Swords and Spaceships

Here's some proof that Hasbro could get away with ANYTHING ten years ago. 2007 was probably the best year to collect Star Wars action figures. The stuff Hasbro was willing to try was amazing, the prices were reasonable, the vehicles were works of art, and you could, y'know, actually find the product. Around this timeframe, Hasbro began offering Comic Packs- two figures plus a reprint of either a Marvel or Dark Horse comic book, the figures featured in the package from the included book.The idea was incredibly appealing to me, since I read the comics as well as bought the toys. These pictured here are from probably my favorite series they ever released, based on the first six issues of the Marvel series that ran from 1977 to 1986. What sets these apart, obviously, are the absurd colors they're painted in. The strange shading on the Stormtrooper armor not to mention the red lenses on the helmets, the far-from-final Imperial uniform on Grand Moff Tarkin, a Chewbacca w...

or He-Man 2.0 if you prefer. Mattel offered this guy last year, and I missed it. I picked it up on eBay for a ridiculous markup, but so it goes, amirite? I always hoped Mattel would offer toys that looked more like the Filmation cartoon from the 1980s, and now their licensee Super 7 is going to town with that idea. More on that later. This figure went on sale around February of last year, and as I said, I missed it. Mattel sold these exclusively through their MattyCollector.Com website, and more customers went away empty-handed than acquired the figure. Mattel relied on forced scarcity to sell these, and since 2009 I've collected this line. I made more purchases from eBay, Amazon, and online retailers than I did Mattel, because they were so hard to acquire. Most of these purchases were well after the figure had been released, and I bought most for far less than what Mattel charged for them. (You can see why the Matty website has folded and a boutique toymaker called Super 7 ...