1. One of your competitors mentioned that they have a "formula" for character selection when creating a wave of action figures (2 heroes, 1 villain, 1 female, etc). Can you share what Hasbro's "formula" is when creating a Star Wars wave?

Answer: We ideally anchor our waves with updates or new versions "hero" characters that satisfy the dual kid and collector audiences. When we are satisfied we have the kid "traction" we need for each wave, we then lay in the collector-specific figures in the right proportion to round out the wave. Given the tremendous range of Star Wars characters and the themes we select we don't work against a hard selection model like you describe but more go by whether the proposed lineup will satisfy all audiences.

2. The Clone Wars figures shown at Australian Toy Fair look really cool - especially the "fully accessorized" R2D2 and "swappable arms" for the General Grievous. Any chance of seeing these improvements carried over to their respective characters in the non-animated line?

Answer: We probably wouldn't do swappable arms for Grievous in the Legacy line. Instead, we'd probably stick with the current strategy of doing quality articulated versions of his iconic forms instead. The R2 is an interesting possibility for down the road, but there are so many accessories/gadgets/powers from the movies that it would be tough to fit them all in. It's an interesting challenge for some day, though.

3. What is the projected character depth/diversity of the Mighty Muggs line? Just as examples, can we expect a Mighty Muggs Jabba and a Mighty Muggs Salacious Crumb, or will we be lucky to get Mighty Muggs Greedo?

Answer: Greedo is a strong possibility, but we don't have plans, at least for now, for the truly silhouette-busting characters like Jabba (and even R2-D2 is in this camp). The only thing we know for certain is that based on the tremendous response, Mighty Muggs has an exciting future where figures like you mention may be a possibility. But for now, we remain focused on driving the Muggs' unique shape and style across the lines.

The elephant in the room:

Can we say we held back confirmation because we really couldn't believe it ourselves that it was happening, and didn't want to dash hopes if it somehow fell through? No? OK then, it is time to come clean. As most people have seen by now, pictures did get leaked of what we were hoping would be the biggest secret we ever held onto - the massive, new 3-3/4" Millennium Falcon. We can confirm that it *is* real, and it *is* spectacular!

Please trust us when we say that our intentions were truly in the right place - we wanted to surprise fans everywhere with the biggest secret we had ever tried to hold back leading up to the massive 7/26 launch date for Clone Wars/Legacy. We do expect the first availability to be 7/26 at the same time as everything else. We have been working against a reveal plan, including a world debut in Wired Magazine (June issue, on sale in May!), followed by some very key celebrity reviews and additional exposure prior to the public debut at Comic Con. At least that was our intention... with something like this, as big as it is, and as intense the interest is in Star Wars, it proved impossible to hold. Look for additional details to roll out as per the schedule above, and look forward to the full public debut at Comic Con.

Star Wars Q&A on StarWars.Hasbro.com:

As part of our efforts to continue to make starwars.hasbro.com an informational destination and to get the best information out there for collectors, we are planning to repost the entire Q&A to
starwars.hasbro.com one week after we have distributed responses back to collector sites, as a cross-web archive. We think this will give sites ample time to break any Q&A news to their own fans, and, at the same time, give more casual fans coming to starwars.hasbro.com exposure to all of the sites asking questions so they can visit those communities if they choose.

Be sure to check out the previous Q&As as well.