On this episode of Tosche Station Radio, Amy Ratcliffe and Bria join the hosts to answer a question that’s been bugging us all lately: Where’s Hera?
There’s only one thing New on the Blog this week: Brian did a live-tweet style review of Idiot’s Array.
In Fixer’s Flash, the hosts have been busy watching Agent Carter. Nanci’s been writing and working on a new novel. Meanwhile, Brian is obsessed with various sportsballs.
Deak’s Dirt starts on the interactive side. Like Star Wars games? You’re in luck! Good Old Games has released a crap ton of them. Meanwhile, Celebration will be screening the Navajo version of A New Hope, will also be bringing back Speed Dating and the Tattoo Pavilion. Strange Magic comes out this week, if that sort of thing is your bag.
Biggs’ Bull$#!^ has standalone casting rumors ahoy! Rooney Mara, Kate Mara, Felicity Jones, Tatiana Maslany. George says Disney went their own way with Episode VII.
Camie’s Concerns this week looks into the stunning lack of Hera in Rebels and Star Wars merchandise. She’s the captain of the ship, so where is she in the marketing and merch? Amy and Bria join in to discuss articles they’ve written on the subject (Amy’s here and Bria’s here) and tackle why it’s deeply problematic to exclude her. After the break, Nanci and Brian discuss a more recent revelation that the Episode VII target toy market excludes girls.
No VIP within a mile of Disney/LFL will ever cop to that mentality yet somehow “Target: Boys” always ends up in there pic.twitter.com/NV9V5ThN3B
— Eleven-ThirtyEight (@eleventhirtyate) January 21, 2015
Amy Ratcliffe can be found online at numerous sites, but her personal blog is here at Geek with Curves. You can also find her on Twitter with the handle @amy_geek.
Tosche Station Radio is the official podcast of Tosche-Station.net and a part of Majestic Giraffe Productions. If you like what you hear, please leave a review on the iTunes Music Store. We can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Nanci and Brian are the co-founders and writers of Tosche-Station.net. You can find Nanci on Twitter with the handle @Nancipants and you can find Brian with @LaneWinree.
This podcast has been brought to you in part by Her Universe and Audible.com.
I sensed a disturbance in the Force. I’ve been a toy collector for years. I mostly prefer action figures, and interestingly enough, it was the release of Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace that got me started. At the moment, they’re worth nothing, but that could always change. Now, I haven’t collected in a few years due to financial considerations. Well, with the new movie trilogy, started by J. J. Abrams, I figured I’d snag a few toys. So I went onto Amazon and looked up Force Awakens action figures and I was sitting there looking through them. I tend to gravitate to female protagonists, but I also like villains. I haven’t bought toys in awhile, and these are new anyway. I don’t go for new unless they’re something special. So, I’m looking at Force Awakens toys and I’m noticing something: Captain Phasma and Rey have multiple entries and versions everywhere. It’s like The Force Awakens is trying to overcompensate for the lack of females represented in toys, and a very sobering thought occurred to me: the market is going to be saturated with these toys. Now it hits me: Force Awakens toys are never going to be worth anything. A few versions of Kylo Ren or Rey may hit 40 or 50 bucks in a few decades, but toy collecting today isn’t like it used to be. People now know to grab them and keep them in package. They know not to rip them open. Unlike the toys of yesterday, there are going to be a lot more of today’s toys preserved MRB. That’s the big problem with Phantom Menace. There are literally thousands of mint condition, never unpackaged TPM toys on Ebay at any given time.
Then, while I’m sitting there thinking, my thoughts turn to Star Wars Rebels; specifically Hera. Now, I haven’t even been looking at toys the past few years unless I whimsically browse the toy aisles at KMart these days. I have no data on current toy values or trends. I don’t know the mood of the toy market. I don’t know what toy styles and fashions are popular with manufacturers. This is because I haven’t been keeping up. So I decide to look up Hera action figures…and I can’t find her. I found Kanan, and I found Ezra, and I found Zeb, and I found Chopper. I even found several versions of Sabine. So I scroll a bit, and there she is, packaged with a stormtrooper. I can’t find her packaged individually, either. So I look harder. I find her on Ebay loose (not MRB! OUT OF THE PACKAGE!!!)…for $18.00. Now, during the prequel trilogy, we saw something similar happen: people cashing in by buying out stock and then selling the toys overmarket. It’s a dirty, slimy, disgusting practice, but it’s common. This case is a little different though. You see, during the prequel trilogy, the over selling couldn’t sustain itself because manufacturers kept putting out stock. So I started looking at the toy chains. Toys R Us and Kay Bee doesn’t carry Hera action figures. So I started looking up news articles, and now I see the controversy with the lack of female characters available in toy lines.
I don’t know why I thought of Hera, but it seems clear that for a speculative collector, her figure is the one to grab. Indeed, I sensed a great disturbance in the Force. Hera and Sabine (Sabine may have more versions, but her standard action figure is still quite hard to find). As an action figure, Hera’s only available dual packaged with a stormtrooper. This is the first available example of a Hera figurine and it’s made in the old Kenner style. So of course, I bought her. I suspect with the way she’s being marketed, she won’t last very long. The type of marketing they’re doing with Hera pretty much assures she’ll never sell enough to satisfy them (and of course, that’s what happens when you only grudgingly agree to market something and then treat like it’s the plague).