Tag: merchandise

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Lucasfilm launches fan art contest; Don’t expect any new The Force Awakens footage at D23

artawakensIn official official news, Lucasfilm has teamed with HP for a fan art competition, Art Awakens. Tumblr has been training for this!

→ With Entertainment Weekly, J.J. Abrams reiterated that we won’t get a new The Force Awakens trailer at D23, or at all until fall. There’ll be no TFA footage at all, “behind the scenes or otherwise,” he said. Of course, that doesn’t mean we won’t get something, like another character reveal or a new poster. (Not to mention things regarding the Parks…) And I’d bet actual money is still that we’ll get something for Rogue One.

→ The Force Awakens scoring sessions are “beyond anything I have experienced musically in my life,” a source tells the John Williams Fan Network.

→ More juice for the theory/hope that Episode VIII will return to film on Skellig Michael at The Star.

→ I won’t be tracking every TFA merchandise leak this month, but here are a few interesting ones: A Micro Machines Millennium Falcon playset, Black Series Finn, Chewbacca and < href="https://twitter.com/Sompeetalay/status/630494610574458880">Kylo Ren and Funko Pop Vinyl figures. My favorite, though, is a lunch bag with some new-to-us Captain Phasma art, which I love because even though she is 100% in armor, the way she’s standing is badass yet makes it absolutely clear that the character is a woman. Men don’t stand like that!

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Everybody go home, there are Star Wars Trapper Keepers

Could it get any more 80s than Artoo and Darth Vader themed Trapper Keepers? Now, I went to a Catholic school that actually outlawed Trapper Keepers during the decade, so I never actually got to have one until the mid-90s… Only to promptly discover that they were kind of annoying to actually use. Still, it’s hard to deny the appeal of these. (via)

There’s a third one with multiple characters on it, but sorry Mead, it’s kind of lame.

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Hasbro reveals The Force Awakens TIE fighter, Fan’s choice winner(s) at SDCC

TIE-fighterTo the surprise of, well, everyone, there weren’t a whole mass of The Force Awakens toy reveals at the Hasbro panel at SDCC. But what they did show was pretty cool – and rather large: A 6″ scale TIE fighter, with “elite” pilot. (There’s a pretty neat display case recreating a scene from the trailer on the show floor now.)

As expected, Knights of the Old Republic‘s Revan won the 2015 Fan’s Choice poll by a landslide, but the results for Rebels Sabine Wren were so good that she’s going to be made as a 6″ Black Series figure, too! They also revealed that a Kanan Jarrus figure is coming to the Black Series as well. Other new 6″ figures include Rebels Ahsoka, a Tatooine Luke Skywalker, a Jango Fett, and one of the new Inquisitors (the dude) from S2 of Rebels. Check the StarWars.com liveblog for pics (very small, with bigger ones coming) and other details.

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The Force Awakens is only six months away!

tfa-teaser2-rey-bb-finn-run-imax1000We’re now six months out from The Force Awakens, Jason Ward at Making Star Wars points out. Six months! Crazy. And will we really see a full-sized Falcon at SDCC? (They did have a Hasbro-themed one at the China Toy Expo in 2013, but that rumor does feel awfully familiar… Still, now that we’re in the real run-up to the movie, it’s hard to predict exactly how high they’re willing to go.)

→ Speaking of highs, The Force Awakens’ second trailer was one for the record books – literally. Guinness World Records today said that the trailer set a new world record: With 30.65 million views in it’s first day, it’s the most viewed movie trailer on YouTube in 24 hours.

→ Emerging yesterday on Jedi Temple Archives was a TFA toy list with not a single recognizable name – No Kylo Ren, no Rey, no Finn, no Poe, no Millennium Falcon. Bizarre, no? I wondered if it was a prank at the time, but it appears they may be in code. Phew.

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The Force Awakens will have a makeup line!

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There will be a The Force Awakens makeup line from Cover Girl, and Rebelscum has some leaked images! (There are no actual TFA images here, just looks from Cover Girl themselves, so I’m not really considering any of this spoilers – read into the lingo as you will, but it’s all fairly boilerplate.) Yes, there is nail polish, but the colors we see in the leaks look pretty standard. Still, the last time we saw a hard push on makeup was with Estee Lauder Yves Saint Laurent back in 1999, so this is a buy-in we haven’t seen in quite a while.

And while as a former nail polish junkie Cover Girl may not be my pick, this does pretty much guarantee you’ll see the stuff everywhere.

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Hallmark will have two The Force Awakens tree ornaments this winter

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The 2015 Hallmark Dream Book is out, and it contains some – but not all – of the Star Wars ornaments we saw at SDCC. Curiously, there are two The Force Awakens ornaments that are yet to be revealed. Odds are probably good that one is a BB-8, but the other?

UPDATE: Jedi News found out that the Admiral Ackbar we saw at SDCC will be a limited release for Hallmark’s Ornament Premiere on July 11. It will only be available in stores.

Head beneath the cut for a shot of the Dream Book’s Star Wars page.

Continue reading “Hallmark will have two The Force Awakens tree ornaments this winter”

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The Force Awakens catchup: BB-8, livestream highlights and more

swca-bb8-jj-kk→ The New York Times had a great feature on BB-8 over Celebration weekend, revealing two things. First, that the version during filming was “a prop built on rollers” – not the fully functional one we saw on stage last week. As mentioned by Kathleen Kennedy onstage, Disney CEO Bob Iger connected the dots, bringing in Sphero to help produce a practical model. And secondly, that a mini toy version – about the size of an apple and controlled via smartphone – will be in stores this holiday season. Bigger versions will (naturally) show up at Disney Parks. Of course, if you can’t wait that long, you can always get a Sphero and make your own….

→ Also in the NYT, a nice look at the folks behind Celebration and Star Wars, including Mary Franklin and Matt Martin.

→ StarWars.com has posted many of the livestream bits (Day 1, 2, 3, 4) as standalone videos: Interviews with Bob Iger, Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, Peter Mayhew and John Knoll and a very beardy teaser breakdown

→ Tosche Station were MVPs this Celebration. They have a thank you to Kathleen Kennedy and a nice roundup of what we learned about The Force Awakens. They also recorded several panels, including John Jackson Miller’s Writing in a Shared Universe, an interview with Ashley Eckstein, the (painful) canon panel, Star Wars Journalism, Del Rey, the Aaron Allston tribute and What Leia Means To Me

→ Mike Cooper at Eleven-ThirtyEight didn’t join us in Anaheim, but he did do some analysis of the teaser and other things we learned about TFA there.

→ An ode to Gary Fisher.

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(Some of) ThinkGeek’s exclusives for Celebration

ThinkGeek is bringing several new items to Celebration – and here are my picks! The Death Star charm above will be coming to the site, but you can get it at Celebration first. And the patch is, sadly, a limited edition that you only get with a purchase of Con Bag of Holding… (Which, of course, I bought before the con.)

The Russell Walks Retro Star Wars Poster Set below, is limited to 250 copies. My heart! Check out the rest at Yakface.

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