Answered Questions - April 25, 2008

[Darth Zirock]

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 plannning 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.

1.) When you were creating the figures based on the Return of the Jedi deleted sandstorm scene, did you get to view some of the actual "lost" footage from the scene, or did you have to go solely off of reference photos in the Lucasfilm archive?

ANSWER: We used reference shots available to us in the Lucasfilm archives. It would be a dream come true to see the actual footage, but it was not available and we went with what we had access to.

2.) What happened to New Jedi Order Luke Skywalker's lightsaber in the Jedi Legacy Evolutions set? All promotional images show him with his RETURN OF THE JEDI green-bladed lightsaber, but somehow the actual figure on the shelves got a green-bladed version of Anakin Skywalker's REVENGE OF THE SITH lightsaber. A green-bladed version of Obi-Wan's ROTS saber would have been closer to the mark.

ANSWER: The promotional images sometimes use placeholder parts. As for the actual one selected, we worked with Lucasfilm on the one to include, and that's where we ended up.

3.) Isn't it about time to retire all of those Darth Maul lightsaber molds with the tubular blades and sculpt a new one with the "flared" blades at the correct length?

ANSWER: Absolutely! Next time we do a Darth Maul, we will take your suggestion to heart.

[zevs]

Darn...I was hoping that Lucas was restoring some of the sandstorm scene to smuggle into the fabled six movie boxset or something and Hasbro got a sneak peak. Oh well...

[Darth Zirock]

Please remember to post questions for the next Q&A on May 9th here.