors: Common Issues in Varying Toys

Action Figure Junkies (AFJ) posted an article yesterday with an interesting idea. What if Hasbro produced a 6″ line of GI Joe figures? Click through for some Star Wars related commentary…

It’s been a few years since any GI Joe figures have been released to the mass market, so what would this line look like? AFJ’s article gives an amazing breakdown of what that line could look like, from wave 1 and exclusives, to BAF and vehicles. 

So what is this article doing on a Star Wars site? I am an avid 3.75-er, but there is an obvious market for 6″ figures. Dare I say they probably even make more money than 3.75″? (ouch)… Even I have to admit a 6″ Iron Grenadier or Retaliation Budo would be incredible, not to mention a Black Series Cobra Commander wearable helmet! Aside from the interest in a line like this, what I wanted to point out is that the author, Robert, mentions several of the same points we see come up again and again in discussions here. 

Things are dwindling for GI-Joe fans (more like already dwindled), and so are 3.75″ Star Wars figures. If you consider, we will be getting most likely 2 waves of TVC figures this entire year. Next year has more planned, but with the way distribution is, who knows how many waves will actually make it to stores in 2019?

One benefit we have as Star Wars collectors is the amount of new media for Hasbro to choose from. As the article mentions, though, much of the toy industry is now parents who buy cool stuff for themselves since many kids’ toys are now electronic. Hasbro, we want new material. We have posted a gazillion times about the figures we feel would be worth it from the ST and spin-off movies and TV shows. Please make figures of these characters that are aimed at adults!

Along with their comment about who is buying toys, is a section about what toys they might buy. Right off the bat they mention how WAVE 1 should be a hard-hitter. We already fouled-out with wave 1 of TVC, and are bunting wave 2, but as Hasbro has said, we’re not out of the ball-park yet. AFJ’s ideas for the waves of 6″ GI-Joe figures are excellent, in my opinion. Wave 1 includes the most popular character in GI-Joe: Snake Eyes, along with 3 other figures from the original line of GI-Joe toys.

Huh, could you imagine if Wave 3 of TVC included an extremely popular character or army-builder, as well as 3 figures from the original Kenner line? We might just simultaneously wet ourselves and empty our wallets with joy. But then add to it some new material like Enfys Nest, Chussido, K2SO, Krennic, Calfor, Edrio, Crait Luke, some freaking droids, and I mean, how could you lose? You could hit home-runs every time by choosing the most popular or coolest of characters and selling them to adults who want to buy them.

They go on to talk about build-a-figure (+re-usable sculpts), vehicles, and exclusives. It’s a very comprehensive article, much like the ones about The Clone wars published recently at JTA. 

Do you agree with these issues and solutions? It just goes to show that collectors of all genres and sizes (not referring to the size of the collectors, but the figures here) have a voice when it comes to what they want. As it turns out, that voice is pretty unified. 

*note: 

This article is published with the thought of bringing 3.75″ and 6″ collectors together to have a voice in what they think will be good for Star Wars collecting going forward. 
While not official, this is a meeting for the Council of Collectors. 

Council: “an advisory, deliberative, or legislative body of people formally constituted and meeting regularly.” Most of y’all are here every day, so I’d say that counts.

I plan on using that title whenever an article about issues relative to all collectors is present.

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