Habro Reveals New Star Wars Toys Including Upcoming Jabba's Barge

We may be more than a year away from the next Star Wars movie coming out, but Hasbro is still pumping out more toys based on your favorite characters. From its Black Series to the classic 5 inch figures, there are collectibles from every single movie in the Star Wars franchise represented, some of which are available for purchase now while others will be coming very soon.

This includes the upcoming Jabba's Sail Barge, one of the biggest Star Wars playsets to date, which Hasbro Lab crowd-funded earlier this yet. The set will be 17 inches tall and almost 50 inches long, weighing almost 14 pounds. This is a playset made specifically for the classic 5 inch Star Wars figures.

At NYCC, Hasbro gave us a private tour of their current and upcoming Star Wars toys. We spoke with Patrick Schneider, Senior Brand Manager Star Wars, and Steve Evans, Design Director on Star Wars at Hasbro, during this tour.

Check out Hasbro's website to see all its current Star Wars offerings and more information about upcoming figure release dates from some of the toys seen here.

"This actually is what we call an EP--an engineering prototype, sort-of first shot of the actual product that's come from the vendors, from the factory line so we've got the artists ready and they're actually going through the motions of producing it," explained Evans. "And we expected to come in, and we expected it to be loose and not fit and things to be wrong, and that's how we troubleshoot. So as we're taking the approach for the barge to show the development with monthly or so behind-the-scenes footage and videos and things we're doing, we thought, 'why not actually show you how we're doing?'"

"So, I'm really, really impressed with this as an EP, and just in terms of how the deco's there," continued Evans "There's still some things to sort out. The sails need a little bit more stretching, and we haven't quite got the wood-grain texture molding on there, but in terms of all the pieces fitting together and it feeling robust and fitting together, I was really, really happy with it."

"When we released this as part of the barge campaign, we had a picture of [Saelt-Marae], and he had his hand [pointed upwards]," explained Evans. "And eagle eye fan went, 'That's not the right picture. In the picture, his hand's actually down like that.' ... I mean... Star Wars.

"And they were right. We couldn't find the image. Didn't have it. We couldn't find it. Lucasfilm couldn't find it. We looked through all the archives; we couldn't find that image. That second, three second later photo of him with his arm down, so we had to take one with the arm up and then digitally paint in the arm down because it was ... We were not going to have it with the arm up because that would be wrong. And again, every pack has a story."

"We've moved away from the extra-large bubbles," Evans said. "I know we had some feedback in terms of that was ruining the aesthetic of the pack which we actually agreed with, so we're now doing the small, medium, and large bubbles. Replicating the imagery that you see from the original one from 1983, going back to the Lucas Archives trying to find the images, realizing they're cropped funny, and having to produce this whole background here in a way that hearkens back to the original, which to be perfectly honest with you is a bit rudimentary. I could CG the railings and have it all looking really good and it was like, no, no, keep it like it was, do it badly. Flood it with blue, and make it over-exposed."

"I think that Yoda's a good choice for photo-real application in the archive cause the original Yoda had good deco... the photo-real's gonna make a great deco, Evans said. "I think Yoda with his wide eyes and kind of wrinkles and creases and stuff is perfect for that process and him being a major character. He definitely deserved a redo, so I'm really happy that we're gonna bring him out in his best iteration. Because the sculpts have always been there, sometimes the deco kind of is a little hit and miss, has been, but now that we employ the photo-real across everything I think everyone's agreed that the consistency and the quality is just kind of had a big, big jump and for no extra cash which is great."

"This is the character from early on in the Black Series, again has the Photo-Real Deco on both of his heads," Schneider explained. "His kind of more gentler Jedi head and then obviously the angry Sith eyes."

"This Grievous stands at seven inches tall," Evans detailed. "He's seven-foot-one in real life and comes with the four lightsabers. He has the soft goods, which is kind of double-stitched soft goods because the designers decided to make the cape different color inside on the outside; has little pockets in the cape to hold the hilts as well. The arms actually split and connect so you can have a two-armed version, and you can split each arm into four arm version which is really, really cool. It'll have 28 plus points of articulation which is a lot for the black series so really happy to finally bring that to the fans."

Keep going for more looks at upcoming and current Star Wars figures from Hasbro.