OPINION:  Plastic-Free Will Steam The Vintage Collection Straight Toward The Iceberg

I had no plans to write this article. No plans, desire or motivation. In fact, my intent was the opposite. It was to encourage people to adapt to the idea of plastic free packaging, but something changed that was sobering. It was this poll from the Star Wars The Vintage Collection Facebook group:


This isn't a statistically small sample, and it presents a gloomy picture. Two thirds of the respondents are going to buy less TVC as a result, but more worrisome is that a full 62% of those who voted will either stop collecting entirely, or greatly reduce the amount of product they buy. Count me in the latter category. I'm going to greatly reduce the amount that I buy. I enjoy collecting loose, and that's my first love to be honest, but I also very much enjoy collecting in package samples of TVC. That's the product I want to buy, but it's also a more fragile collection to curate. For that reason, I often buy "back up" samples. Experience has taught me that it's much cheaper to buy a back up sample for MSRP then try to replace my carded sample at a later date should something happen to it. Those purchases will be gone for me. In some cases, like the recent Greef Karga, my purchases would be cut by two thirds. I contend those secondary and tertiary purchases by some collectors are what make figures of those secondary and tertiary characters viable.

We do not have the customer base of The Black Series. What we have is the passion. TBS fans, in general, tend to be more casual collectors. There's a lot more of them, but on balance, they don't individually buy as much product as an individual TVC collector. The vintage Kenner packaging style is the equivalent of a force multiplier. It turns one customer into two, three or more sales in some cases. We make up for our shortfall in the number of customers with zealotry. Once the incentive for that zealotry is gone, those sales are gone. Getting rid of the bubbles removes that incentive. There's a reason why the vintage Kenner style is the most mimicked packaging in toy history. They struck gold. Aside from the classic design, it's one of the most presentable in-package toys in history. The coffin bubble allows the collector to display a single-sided view of both the figure and packaging. You can tack it up on the wall and, as far as a visualization goes, you get 90% of the picture. That's very important. If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch Pawn Stars when someone brings in an autographed album, but it's signed on the reverse side. It more than halves the value because a collector wants to be able to present the album cover and the autographs at once. That's what the coffin Kenner bubble allows for displaying 3.75" action figures. The product and packaging can be displayed simultaneously in a single-sided view.

We all want TVC to have a bigger budget for more new tooling, but that's a bit like a financial planner telling you that you that you need more money. "Bigger budget" is the result. It's not the solution. The solution is more sales. The budget will only go up as sales go up. It's a long and drawn out process that evolves over years and not months (and if you do an accounting since 2020, you can see these glacial results). Conversely, what do you think reduced sales will do? Moving to plastic free packaging for TVC will be as disastrous as the pivot to the 3.75" Black Series packaging in 2012. The budget will start shrinking until we wind up back in the 2015 days of Walmart exclusivity or worse. And remember, the stone rolls downhill a lot faster than it can be pushed uphill. The budget will contract quickly.

This has all left me somewhat depressed with respect to the hobby. I'm not depressed because the exact vintage Kenner look will be going away. I'm not depressed because I won't have my carded collection anymore. I'm depressed because I don't see a way that the 3.75" scale survives this transition in the long term. The entire line will go away again.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm dismissing the issue of single use plastics. It's a massive global ecological issue, but solving it via TVC's coffin bubbles is a bit like trying to offset the high cost of college tuition by reducing the price of sodas in the student lounge by $0.25. Single use food plastics are far and away the biggest problem to the point that you could say they are the problem. I would bet my life that the food section of just my local Walmart produces more plastic waste in a week than TVC does globally in a year, especially considering how many of those plastic bubbles stay on card.

If you're a loose collector and think you're "better than" for opening your figures, shut up. You collect a toxic PVC plastic product that is also likely going to end up in a landfill some day. Your kids aren't going to keep these things. They'll sell them. And then they'll be sold again, until that day when they hold no value, and end up in the trash. Those few milligrams of highly recyclable type 1 plastic in the bubbles aren't making that much more of a dent on the environment than the way you chose to collect. Open your figures, recycle the packaging like a responsible adult, and don't moralize about the nearly identical ecological impact of the way you collect.

If you're also a loose collector and don't care about the packaging, and thus don't care if TVC transitions to plastic free packaging, you're whistling past the graveyard. Some part of me actually wouldn't mind going back to the days of buying one of a figure to open and being done, as I have when the line look was something other than TVC. It's less expensive, requires much less space, and it's a far less challenging way to collect, but I know the line can't survive these days when collectors don't consider the package the product. If I thought for a second that the line could be supported at its current levels by loose only collectors, I wouldn't be a bit concerned, but it can't. Plastic free TVC cards will not inspire in-package collecting. The line will die within a few years. We only need to look at 2012 when the outstanding, and all-new figure of Vizam peg warmed mightily.

There is absolutely no argument that the packaging isn't the product. If it isn't why on Earth did Hasbro go through the somewhat significant expense of carding the Antoc Merrick figure in the Antoc Merrick's X-Wing. It makes no sense whatsoever. Hasbro isn't transitioning to plastic free figures for TVC, so they shouldn't transition to plastic free packaging either, which is equally as much of the product.

I hope I'm wrong about all of this, but 40+ years in this hobby tells me that I'm not.

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