With the Star Wars: The Black Series line celebrating its fifth anniversary, Hasbro has announced that it will be revisiting some of the earliest figures from the 6″ series as part of the Archive Collection, which will launch with reissues of Anakin Skywalker, Boba Fett, Luke Skywalker (X-Wing Pilot), Bossk, IG-88, Scout Trooper and Yoda. Take a look at the promotional images here…
“We’ve actually been discussing this in one form or another for literally the past two years,” said Patrick Schneider, senior brand manager. “And it was just based on this idea: Fans would say, ‘It’s great that you’re releasing 4-LOM. I want 4-LOM. But for 4-LOM to make sense, I also need Boba Fett and Bossk and IG-88. There’s a reason that we released those figures first. And now that we’re five years out from the launch of Black Series, we kind of need to bring them back.”
The Archive Collection figures will be packaged on blister cards as opposed to the standard Black Series box packaging, which should ensure that fans’ existing collections will not be devalued with the re-release of the figures.
“The after-market prices were crazy,” states Schneider. “These [normally $20] figures are selling for over $100. We wanted to do two things: we want to bring new collectors into the Black Series and we want to respect and be honest with the collectors we already have. We didn’t want to devalue the collections people have spent a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of money on…on an emotional level, let alone a business level”
The Archive Collection is set to launch in 2019, and will be limited to a select few figures, with just the seven above released in the first year.
