This past weekend at WonderCon 2024 in Anaheim, Laughing Place was invited to attend a press meeting with Hasbro representatives following the popular toy company’s panel presentation at the convention. During that event I briefly had the opportunity to speak with Priya Muthu, who serves as Hasbro’s Associate Brand Manager for the Star Wars line, about the announcements for The Vintage Collection and The Black Series coming out of WonderCon.
Image via Priya Muthu / LinkedIn
Mike Celestino, Laughing Place: I really enjoyed your presentation at the panel today. I wonder if you could give me a broad overview of what Hasbro revealed from the Star Wars line.
Priya Muthu: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. So we had some great reveals today for our Vintage Collection. We were able to reveal Ezra [Bridger]– this is his “Hero of Lothal” live-action look from Ahsoka– and then we had Kanan Jarrus as well– this is going to be his season one look from Rebels. We were excited to be able to get him in, and Zeb [Orellios] as well to round that out– we don't want to forget the muscle of the crew, so we have Zeb in his season one appearance as well. It might be my favorite, but he has this super cool, unique new face portrait. He looks a lot more determined and stoic, as you can see in the images. [I] love that we were able to get these figures out to people and build out that collection.
And then of course for Black Series, we have Momaw Nadon. I'm sure a lot of people have probably already figured, but he was a partial from Dok[-Ondar]. But once again, [we’re] excited to get a classic character into the line and build out that A New Hope collection. So all in all a very exciting slate and we were happy to be able to share all of these with you today.
LP: How do these Star Wars Rebels Vintage Collection figures differ from the ones that are coming with the HasLab Ghost ship?
Priya: That's a great question. So the ones coming in the Ghost, those are going to be their end of [series] looks– [as they appeared] towards the end of the Rebels show– whereas these are the [early] season looks and Ezra here is obviously the live-action version, too. It's more so just building that out and being able to get some of these popular characters into the line with different looks, and still being able to get them out to fans, especially maybe certain fans who didn't necessarily opt in for the HasLab. But we know that these are popular characters that people still love and want to have in their lines, so that's why we're excited to get that out. I will say the other difference is that the HasLab figures tend to come with a couple more unique accessories to each. For example, [with] Ezra, the HasLab version in particular, he comes with a unique Lothcat and he also comes with that painted scout trooper helmet that we famously see. So there are some additional unique accessories that come with the HasLab versions of the figures that these [individually carded ones] don't necessarily come with, but [they are] still a great addition to the line.
LP: Lastly, regarding Momaw Nadon (the character we used to call “Hammerhead” back in the old days), you referred to him as a “partial” from Dok-Ondar. As a non-toy industry person, can you explain to me what that means?
Priya: Yeah, so the Dok-Ondar [figure] which we did, which received a lot of love– people love that character– once we put that figure out into the line, when I'm saying partial, basically it's some of the molds for his body are similar. By that, what I meant is when we were actually thinking of building out Dok-Ondar, we thought, ‘Hey, there's a lot of similarities with Dok and Momaw.’ That means while we're building Dok out that we can also build Momaw into [the Black Series line] as well. There are differences, obviously, as you can see, this is a fully newly sculpted head. So there are differences, but while we were building that character, we already had Momaw in the back of our minds. The way I like to say it and I think Eric, our designer would [also] say is, ‘He was always part of the plan.’ So it was exciting to be able to do that one figure but have this in our back pocket, and now be able to get this out to the fans as well.
LP: Thank you so much for talking to me and congratulations on the reveals. I'm looking forward to adding these to my collection.
Priya: Likewise. Thank you so much for having me.
For additional information on Hasbro’s Star Wars line, be sure to visit the official Hasbro Pulse website.