Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Just like they did last year, Hasbro won’t be showing any toys from Rogue One at Toy Fair this year, per a statement from the company. On the other hand, we do expect lots and lots of The Force Awakens stuff!
Meanwhile, for the rumor hounds, Making Star Wars has a pair of reports. The first pertains to an all-new villain and his striking wardrobe, while the second has to do with hero disguises and code names.
“Hasbro feels they have released plenty of female characters in the line.” That’s the money quote, from a Toy Fair Q&A with collector site Jedi Temple Archives. Granted, it doesn’t seem to be an exact quote, but the sentiment is pretty clear in any case. UPDATE: The answer has since been revised, at Hasbro’s request, to namedrop figures released over the past several years – that Mara Jade figure came out in 2013 – but the problem still remains. The Mary Sue has a great response to this:
It’s not that there aren’t any female characters in their line, because of course that would be untrue—it’s that they clearly take a backseat to the male ones which Hasbro thinks will sell better to boys.
Hasbro also said have no more Leia figures planned at the moment. (Though I doubt that includes The Force Awakens, which they are very much not talking about yet. But then again, who knows?) Asajj Ventress is also in the “no current plans” category.
Does our only hope for more than a paltry handful of women figures rest solely in the hands of the new film? We know there are multiple women in the cast, but such is the case with Rebels, and that rollout certainly hasn’t been without issues. (Though the recent issues finding figures – all figures – is likely due to an ongoing labor dispute at west coast seaports.)
Last night brought Rebelscum with a listing of The Force Awakens toys that are currently being solicited. Hasbro has covered their tracks pretty well as far as Episode VII information – most everything is ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ and such – but Making Star Wars has some analysis. There is a remote control droid that I fervently hope is BB-8, because who doesn’t want that?
(And don’t forget, spoilerphobes, that we may have already seen a Black Series leak.)
In any case, don’t expect to see these toys legitimately at the upcoming Toy Fair in New York – Hasbro sent out a press release that they won’t be showing any of their The Force Awakens stuff. Pity, because certainly they have something that only ‘reveals’ the same things we saw in the trailer? Like, say, a remote controlled BB-8? An X-wing? Rey and her speeder? Perhaps they’re saving those sort of reveals for Celebration or SDCC?
Once again, we’re getting Rebels news via toys, but at least we’re seeing a few different varieties of toys. Toy Fair 2014 is going on in New York, and Newsarama has a good pic-heavy report on the Rebels stuff, while Yakface has the official pics.
First up, we see a likely candidate for the show’s second female character: A pink-armored (possibly red or orange?) Mandalorian. We’ve been assuming the first woman is green Twi’lek Hera, we’ve seen only in LEGO form thus far, but she doesn’t seem to be making any Hasbro appearances. (We know there are two women in the ensemble, though surely there will be more to come.) The alien Zeb, another unannounced LEGO reveal who seems to be based on early McQuarrie concepts for Chewbacca, also figures heavily.
(It does seems pretty weird that there’s a Zeb toy but not any of Hera and barely one of the Mando. Zeb isn’t officially announced, so that isn’t it… Hasbro, you have to make toys of women to sell toys of women, c’mon.)
Also revealed? Agent Kallus (of course,) an Imperial (of course.) And although not on display, a Rebels-branded Threepio and Artoo were shown at the Hasbro presentation, where it was announced they’ll figure into the show somehow.
There’s also plenty on the Inquisitor, Kanan, and Ezra, including some of their gear and spaceships.
We were a tad worried about the latest Mara Jade figure when Hasbro cancelled the Droid Factory line, but the word out of Toy Fair today places her back among the upcoming releases – in the Black Series wave 2. It doesn’t appear she’s getting a size upgrade – the series will contain standard 3¾” figures as well as the new 6″ ones – just geared towards “collectors,” which I’m guessing means the figure will be even harder to find and cost more than it would have before. (Sigh.)
Thanks to @ASMzine and @Yakface for the heads-up and answering my not-a-collector questions, and Jedi News for their liveblog, which confirmed that the figure is the Fan’s Choice version we saw last year.
LEGO announced at Toy Fair that they have extended their license with Lucasfilm for Star Wars-themed toys, video games, etc. for another ten years. So not only will there be twenty new Star Wars LEGO building sets released in 2012, we’ll be seeing lots of LEGO Star Wars merchandise until 2022 (or probably longer).
As part of the announcement, they released some stats including that the LEGO Star Wars video game franchise has sold more than 30 million units with their four titles (and Joystiq seems to think they have a sequel in the works to their 2011 The Clone Wars video game). Also, from Toy Fair, Kotaku has some photos of some The Old Republic building sets and The Lord of the Rings sets (a new license for LEGO) and Collider’s got images of The Avengers sets. And for those who want to drool over all the revealed sets, FBTB has your full LEGO Star Wars set coverage from Toy Fair.
Toy Fair is going on this weekend, and according to multiple reports, Jedi Master Mara Jade Skywalker was voted the Fan Choice figure. (You might remember the contest from last fall.) Unfortunately for those of us hoping to finally get a Mara figure without that blasted catsuit…
#StarWars Fans’ Choice tidbit: Mara Jade Skywalker will use Adam Hughes artwork as a start. #hotness
— Imperial Holcron (@ImpHolocron) February 11, 2012
Yeah. That artwork. (Again?) Sigh. I’m not hearing anything about a a prototype yet, but as always, we’ll have an eye out for updates.
The other Star Wars talker of Toy Fair? A Jar Jar in Carbonite figure will be a SDCC 2012 exclusive. Teehee.
UPDATED! StarWars.com has posted photos of Hasbro’s Toy Fair offerings, and sure enough, there’s no sign of Mara. (Though there is some nice Clone Wars stuff, if that’s your thing.) Needless to say, we’ll be watching Hasbro’s presentations through summer con season with great interest.
Looks like we might be getting a nice long break from The Clone Wars: A schedule snapped at Toy Fair shows that the second season of the show (and a box set of the S1 DVDs) are on track for the fourth quarter of 2009. That means we likely won’t see them until October at the earliest.
We can also expect another video game (??) in September.
It’s not exactly the Dr. Manhattan condom or even the Force Trainer, but J.J. Abrams’ Trek movie does have some serious WTFery going on in the merchandising department, entering the realm of fragrance:
“Tiberius,” in honor of James Kirk’s middle name; “Pon Far,” touted as the Klingon version of “Passion”; and “Red Shirt,” named after the poor, red-shirted souls who never survive the episode.
A Red Shirt fragance, because there’s nothing quite like the smell of fail in the morning, huh? (And pon farr is Vulcan, not Klingon.) They’re not the first media property to branch out: Twilight did get there (and sued!) first. Still, Trek does seem like a reach.
Of course, should it be successful as more than an internet laughingstock and Lucasfilm chose to peruse this new market for Star Wars, there is really only one possible choice for a theme.
Both StarWars.com and Rebelscum are covering the reveals heavily… I can’t even begin to catch up at this point! Above, a Dagobah Frog Habitat from Uncle Milton, another ‘Seriously?’ item from the brains behind the Force Trainer.
UPDATE: More Force Trainer action at Gizmodo.