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Post by rupert on May 5, 2005 11:46:44 GMT -5
the star wars hype machine is in fast pace. everywhere you go or browse through, the mania is fever pitch. as an imagination advocate, i am waiting patiently for the movie. okay.
one would think george lucas is all 'next generation graphics and this and that. everything is top of the line. he will make billions, guaranteed. everything with star wars has to be top notch, from pepsi cans to t-shirts.
when it comes to the toys, most of them just plain suck. i like toys; well articulated toys. if it doesn't have at least 14 points, forget it. why would georgey boy put out poor quality toys if they don;t move. we are in the next generation toy age, (i.e. toybiz marvel legends, bandai v.2 gundams msias, stickfa generation 2, etc.)
so i stand back and look at the coveted "it" toy, the #41 clone trooper. it's labeled "super articulated" it's bare standard compared to other toy lines. hmmf. "this is what lucas and hasbro consider 'super articulated'?"
hasbro has put out awesome stuff like xevoz. sure they canned it for perhaps star wars franchise. but wouldn't you want a good name from knowing the customers enjoy your product. i think of how lousy the star wars figures are and think, why not incorporated some of the xevoz joints into some of these figures?
the #41 clone trooper is hot and sought after because it has 14 points of articulation. why aren't ALL the figures like this? so i look at all the pegwarmers, and sigh.
just my two cents. please feel free to comment. thanks.
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Post by Squishee Slinger on May 5, 2005 13:00:48 GMT -5
This is just My opinion as an ex-collector....
Completist fans of huge franchises can become a slave to their collections. I know a lot of people who will gripe and say the same things you have but will still buy a ton of product. I used to buy at least one of every character whether I liked them or not.
I stopped buying these entirely through the year and a half mark of Attack Of The Clones. When I got into Xevoz, I saw all the money I was wasting on toys like SW that many times couldn't even stand up under their own power. I wasn't enjoying them and they offer crap for play value. I realized that I was spending big money and I hated what i was getting in return. Star Wars figure buying had just become like getting a druglike fix of finding a chase item and the only thrill I got out of it was saying I was complete on finding an item. Star Wars figure collecting for me was just a real bad habit.
That's the reason Hasbro can get away with limited articulation, bad likenesses, rehashes, making expensive exclusives, and short running some figures without posioning the well. They know how obsessive the fans are and how deep they have the hook in some of them. Of course, it doesn't help that they have a huge portion of their toy producing budget shipping off to Mr. Lucash but they negotiated the deal so they get no tears for me. I think that deal tends to limit some of their toy budget, but really they are capable of some really good figures from time to time. Why it's not a consistent effort accross the board for their toys, makes the crappy ones they pump out so frustrating for fans of the films.
~SS~
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Post by rupert on May 5, 2005 13:34:57 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]you have a very good point. too much of something can be an extreme. personally, i stopped buying everything this, everything that. i'm picky. i am into eye candy. my personal stardards are high for toys. i am not big on star wars, just grunts and building grunts. thanks for the insight SS.  [/glow] |
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Post by eMummy on May 5, 2005 13:46:57 GMT -5
When some of us grew up with Star Wars (sw) toys, they had what... 5 points of articulation (poa). This I believe is the thinking behind the sw line and most toys in general. They are for kids. Collectors, older fans, we remember having the old sw figs, and we want a full set. I think for the most part, it's great that Hasbro (H) does the sw line the way it was back then, same size, and making a figure for every character. Even tho there is a large amount of pegwarmers they still bother to make pretty minor characters into figures like the Kenner line. Which makes it sort of the catch'em all pokemon thing. Look at us with the Xevoz... it's great to have all 25 kits. Back to my first point: they are for kids. I remember reading some old issue of ToyFare where they showed the sculpts and paints for the revamped MOTU line (masters of the universe (HE-Man)) they had elbow and knee joints, and I think ankle joints and wrist swivel... when the line came out, all those poa were removed. WHY?! because these were geared at kids 5-6+ and kids play rough with their toys and have them do crazy stuff indoors and outside. poa makes toys fragile. I remember when I broke off the arm on my Megatron (g1 walther ppk version) SADNESS. Which is why they make those zero poa star wars baby things and why the sw line blows. From reading about Luke's visit to the Hasbro office in RI, and from what I think I know about plastics... sure humanity has invented plastic and uses it for A LOT OF STUFF, but I believe that most polymers are derived from Oil products, and you know how oil is the cause of a lot of world grief. www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/uses/plastic.htmlI don't mean to rant on this, in fact thinking about this stuff scares me. When the world runs low on fossil fuel oil, we'll need to carve toys out of wood again, and wear hemp all the time, and my car will hopefully run on hydrogen... - but there are oils derived from renewable crops, but the world has no infrastructure for that... there are people working on it. Smart people who can spell on forums... (directed at some other posters not rupert) BURN!!! What was my point on this: There is only so much plastic that the world can make, and it's a little more expensive now to get. So when choosing what toys to make, they choose the ones that make money. Sadly making more money means manufacturing and quality goes out the window. They know sw fans will by low poa sw figs anyway, they don't need to cater to us kids who grew up with low poa toys and now want to be able to pose them in cool ways on our desks and shelves. We are.. what? 20% of the market or less even. Which is obviously not enough to keep Xevoz alive. I love the ball and socket joint. Xevoz are all about posing/kitbashing. I suggest everyone buy the 67 or so poa Spider-man 18' or whatever toy. He is AWESOME, and even tho he's HUGE 67 man... 67 poa! and now he's at KB Toys for like $14. The king of POA! So what's this all mean... the world must stop making crap. If we melted down all the sw crap, my little pony, care bears, crappy pvc figs, trash trinket jewelry, plastic bottles, bad fig sculpts, crappy toyslines, asian spader-man knock offs, the batman movie toyslines, toys from bad movies in general, lunch boxes, McFarlane statues, etc we'd have more plastic for Xevoz and other better toys with articulation. (I know that there are many kinds of plastics, so some of the items i mentioned would not make a good XEVOZ toy... but you see my point) Hasbro seems to be doing right by GIJOE, the SIGMA SIX line does look good, and the Binaltechs/Alternators are fantastic even though no one under 12 should be allowed to play with them. If we could some how manage to get the rights of Xevoz from Hasbro and then go and make our own. I'm sure they'd part with it for a sum of money. Or just follow the Megablocks route, and make toys with compatible ball and socket joints but then unlike the Megablocks make them quality sculpts. Did you see that female xevoz torso on ebay? the brea sts are ridiculously large. That boy has problems, and besides, she wouldn't be able to stay upright. that's my nickel  |
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Post by rupert on May 5, 2005 14:59:56 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]i say melt down the pegwarmers and re-use the plastic to make more fan-loving figures. that's my take on that. but i see where you come from Emummy about sticking to traditional sizes and having a wide array of characters. [/glow]
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Post by Randy13 on May 5, 2005 16:44:40 GMT -5
I guess what baffles me is not that they didn't improve the articulation or sculpt of the original 3.75" series, but that they introduced 3 or 4 NEW lines of figures, NONE of which has marvel-legends-style high end detail. The best SW sculpts (toy-wise) are still the 3.75"ers, and they are NOT very good. The 12" line, which is slightly more poseable and ostensibly geared towards adults, has the WORST sculpting of all. I look at my friend's Marmit 12" Boba Fett, and I see the greatest SW fig ever. And it costs like 100 bucks. That ain't right. There is a huge adult collector market for SW, and they should demand adult quality toys. But maybe that doesn't matter if it's a MOC affair.
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Post by CrazyBirdMan on May 5, 2005 17:11:30 GMT -5
. . . . But maybe that doesn't matter if it's a MOC affair. |
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Post by Secter on May 5, 2005 17:45:11 GMT -5
Every TRU I have gone in to lately has at least THREE FREAKEN STAR WARS DISPLAYS. They have one huge display right when you come in, a bin usually in the center near the games full of figures, and then another entire aisle in the boys action figure area all devoted to SW shiat. Target also has them in the toy section and up near the registers in the fron of the store. The worse part is nothing ever seems to be moving, every peg is chock full of figures to the end. Either that, or it is moving but can't tell cuase there is soo much stock in the back. Star Wars has all these aisles devoted to the worthless crap, yet Xevoz barely even took up 1/3 of a 6 foot long aisle.
I don't even see why people would collect these things and keep them MIP anymore. I mean there are so many figures and cases being shipped all over, is it even possible for a figure to be considered rare or worth anything? Even if a figure was packed 1 per 3 cases, that would still mean there are like 50 of em out on display at a TRU store. It's just pointless, the whole Star Wars epidemic is quite rediculous. We will probably see figures with paint mistakes as the next "rares". "Yes, that Anakin has a black paint mark on his cheek, he is the next Luke with the 0.1000 number on the back packaging!"
And don't even get me started on the articulation. Yeah the figures look nice, but damn do they suck for playability. [/b]
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mach9
Dune Stinger
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Post by mach9 on May 10, 2005 15:27:39 GMT -5
Hey don't forget the whole thing driving Star Wars is the whole story and universe behind it. If Star Wars was just a toy line without any backstory, especially a movie behind it, it would have been dust in a month.
The Star Wars movies and the impression it left on its fans imagination are really what drives the toy's popularity. I think that is why the Empire, I mean Hasbro, can get away with making toys that are more like mini-statues.
As far Star Wars collectors being more obsessive than Xevoz collectors, as a person who does both, I have to say that they are equal. So don't go calling the kettle black. I mean who the heck are the people who buying Hyperguardians for $100 on ebay. Hyperguardian is only a $7 figure at retail. Any Wave 4 figures are immediately driven up on ebay.
For Star Wars toys the market dynamics are better. Since it so popular and the fan base huge, the supply and prices of most figures stablize much better over time. You don't have a situation where people in Malaysia and Singapore who got lucky and found some figures that slipped out of Hasbro's warehouses monopolizing the supply and scalping like crazy.
I believe that the value of Star Wars Toys(certain specific figures of course) will hold much better than Xevoz in the long term. The Star Wars fan base is actually growing, as kids love the new movies(even though most adults hate them).
As for why the SA clone trooper is 41 considered "hot" or rare. Hardcore collectors are buying these up to build their dioramas. Scenes where they have scores of troopers enacting some scene. This is the only figure SW collectors would pick up multiples of. I mean you only need one Anakin. The other issue is Hasbro strange case arrangements where they shortpack. It is obvious that people will buy more than one trooper, but for some reason they insist on filling a case with multiples of the brand name characters. Even if they are releasing additional waves with multiple variants. So you have to dig through piles of Anakins, Yodas, etc just to get one figure. Now imagine competing with hundreds of people who are looking for the same figure or just grabbing it for their kids.
As for what in general is "rare" or hot it is difficult to judge there could be a million reasons. Crypt Curse is probably just as rare as Storm Wing yet it doesn't go for the same amount. It could be more people consider StorW ingcooler. If I add it up, my Star Wars collection actually is worth much more then I put into it, and I was just collecting what I liked. Unfortunately the same couldn't be said for Xevoz most of which I bought at retail the moment it came out. There was an auction on ebay that way almost all of Wv1-3 and had all the Wave4 except for their packaging. If I had never bought a single Xevoz and waited for that auction my collection would be practically complete and saved me a lot of money.
I feel that Hasbro deserves ire for the way they shut us Xevoz fans out of the loop. Why can't they officially comment on what's going on? It is basically saying you can buy from me just don't talk to me.
As for Xevoz Wave 4, my experince on ebay has always been that I wound up paying a premium for a figure that I found at retail later. Hasbro probably has a warehouse full of figures chucked in the back of some warehouse in China.
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Post by CrazyBirdMan on May 10, 2005 17:34:55 GMT -5
But Star Wars figures are crap. that's the point a lot of people are trying to make. Would anyone pay for a Star Wars toy if there was no movie? Who would pay $5-8 retail for a figure with 6 points of articulation, bad likenesses, and no posibility? Can you think of another line of action figures that are so good, have such great playability, that people would pay top dollar for them even though they had no cartoon, comic, movie, and little to no advertizing?
I liked the Super artucilated Clone trooer, but it still just has the posibility of the average action figure of that size. Hell G.I.JOE figures were almost that posable what 20 years ago.
I'm not dissing Star Wars collecters, if that's your thing and you love it, that's cool. I'm just saying it's been 30 years now, and the figures haven't inproved much. Take any other toyline that's been around that long, and you'd see they've made drastic improvments. Some you may not have liked, but at least they were advancing in some way.
Basically my point is that Star Wars action figures, specifically the 3.75 inch ones, are crap, and anyone that tells you otherwise is lying to you, and/or themselves.
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Post by Randy13 on May 10, 2005 21:30:43 GMT -5
Hey don't forget the whole thing driving Star Wars is the whole story and universe behind it. If Star Wars was just a toy line without any backstory, especially a movie behind it, it would have been dust in a month. I think a big part of it, too, was that the SW universe and storyline are (well...USED to be) mutable and open ended. I was a HARDCORE fan back in the day. I had much love for the original story, and was able to at least tolerate the undignified fate of Boba Fett. But I, like alot of kids, made my own stories. I wrote an incredibly amateurish novella centered around the Mandalorian super-commandos (which have apparently been erased from the 'canon'), I designed an entire book of illustrations showcasing the fictional martial arts style that I invented for Zuckuss. I had my own backstories for the Sith and the republic. It was great. And I bet millions of kids did the same stuff. But now the new movies have come and erased much of the mystery, replacing it with hastily written, childish crap (yes, my novella was better). The true nerds use strong language to describe the new series: "unforgiveable" "inexcuseable", and "traitorous", for example. The taint of these movies has spread to the toys, as well. I am almost moved to tears as I realize that, after 27 years, I'm actually ready to sell my original figures. Blue Snaggletooth, Nein nunb, Amanaman...my loyalty only extends so far, Mr. Lucas. Like the final scene of ROTJ, I will cue up the sad, slow music as I don my Jedi robes for the last time and set my original millenium falcon ablaze on a funereal bonfire...<sniff>... If you've read this far...thanks. |
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Post by rupert on May 11, 2005 14:42:49 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]yup, figures haven't changed much. its a shame we down our hard earned money to get piss poor products from movies we love. its all lucas' fault. he greenlights everything, and for him to shove this junk down our throats is sad. especially right now during all the hype before the movie comes out. we are buying it ALL up. [/glow]  [shadow=blue,left,300]GEORGE LUCAS IS A VERY VERY BAD MAN![/shadow] |
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mach9
Dune Stinger
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Post by mach9 on May 11, 2005 16:02:38 GMT -5
I think a big part of it, too, was that the SW universe and storyline are (well...USED to be) mutable and open ended. I was a HARDCORE fan back in the day. I had much love for the original story, and was able to at least tolerate the undignified fate of Boba Fett. But I, like alot of kids, made my own stories. I wrote an incredibly amateurish novella centered around the Mandalorian super-commandos (which have apparently been erased from the 'canon'), I designed an entire book of illustrations showcasing the fictional martial arts style that I invented for Zuckuss. I had my own backstories for the Sith and the republic. It was great. And I bet millions of kids did the same stuff. I agree Randy, unfortunately Lucas should have left well enough alone. Some good stuff did come out of the new episodes like the Clone Wars Cartoon. But Stormtroopers being all a bunch of Boba Fett clones, yuck. From what I heard Lucas is completely different person then the idolized images fans have in their minds. His mindset is completely different then that of an average fan. The strange things about a lot of people who gain fame and success from scifi, have a disdaining attitude against fans. The SW toys you have to consider them as more like statues then toys. Personally I only like certain figures or vehicles mainly because of their design or if they have an interesting backstory. But Hasbro does release legions of junk that even as a statue is garbage. Hence the endless piles of pegwarmers. Star Wars Legos are cooler but hideously expensive. |
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Post by Squishee Slinger on May 11, 2005 16:44:04 GMT -5
I used to look at them as statues... ...that couldn't even stand under their own power.  I'd love for a quality collector company to do a great 6 in line or that xevoz version of the characters that's been mentioned. ~SS~ |
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Post by eMummy on May 11, 2005 17:33:29 GMT -5
Well, We'll have Star Wars in our lives in some form or another for several more years. Lucas is working on a TV series based on minor characters in Austrailia for the period after eps III and there are also plans to convert the entire movie saga into 3-D for release in theaters.
I think that will be cool... unless I throw up during it. 3-D for that long would give someone a headache.
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