So why customize action figures?
Today there is a huge interest in action figures. As franchise films and retro 80's pop culture rises in popularity, so does the demand for super cool action figures based on them. Unfortunately, not all of the action figure lines are holding the interest of the adult collector.
The worst offender is Hasbro's Star Wars line. This line in recent years has moved away from the detail and articulation that made it's Vintage Collection popular to a more basic figure with fewer accessories and less points of articulation. The figures they do market to collectors (The Black Series) have declined in quality while rising in price. The figures released are often the same "Main Hero" characters over and over again with only a few new characters in the line. The few that
are cool are often shipped with numerous paint errors, loose limbs, and weak blister glue on the packaging.
Hasbro seems to be completely oblivious to its own market: the Star Wars Collector. Instead of making available the characters that collectors would buy over and over again (Stormtroopers, Clone Troopers) or well made new characters, they fill the pegs with version after version of Main Hero characters (Anakin, Luke, Han Solo). This results in the pegs remaining chock full of characters everyone already has or has no reason to own.
Like most collectors, I was tired of the quality going down while the price point went up on these figures. Add to that the increasingly poor selection of characters and the equally terrible availability of them, I realized there was only one way I was going to have the characters I actually wanted - make them myself.
