The Hasbro Star Wars team has answered the latest round of  Star Wars questions submitted by AFi readers.  In this round they have given us some of the most honest and insightful answers that we have ever gotten from one of these Q&A’s, so kudos to the Hasbro Star Wars team!

Q1. Just curious as to why the Build-a-Droid pieces weren’t made compatible with the C-3PO/Battle Droid set from 2002 considering those two figures have been in circulation almost continuously since that time. Also why was C-3PX designed with a ball-socket neck connection and not the peg-into-torso connection the others have (and why the difference in peg sizes with his limbs, as well)?

A1. The C-3PO Battle droid set did not have the universal connector that we needed to have to accommodate all figures.  As for the C-3PX, it was designed by a separate design team in parallel with the main line and we did not have solid communication about the exact protocol droid designs and the final peg size the droids would have.  It was a miss on our part.

Q2. What is the status on the unbearded 2nd hoth trooper- we were told that it would be showing up in a later assortment on the new card. But none of the scheduled releases have it listed– is it still coming??

A2. Believe it or not, we still do not have an answer from our factory on this one as to how many were shipped.  We have seen samples, and have been told that they were revised into production, but we know in all of the cases we have sampled from this assortment (at several different delivery stages)that all the figures have been bearded.  So we have yet to find a retail case with the beardless.  It may not be that we will not have the real truth until all of the cases have been distributed and there is a better representation of the whole run.  At this point, we’re hoping it didn’t get out, since it is looking like it will be even rarer than we thought.  We are 100% dedicated to getting it back out in one form or another next year, though, so fans *will* be able to get this figure.

Q3. Can we look forward to any Build-a-Droids that aren’t "protocol" or "astromech" in the basic line?? I’m meaning that in the sense that you identify the 4-piece droids as astromechs and the 6 piece as protocols, not so much in the literal meaning of those terms…

A3. All of the build-able droids we are doing follow this standard template of either 4-pieces for Astro or 6 for protocol.  We aren’t doing any other types, such as treaded droids, as cool as that would be!

  If you have a question you would like the Hasbro Star Wars team to answer you can submit them in this thread. Questions are due by Friday Oct 30th.

Our thanks to the Hasbro SW team!