June 2010 - Every couple of weeks, Hasbro will answer two questions per web site about their Star Wars products. Here are the questions and answers for the latest round:
1) With all of the Ewok figures we've received in recent years, we now have every vintage Ewok figure represented in the modern Star Wars line except for one -- Lumat. Since Lumat is the final Ewok needed to complete the vintage lineup of Ewoks, it seems logical for him to be included in The Vintage Collection. Are there plans to complete our Ewok rosters with Lumat within the next year or so?
Answer: Lumat will not be out within the next year or so, but there is near-100% certainty that he will be out not too long after that. Whether he will be on a Vintage card or another format has yet to be seen.
2) It was stated in a previous Q&A that Willrow Hood would be a test to see how well a fully collector-oriented figure like Jocasta Nu would fare in the marketplace today. Willrow Hood seems to have sold through fairly quickly and well. Since Jocasta Nu is not only a Jedi with significantly more screen presence than Willrow Hood, placed second in the internet-wide Fan's Choice collectors' poll, has appearances in the Clone Wars cartoon, and is one of the few movie characters with lines not to receive an action figure, have the sales of Willrow Hood increased the probability of collectors finally getting their Jocasta Nu figure in the next few years?
Answer: We have a long history of doing niche figures and need to make sure that we find the right volumes we need to release to make sure we don't clog the pegs. As fans have seen, this release number has actually fallen over the past couple of years and Willrow was one of the lowest-batch figures we have ever done. Still, figures like this are actually some of our worst figures in terms of return on effort and costs, so we have to carefully manage how many obscure figures we put in. We know we need to, to keep the long-term fans engaged, otherwise we would just concentrate on updates to core heroes and troopers all day which are much better sellers. So Willrow wasn't really a test of anything but more of a validation that fans would pick him up since he started as a small movement, a joke really, that snowballed with time. Jocasta, while much more prominent, does not factor in to any of our future plans right now. There are fewer slots for obscure characters and we
just don't see her as a compelling one right now.
