San Diego Comic-Con Hasbro Panel

Hasbro held their annual Comic-Con panel today and while we usually get a peek at the fall offerings and a preview of the coming year’s early offerings, the 2013 panel was pretty light on new information.

In fairness to Hasbro, Star Wars Celebration Europe II is being held next weekend and they did hold some stuff back for that event.  However, today’s panel spent half of its time covering the Angry Birds Star Wars II video game and the toys, TELEPODS, being released to interact with it.  Traditional action figures have definitely taken a backseat, and it will probably remain that way until the marketing starts to gear up for the new movies scheduled to start in 2015.

Most of the information for the upcoming action figure lines was already available online but we’ll sort it out below and will start populating new checklists over the weekend.

Black Series

The Black Series is split into two scales, 4″ and 6″, with the first two waves of each being shown and confirmed.

Black Series 6″

• Wave 1 – July/August
  • Luke Skywalker X-Wing Pilot
  • Darth Maul
  • R2-D2
  • Sandtrooper
• Wave 2 – December
  • Princess Leia, slave outfit
  • Han Solo (ANH)
  • Greedo
  • Boba Fett (TESB) – Same as Comic-Con exclusive only without the Han in Carbonite

A 6″ scale Speeder Bike and Scout Trooper were also teased, with other small vehicles a possibilty.

Black Series 4″

• Wave 1 – July/August
  • Anakin Skywalker
  • Padme Amidala
  • Clone Trooper Sergeant
  • Biker Scout
  • Darth Vader
  • Clone Pilot
  • Luke Skywalker (Yavin Ceremony)
  • Biggs Darklighter
• Wave 2 – November
  • Pablo-Jill
  • Mara Jade
  • R2-D2
  • Elite Corps Clone Trooper
  • Luminara Unduli
  • Stormtrooper

Saga Legends

• Wave 1 – July/August
  • Yoda
  • Obi-Wan Kenobi
  • Mace Windu
  • Anakin Skywalker
  • Clone Trooper
  • Shock Trooper
  • Super Battle Droid
  • R4-P17
• Wave 2 – 2013
  • Boba Fett
  • Captain Rex
  • Stormtrooper
• Wave 1 – February 2014
  • Obi-Wan Kenobi (Clone Wars)
  • Luke Skywalker (ROTJ)
  • Clone Commander Cody

Mission Series

• Wave 1 – July/August
  • Darth Vader & Seeker Droid
  • Anakin Skywalker & 501st Clone Trooper
  • Jango Fett & Battle Droid
  • 212th Battalion Clone Trooper & Battle Droid
• Wave 2 – February 2014
  • R2-D2 & C-3PO
  • Obi-Wan Kenobi & Darth Maul (Clone Wars)
  • Han Solo & Chewbacca

Exclusives

All of the vehicle exclusives for this year will come in Vintage Collection packaging.

• Toys-R-Us
  • Republic Gunship
  • X-Wing Starfighter
• KMart
  • Death Star Scanning Crew (Stormtrooper & Scanning Crew)
  • Imperial Scanning Crew (Imperial Officer & Scanning Crew)
  • Ewok Assault Catapult
• Amazon
  • Slave I
  • TIE Interceptor

Legacy Collection Droid Factory

Shortly after the Legacy Collection Droid Factory series was shown at Celebration VI, it became apparent that the line would never see retail.  Eventually, Hasbro did cancel it and replaced it with the Black Series and Saga Legends lines.

The first wave of Droid Factory figures was slated to build FA-4 and TC-70 and included 12 figures mixed between Attack of the Clones and Original Trilogy characters (with a ROTS Clone).  After the cancellation, eight figures from waves 1 and 2 were pulled together to form wave 1 of the Black Series.  Some of the other characters originally slated for release disappeared off the radar until this weekend.

Those figures are now part of an exclusive wave of Droid Factory figures released as a set, on the original Droid Factory cards, by Amazon.  The six figure wave will include parts to build TC-70 and FA-4 will be carded.

• Black Squadron TIE Pilot
• Battle Droid
• 212th Clone Trooper
• Sandtrooper
• Sun Fac
• FA-4

The Other Stuff

During the early part of the panel, Hasbro discussed the Angry Birds line of toys, which can now be integrated into Angry Birds Star Wars II.  The game will be released in September and the line of toys will consist of 30 TELEPODS.

The presentation also included info on the new role play lightsaber and the 12″ Anakin to Darth Vader figure.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of new toys announced that the collector market will be interested in.  Arguably, KMart has the most in-demand exclusives on the way with the two Scanning Crew packs while the Amazon Droid Factory wave was probably the only surprise.

It’s still too early to tell how the 6″ Black Series will be accepted so it’s interesting to see Hasbro already planning some vehicles for the line.  And it didn’t take long for them to cut the Prequel Trilogy characters out of the wave mix, going 100% OT on wave 2.

Although there was no Q&A, one disappointing piece of info that was passed on during the panel is that Hasbro has no plans for any scale of Sail Barge.

Even with Celebration Europe coming up next week, we don’t expect to see too much from that convention with the possible exception of a tease for a 3rd wave of Black Series 4″ figures.