A happy belated New Year! We are back from our post The Rise of Skywalker winter break and looking forward to what lies ahead in both the Star Wars and action figure universe.
Here’s a quick glance on some of the fun we are looking forward in 2020:
- January – Rise of the Resistance in Galaxy’s Edge, Disneyland; the finale of Star Wars: Resistance
- February – The Clone Wars Season 7 on Disney+; New York Toy Fair
- March – Art of and novelization of The Rise of Skywalker
- April – Tentative home release of The Rise of Skywalker
- May – 40th Anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back
- July – San Diego Comic-Con
- August – Star Wars Celebration Anaheim
- Fall – The Mandalorian Season 2 on Disney+
- October – New York Comic Con
- TBA – Jedi Temple Challenge on Disney+
In anticipation of the return of The Clone Wars, we have saved and just now started the audio performance of Star Wars: Dooku – Jedi Lost. We are also revisiting the animated series in order to fresh when the series returns next month. Just two reissued figures in The Vintage Collection have been announced so far so we hope in conjunction with February’s Toy Fair more reveals will be forthcoming.
May in another month which should be good this year as that is the shipping month for a lot of pre-sales which took place last month including for Baby Yoda merch.
This will be an interesting year as we have had the conclusion of a trilogy twice below and both faired rather differently. In 1984, Kenner finished out their Return of the Jedi line and released about 15 figures plus a smattering of vehicles, playsets, and accessories. They would then the following year, take three swings are reviving the popular action figure line before striking out and retiring the brand for a decade.
In the complete opposite direction, Hasbro in 2006 following the Revenge of the Sith line released over 100 basic action figures in addition to a large number of vehicles, exclusives, and a wave of Original Trilogy Collection figures. From there the line continued to ramp up in 2007 with the 30th Anniversary Collection where Hasbro was producing a massive amount of figures, comic packs, vehicles, multipacks, and exclusives.
The jury is still out on which direction Hasbro will take the brand in 2020 but right now with no HasLab, no major film, no 5POA figures, rumors of new scales, the brand license expiring, the lasting effects of the loss of Toys ‘R’ Us (our Wal*Mart currently has one single Star Wars figure for the last week) and with most of the product announced so far includes tons of reissues and not shipping until Spring, we are a bit nervous about the line going forward.
We hope 2020 is a year to remember in both action figure collecting and in media but regardless, come what may, we’ll be here sharing our passion for either what’s coming or what has come before.
Until next time,
May the Figures be with you!
