The Hasbro Star Wars team has answered the latest round of  Star Wars questions submitted by AFi readers. This is the first round of answers for 2010,and there’s plenty more to come.   Check the end of this post for how you can submit a question for the next round.

Q1) I’ve noticed the many of the "space suit" Clone Wars figures (like Anakin and Obi-Wan) have Jango Fett styled jetpacks with little removable/shootable rockets. How close are we to having this tooling applied to the number-one character on any Star Wars action figure fan’s wish-list: Rocket firing Boba Fett?

A1) Since the tooling is done in Clone Wars styling, it would not be applied to a figure such as a rocket-firing Boba Fett.  If we were to do that figure, it would be a done in a different style.

Q2) What criteria would determine whether a character cannot be improved on any more? Super articulation? 100% reference accuracy sculpt? You think about characters like Boba Fett and Darth Vader – they’ve been remade so many times, it’s hard to think of what could be improved on them.

A2) Outstanding question, and one that we have been thinking about ourselves.  Sculpting, articulation, and features that deliver play but match the modern aesthetics would be the three primary considerations.  For instance, looking back at many Episode I or Saga figures, such as the Queen Amidalas of the time, Dexter Jettster, Boss Nass, and the line, we are hard-pressed to produce a sculpt that was a strong leap over those, and would not add any additional articulations or features to those figures since, in our opinion, there is not a strong desire or pull to see those figures re-done (and for our consideration, it’s the tooling budget and figure slot that those characters would occupy that are strong considerations since they would displace new or more important characters to update).  Along with the understanding that we would devote any figure slots to new figures (or different versions of Amidala/Padme, for example), then we are really looking at figures like this as "definitively done" against the modern sculpting aesthetic and they would not be resculpted.  Other figures, like troopers, have been systematically updated but in some cases, not perfectly (most Rebel Troopers fall into this category) so we have plans to update them over the next several years.  Still other figures, like Jango, Zam Wessel or Darth Vader, which have features like removable helmets or pop-out weapons, have versions that we feel we can update and deliver better with newer versions over time.  So there is no easy answer to your question, in general we will pursue updating a character if we feel there is still a story to be told with them in a way that collectors will respond to.

If you have a question you would like the Hasbro Star Wars team to answer you can submit them in this thread. We have already submitted for the next round, but we are taking questions for the next batch.   Hasbro has changed the submission rules for 2010 and they only allow two questions from each site, so get your questions in early!

Our thanks to the Hasbro SW team!

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Posted by Daniel Pickett