Tuesday, September 8, 2015

100 Days Out

Today marks 100 days until the official release of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. And right now Star Wars seems to be everywhere.

This last Friday was Force Friday, basically when all the new Star Wars merchandise was allowed to be sold. While the new figures were blowing out of stores like crazy, in fact you would be lucky to find much in the way of merchandise on store shelves right now, there was a good deal off classic trilogy items mixed  in with the new movie pieces. There were a few prequel items, but those were very few. The companies putting the merchandise out clearly do know what movies matter.

Unlike the crazy amount of everything that was throw out there for the prequel merchandising insanity, they toned in down a great deal this time. While there is a lot of items released, it seems they were more controlled in making sure what was being sold had a little more thought that just slapping Star Wars characters on everything, although some of that did still happen, just not to the level we had seen.

I was surprised at the lack of BB-8 merchandise. BB-8 is the new astromech droid that look like an upside down bowl on top of a large ball. While we really have not seen much of the droid yet, it is one of the main visual aspects that is getting associated with the movie. There were two different remote controlled version of BB-8 released, neither one was affordable ($80/$150). For people with my budget or your average kid, there really was a limited selection for a BB-8. It feels like someone dropped the bomb on this one. While everyone with their hands in the pot are no doubt making big bucks, there is a huge area they are missing out on.

I have no doubt that I will be picking up various items as I am able, right now I am just not able to collect at the level I used to. It will be interesting to discover what Episode VII items end up in  my collection. I have to be pickier than I used to be, so the items I buy will have to be ones I feel are worth the money.

Of course this is just the start of nonstop Star Wars being out there for at least the next five years. We are supposed to get a new movie a year starting with Episode VII. So Star Wars is everywhere right now and is not going to fade away or even have the chance to die down even a little. I just hope the movies can live up to the hype. At least the odds say they will be better than the Prequel movies, so they have that going for them.