Celebration VI – Disney Parks Collector Panel

Disney held their Collector Panel yesterday and showed off some exciting toys that will be coming in the next year.

They started off with a few photos of the Celebration VI exclusives including the T-Shirts, Starspeeder die-cast vehicles and the Holographic Princess Leia Vinylmation.  They also covered the print on demand name badges and cell phone cases and Carbon Freeze Me experience.

Disney will be expanding the Build a Lightsaber experience too Disney Paris in time for Christmas.  Their other building experience, Droid Factory, that’s now open in Tatooine Traders is being considered for expansion to Disney World in the next year.  A poster featuring the currently available pieces was handed out at the end of the show.  They referred to the current list of parts as being for the grand opening which seemed to imply we could see more pieces in the future.  An interesting fact about Droid Factory is that the team said they’d been working on this for 10 years.

For 2013, the focus will be on Return of the Jedi and there will be several releases of toys that have the movie for a theme.  Included will be new figures featuring Disney characters as Star Wars characters, such as Mickey as Luke Skywalker in his Endor poncho.  A really cool boxed set will be the Sarlacc Attack set which has our heroes on a skiff, perched over a Sarlacc pit.  New characters in the mix next year will be Bean Bunny and Chicken as Wicket Warrick and a Stormtrooper and Uncle Deadly and Gonzo appear as the Emperor and Darth Vader respectively.

Disney will introduce a “hot potato” game which features a Thermal Detonator which will beep and then explode.  A Disney character has a line at the end of the game to make it even more entertaining.  There’s also a latex Salacious B. Crumb articulated figure that will be limited to 1983 pieces.

Vinylmation will be expanding with a new wave featuring characters from Star Wars: A New Hope.  The chase figure for the set will be Garindan.  Finally, a sneak peek for series 3 was shown and included Admiral Ackbar and a 9″ tall Jabba the Hutt with a 1.5″ Salacious Crumb.

Finally, the big announcement is that Disney is doing a mashup of Cars and Star Wars.  They showed off the first wave of die-cast cars featuring Mater as Darth Vader, Lightning McQueen as Luke in X-Wing outfit, Sally as Princess Leia, Guido and Luigi as R2 and C-3PO and a tractor as a Stormtrooper.  There’s a sixth figure that’s a chase but wasn’t announced.  Disney will be giving away a set of trading cards this weekend that feature the characters listed and if you pick up all 5 you will be able to figure out who the chase is.

Disney has some of the coolest collectibles on the market and if you are both a fan of Disney and Star Wars, the upcoming year should bring a lot of treats.  Check out the full photo gallery below.