Hot Toys Sandtrooper and Dewback 1/6

asianjabba said:

This is a bit off topic - I preordered the HT dewback because that is 1 of 2 my favorite animals in all of Star Wars universe. My question is - since the dewback is out what are the chances hot toys makes an epic tauntaun? I have the sideshow which I think is epic. But wondering if HT will ever update it like the did with the dewback

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It’s very possible they will, it may take them a while but they proved they can make mounts in this size. They are like glorified chairs for 1/6 figures. Based on the style of their Dewback I wouldn’t be surprised if the Tauntaun will have fur. The fully sculpted one from Sideshow is simply not realistic enough.

There is the Inbox Taun Taun, but not sure if it's still possible to preorder that ?

asianjabba said:

This is a bit off topic - I preordered the HT dewback because that is 1 of 2 my favorite animals in all of Star Wars universe. My question is - since the dewback is out what are the chances hot toys makes an epic tauntaun? I have the sideshow which I think is epic. But wondering if HT will ever update it like the did with the dewback

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Doubtful - this Dewback is just a redo of a Mando Dewback they had sitting around for a few years unreleased from S1/2 era that they decided to do a few tweaks on to change some, though not even close to all, of the Mando details to ANH details.

While I would LOVE to see what HT would do with a Taun, I've seen nothing to indicate it'll ever happen. People talk about ROTJ anniv getting a stingy treatment from HT, but even ESB really only got a couple of new figs, nothing close to the level of commitment of a Taun.

We're in a very Disney product era now for figs, and HT, like any licensee, hones closely to the media support - meaning that apart from the occasional (increasingly rare) OT call-out, the Disney SW movies/D+ shows are going to be 80-90% of their focus. In the first years of the Disney/D+ era, we were still getting a not-great but steady stream of non-D+ stuff, now that seems to have dried up to really only releases of long-dormant figs like 3PO and the DST (if that ever goes up for PO.)

The only really chance we get a HT Taun is, like with the Dewback, we get a scene where Mando or some other D+ lead, rides one. Though we'll get the D+ version of a Taun, which the HT speeder bike and Dewback proves will be decent, but not fully accurate to the OT.

While AOTC was a truly staggering excpetion to all this, we'll soon find out in the way HT treats TPM as to whether there is indeed a major new focus on the PT or if AOTC just held an extra special place in young Howard's heart, explaining the bizarre HT depth on that movie.

Hoody999 said:

There is the Inbox Taun Taun, but not sure if it's still possible to preorder that ?

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Yeah I believe it closed months ago. They may do a second run, which I believe they did on the Bantha or Wampa or both.

I seriously thought about ordering because it actually looked quite good but I didn't love their Bantha and Wampa, which looked amazing as protos but weren't quite as good as final products. The Wampa for example I thought looked a bit "cute" rather than scary, and, like the Bantha, looked more like a decent fan custom (i'd argue the custom wampa on this forum a few years ago was vastly superior, as was the 3D printed Bantha) than a Sideshow/HT level product.

They are really hand-made so it's hard to keep up that uniformity of product I guess. They were also pretty much the cost a HT Taun would be, and it's a company that is really only a FB page, so it concerned me giving that amount of cash over to an obscure company that's a bit hard to pin down.

I'll almost certainly regret not ordering, but I wish they were more like regular 1/6 products where you can at least see some in-hand pics then order one, rather than taking a fairly major gamble on final product quality plus a non-major company in (I think..) Thailand.

Felinx said:

Yeah I believe it closed months ago. They may do a second run, which I believe they did on the Bantha or Wampa or both.

I seriously thought about ordering because it actually looked quite good but I didn't love their Bantha and Wampa, which looked amazing as protos but weren't quite as good as final products. The Wampa for example I thought looked a bit "cute" rather than scary, and, like the Bantha, looked more like a decent fan custom (i'd argue the custom wampa on this forum a few years ago was vastly superior, as was the 3D printed Bantha) than a Sideshow/HT level product.

They are really hand-made so it's hard to keep up that uniformity of product I guess. They were also pretty much the cost a HT Taun would be, and it's a company that is really only a FB page, so it concerned me giving that amount of cash over to an obscure company that's a bit hard to pin down.

I'll almost certainly regret not ordering, but I wish they were more like regular 1/6 products where you can at least see some in-hand pics then order one, rather than taking a fairly major gamble on final product quality plus a non-major company in (I think..) Thailand.

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I decided to pre-order so I guess we'll see.

My thinking was that Hot Toys will never do a Taun Taun, let alone with fur. However IF they did, they are more a moulded plastic specialist company so I'd see the chances of a sculpted version (like the SS version) as pretty high.

Therefore it was a "this is my only chance" moment.

I really love my Blurrg. He really helps the display look more interesting without just humanoid figures lined up. Of course I'll also be getting the Dewback, that is a must !!

But a Taun Taun with SS Han in front with his life-form reader (with hood on to cover that sculpt !!) will look pretty cool imo.

Given how poorly Snowspeeder Luke seemed to sell, it seems very unlikely we'll see anything more from the world of Hoth.

Collectors screaming for HT to make more OT figures then giving Snowspeeder Luke and Scout trooper the cold shoulder.

davejames said:

Given how poorly Snowspeeder Luke seemed to sell, it seems very unlikely we'll see anything more from the world of Hoth.

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Yeah that’s one figure where I am absolutely floored that it didn’t sell better.

That Pilot Luke is one of HT' best figures, not just Lukes.

Goes to show you how the OT is dying out.

davejames said:

Given how poorly Snowspeeder Luke seemed to sell, it seems very unlikely we'll see anything more from the world of Hoth.

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As cool as they are for us, for a lot of more casual collectors/fans (the majority) the Luke pilot outfits aren't in the "iconic must-have" looks of farmboy, Bespin and Jedi. Most fans simply can't even tell the difference between Snowspeeder and X-wing outfits.

On the other hand, the new/recent HT Luke Bespin seemed to sell out pretty fast (though yes its possible HT lowered numbers due to snowspeeder sales, though counterintuitively, they released two versions of Bespin.)

I'd also argue the Luke Snowspeeder fig was more of a middling grade, starting with something those casual collectors would have noticed first: HT simply reusing a pretty old, already overused, Luke sculpt instead of going with a noticeably better new Luke sculpt. That was not only previewed by snowspeeder release time that in theory could have been used.

That was the death-knell for Snowspeeder Luke for casual fans: "better Luke coming soon."

The fig also had skinny legs, weak glove sculpts (Maul re-use,) bad/inaccurate knee bandolier, too-skinny webbing straps, slightly oversized chest box, goofy-wrong grenade, ugly stand, and importantly, yet another kinda-accurate-but-not helmet (a little better than so-so SSC version) that missed the perfect opportunity to nail that iconic prop.

Had they done Luke Hoth instead (second-place to Bespin for ESB in that iconic outfits list, but much further ahead than snowspeeder) for 40th I think it would have done better and sold out, though not as fast as the Bespin did.

Wor-Gar said:

That Pilot Luke is one of HT' best figures, not just Lukes.

Goes to show you how the OT is dying out.

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To me it shows the bandwidth problem of SW collecting in the D+ era: where casual fans/collectors have just seen a Mando ep that really excited them in OT-level ways that the ST failed to do, so it overwhelms the desire for slightly lesser OT stuff. In short, Mando got OT-level love.

The ST really didn't excite SW 1/6 collectors much at all so OT releases continued fairly strong, but then Mando (along with bits and pieces of its poorer cousins Kenobi/BOBF/Ahsoka) came along and it was a tsunami of OT-derived (most popular D+ stuff is OT-derivative) interest, and a tsunami of releases.

The fact its OT-derivative is key: it to some degree supplants actual OT stuff. Even on lower-tier releases: Mando Tusken replaces ANH version, Mando Biker undermines sales of ROTJ version.

In the heat of Mando (and enduring heat: we have a Mando movie coming) casual fans will indeed choose an updated armor Mando, or new-look black suit Boba, or black-don't-crack Kenobi Vader - all OT-derivative - over a second-tier Luke outfit like Snowspeeder (which for many is equivalent to say a Luke Endor outfit.)

Mando being OT-lite is not a good thing. Not to me.

Everything from Disney, except RO and Grogu, is trash.

Felinx said:

As cool as they are for us, for a lot of more casual collectors/fans (the majority) the Luke pilot outfits aren't in the "iconic must-have" looks of farmboy, Bespin and Jedi. Most fans simply can't even tell the difference between Snowspeeder and X-wing outfits.

On the other hand, the new/recent HT Luke Bespin seemed to sell out pretty fast (though yes its possible HT lowered numbers due to snowspeeder sales, though counterintuitively, they released two versions of Bespin.)

I'd also argue the Luke Snowspeeder fig was more of a middling grade, starting with something those casual collectors would have noticed first: HT simply reusing a pretty old, already overused, Luke sculpt instead of going with a noticeably better new Luke sculpt. That was not only previewed by snowspeeder release time that in theory could have been used.

That was the death-knell for Snowspeeder Luke for casual fans: "better Luke coming soon."

The fig also had skinny legs, weak glove sculpts (Maul re-use,) bad/inaccurate knee bandolier, too-skinny webbing straps, slightly oversized chest box, goofy-wrong grenade, ugly stand, and importantly, yet another kinda-accurate-but-not helmet (a little better than so-so SSC version) that missed the perfect opportunity to nail that iconic prop.

Had they done Luke Hoth instead (second-place to Bespin for ESB in that iconic outfits list, but much further ahead than snowspeeder) for 40th I think it would have done better and sold out, though not as fast as the Bespin did.

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That may all be true, but from HT's perspective it's simply another ESB figure (like Lando) that didn't sell.

Of course fortunately for us Howard is a huge OT fan, so there's always a chance we might see more. Someday...

I think Howard is a bigger fan of money these days.

I bet he doesn't even have that "private collection" we used to all fantasize about that he had. It's all trash now while he powers his yacht to the Bahamas with scantily clad Barbies.

Wor-Gar said:

Mando being OT-lite is not a good thing. Not to me.

Everything from Disney, except RO and Grogu, is trash.

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So Andor is trash now? Its hard to keep up with what's in and what's not these days.

yodasan said:

So Andor is trash now? Its hard to keep up with what's in and what's not these days.

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I appreciated Andor - a nice departure from the crap of BOBF and Kenobi and the meh of Ashoka - but it was slow, almost self-consciously so, to a point where it eventually got harder to press the next ep button, and didn't really stay with me the way the best of S1 Mando did.

I don't think there's been much in-out on most of the D+ series: BOBF was a total dud from the get-go and despite early excitement, Kenobi (apart from Vader) was mocked pretty much from the day it hit. Andor was tonally/visually right but just seemed to send people to sleep so I guess landed somewhere in the middle.

yodasan said:

So Andor is trash now? Its hard to keep up with what's in and what's not these days.

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Oh, I forgot Andor. But that's the problem. It's forgettable. Not trash... but not revisitable.

I'm sure there are some gems in what I'm calling "trash", but at the end of the day, none of it meant much and was as disposable as trash.

davejames said:

That may all be true, but from HT's perspective it's simply another ESB figure (like Lando) that didn't sell.

Of course fortunately for us Howard is a huge OT fan, so there's always a chance we might more. Someday...

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We may be in the liminal state of OT 1/6. That HT has pretty much done all the big ones (with some painful omissions like Han Bespin and Luke Hoth) they were ever going to do, along with cash-grab re-releases, plus a few left-field releases (looking at you power droid and Death Star Gunner) and have moved into the D+ volume business, temporarily mixed in with some Howard PT love.

The next phase may be split - where Inart or a similar company redoes some of the "big" OT characters as expensive ultra-real haired figures, while a knockoff company like Mars or Play Toy does some strong seller in-between OT characters (like bounty hunters) - and may be only a year or two away.

Unfortunately I don't think that upcoming era bodes well for the types of figs Sideshow used to do, the fun more background figs like Greedo, Ackbar, gamorrean, lesser troopers and droids. These will never be InArt and probably won't interest Mars or Play Toy unless they are literal recasts of the old Sideshow figs, which in some cases might be good, in others not so much.

In short, the golden age of 1/6 OT/SW quantity rapidly improving in quality at a decent volume, consistency of releases and price of the past 15 years may be over.

Background (aka fun) characters won’t happen. Casual collectors simply don’t care. They are only for hardcore SW fans. HT targets mainstream not those 10% who know the names of all those bounty hunters from ESB. Recent “fun” chatacters, IG-11, Kuiil, pretty good characters but with no draw, if they are not well known or carries the worth they won’t sell.

If HT’s not making Jar Jar they sure as heck won’t make Ackbar. Both are meme characters and Ackbar’s a one trick pony.

Hate to say it but in my view Jar Jar is more worthy of a figure than Ackbar. Jar Jar has quite a bit of screen presence even though he’s annoying. Ackbar has a couple of short scenes with one memorable line.

I still haven’t pre-ordered the new Sandtrooper. Probably will eventually though. I would like the Dewback too but just not sure if I can justify the money and space as cool as it is.