Happy Force Friday II!

September 1st, 2017, Force Friday II...or Christmas Day for many Star Wars collectors. Since I don't follow Star Wars toys as much as some, I only became familiar with this day a few days ago. Out of curiousity I did go to Target's website to see which stores around me would be participating in the Midnight launch. I wasn't planning on going, but I was curious. 1 store out of maybe 10 or so in my area was participating.

I strolled into my local Target near the house Friday morning (I really went there to buy a gift card for one of my employees) and when I walked down the toy aisle w/ Star Wars I was met by several adult men shopping the section. There was even a woman that had her husband on Facetime and she was holding the phone up to the different figures on the pegs. What a good wife!

Since images of these toys had made it's way to the internet prior to Force Friday, I had an idea of what to expect on store shelves today, but I do have to say it was nice getting to see these in person. I ended up grabbing a First Order Stormtrooper.

I love the new packaging. The red Star Wars logo really pops on the white blister card backing. Very prominent with the packging is the new gimmick, Force Link. I saw this bracelet type thing ($30?!) today, but it didn't seem like anyone was buying it as the pegs were still full. 

The back of the packaging really doesn't tell you much anything about the character, just an advertisement of how the Force Link gimmick works. Boring. I don't know who some of some of these new characters are so I was hoping to read something about them on the packaging.

After I got home and I was looking at the figure more carefully it dawned on me that this is the exact same figure from The Force Awakens...sans one gun.

I grabbed the one loose Stormtrooper I have from the previous movie and sure enough my hunch was right. Minus the oversized blaster that The Force Awakens version came with, this is the same figure. Even his blaster is the same. At least the extra gun included is regular sized and not that large gun the figure couldn't hold all that well.

I'm not a MOC collector, but dang I'm tempted to not even bother opening this figure now. I already have a loose specimen and besides, the packaging is oh so nice.

Speaking of the packaging, look how much smaller the new cards are as compared to even then the Rogue One releases. The packaging is shorter and not quite as wide as the previous Star Wars toys. I'm sure the Star Wars hoarders will be happy to know that Hasbro has reduced the packaging size so they can fit more toys in their storage unit.

Since the figure is basically the same, I'm not going to bother to open this one...at least for now. However I did review the First Order Stormtrooper from The Force Awakens so take a look at that post if you're curious about the figure itself.

Thanks for dropping by. Stay tuned as there might be more Star Wars posts coming in the near future.