Hasbro, as your biggest cheerleader, sometimes I’m forced to point out something that is painfully obvious and hope that someone out there reads it. Out in Los Angeles I caught wind of some information regarding the exalted, beloved Build-A-Droid program. The hope and dream that all of these pieces might be combined to create new droids made my heart leap for joy, but, as I learned, there are unreasonable roadblocks in the way. (Hey readers — sometimes the Hasbro team is just as frustrated by retailers’ fickle tastes as we are!) We live in an alternate universe now where people who don’t make toys (in fact, they don’t even know exactly how toys are made) are the people who decide what toys are made and sold. (Hopefully our friend Mr. Internet will shove these "big box" stores out of the toy business with the same blast of reality that the music business and the movie business have been subjected to.)

OK, so… as far as we (collector types) have heard, the concept of a Build-A-Droid playset fizzled. I know that you (Hasbro as a whole) tried to pull together a set that would appeal to collectors, kids, and parents. For some reason (STUPID RETAIL BUYERS) it just didn’t happen. It has even been whispered into my nearly deaf left-ear (that’s not a joke) that a Build-A-Droid concept was pitched as an "Ultimate Battle Pack" (one as a Jawa-themed set, and one as Jabba The Hutt’s Droid Dungeon). Sadly, Jabba The Hutt’s association (as an exclusive) with another retailer doomed the most promising concept. (It makes no sense to me. I’d piggyback on their promotion with a cool item in a bigger box with more stuff.)

What to do? What to do? Oh yeah… all of those great Build-A-Droid parts can still be boxed up to make a really amazing value-priced gift set in time for the Holiday Gifting Season. Repaint them Astromechs, give the Protocol Droids new shiny deco. Make a new 8D8 out of the new BG-J38 body (since they only have different heads). If you want to go all out and send some love to the dedicated collectors, throw in the prototype "bug head" Death Star Droid. (See mock-up image. Head courtesy of the Star Wars Collectors Archive.) Now wouldn’t that be cool, kids?

Parents LOVE a value-priced set with lots of pieces. Kids love "robots" (droids to us). Collectors (see: Pawlus, Adam) love droids. Hasbro loves using existing tooling to maximize profit (and enhance shareholder value — yes, I read that book). What am I missing? Is it because semi-generic droids lack the push of The Clone Wars TV toon? There are droids everywhere in the Star Wars universe, and we can always use at least a half-dozen more (with options to create even more if we buy multiple sets).

While I’ve got a little rant going, we’ve hosted (on our own bandwidth) two of Hasbro’s super-cool promotional spots (for the AT-TE* and the Turbo Tank, respectively). What’s to stop Team Hasbro from shooting some quick digital video coolness to promote waves of figures, figures with vehicles, mainline vehicles, and (naturally) the amazing monster-sized vehicles. (I can’t wait to see the Big Arsenal Imperial AT-AT Walker super deluxe vehicle promotional spot.)

It’s going to be a very long summer.

*For some reason GooTube removed the AT-TE promotional spot (despite receiving an official copy the commercial). We will relocate it as soon as possible. For the record, I either didn’t know or forgot that it was on GooTube. It was meant to be hosted on our servers. Oy vey!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Daily Blog, Gossip, Hasbro, Toy Fair 2010, Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.