MGS Interview: April 25, 2023

In a livestream hosted by The Mandalorian actor Paul Sun-Hyung Lee last April 25, Jazwares launched the N-1 Starfighter.

The two-hour interview with Sr. Product Manager Maxwell Lux and Designer Gihoon Song also provided a wealth of new information for the Micro Galaxy toyline.

Here’s all the important info you may have missed.

Price Reductions

The biggest news apart from the N-1 is that MGS will be cutting prices. While the larger Starship and Assault classes are going up in price, the smaller classes will see price cuts.

Class	Current Price	New Price
Scout	$5.99	$4.99
Light Armor	$12.99	$9.99
Starfighter	$16.99	$14.99

There’s no word yet when it will take effect. But this is very welcome news, and confirms Max’s previous statements that MGS will have a “price strategy that goes against the rest of the toy industry”.

New SDCC Exclusives

There will be four MGS convention exclusives for the San Diego Comic Con in July.

According to Max, one of these will be “the coolest exclusive ever”, so much so that fans will exclaim “This is IT!” when they finally see it. The packaging alone will be “mind blowing”.

Max sounds like he can barely contain himself from revealing them, and mentioned how the PR team is holding him back until they can do a mass announcement.

Universal Stands

The MGS team is mulling the idea of making universal stands compatible with all models. Max has ideas he will discuss during their SDCC brainstorming meeting. His concept consists of a clear stand that instead of clipping on, connects with the ship on 3 points or balances it.

Max mentioned potentially selling it direct to consumers, or via Amazon as sales avenues. He also said that if they ever re-release Slave I, “it will come with a stand so it can be displayed in flight mode.”

The stand discussion was prompted by Gihoon, who mentioned that they saw how members of the MGS subreddit were using the Ginivex flight stand for other ships.

This means the MGS team is actively looking at the Micro Galaxy subreddit, so make your voices heard on Reddit!

Next Models

• Once the Jedi starfighter lineup is complete, TIE variants are next.
• The TIE Phantom is “100%” (this was also confirmed during the previous interview hosted by the MGS Facebook group).
• The TIE Crawler is in the planning pipeline, but somehow it always gets superseded by other potential models in their brainstorm sessions.
• There is “definitely a chance” of the Ebon Hawk and the Moldy Crow.
• The Sail Barge “gets priority”, since Max Rebo is Max’s favorite character besides Admiral Ackbar.
• It sounds like the Sentinel-class landing craft is not yet confirmed, and Max was only “geeking out” in the last interview.

Repaints

• The current N-1 has a Grogu permanently fixed in place. The team is already exploring an N-1 variant with Grogu in Din’s lap and R5 in the dome.
• Max asked the audience if there are other versions of the Havoc Marauder in the Clone Wars series. He may be exploring repaint potential for the Marauder.

Playsets

Action Fleet-style playsets and dioramas are something they “badly want to do in the future”. In fact, the team is actively ideating it.

Max has mentioned creating a TIE hangar. They have also discussed the vertical TIE racks used by the First Order in internal meetings.

Capital Ship Discussion

Star Destroyer

• In past interviews, Max mentioned how one team member was campaigning for an ISD.
• He now confirms it was Gihoon, who went as far as creating a cardboard mockup on his weekend off, to show the team “we can do it!”
• The team finally did some initial measurements of an ISD to MGS scale. At 1/96, it was the length of two buses.

Corellian Corvette

• The iconic Blockade Runner is “definitely a possibility.”
• Gihoon created an initial design that turned into a transforming playset
• Max: “I really wish I could spoil what’s in the next wave.”

Hammerhead Corvette

• While discussing the Blockade Runner, Max also mentioned he wants to do a Hammerhead corvette.
• The biggest hindrance is the size. Any mockup of the corvettes no longer fit with the MGS 1:96 scale.

Collector’s Boxes

Max repeated their idea for a Collector’s Box Set that contains everything in each wave, including the rares and chases.

This time, he mentioned including a hand-signed letter from the MGS team with each set.

This could be an indication of how costly or how limited they may be if ever they get produced.

Distribution

• The MGS line is not region-locked. What are exclusives in the US (such as Walmart and Target exclusive models) are not exclusives anywhere else.
• Max wants the Walmart podracer exclusives to be available internationally, especially since The Phantom Menace will have its 25th anniversary next year.
• He also wants the same wider international distribution for the Target gunship repaints.
• Max wants to go back and produce previous waves that are in-demand. In the previous interview, he indicated strong demand for the ships of Sabine, Hera and Ahsoka, so there’s a chance they may be reproduced.
• Celebration Europe was “an eye opener” for the Jazwares top leadership. That’s when they realized how popular MGS actually was.
• As a result, they now have all-hands meetings, and more resources are being allocated for the MGS line.

Various tidbits

As always, Max and Gihoon provided plenty of “inside baseball” stuff at what goes on behind the scenes.

• The MGS team has a document of all potential models for the line that stretches to 108 pages.
• The product development team has fanciful kitbash concepts they call the “uglies”. One of those is a Y-TIE combo.
• Max and Gihoon joked about giving away these “uglies” as convention exclusives. This could suggest they have actual physical kitbash sculpts, not just ideas or digital renders.
• Max wants to do Kenner Mini Rigs badly, like the Bossk one.
• There are 2 mistakes in the initial Falcon release. One was not having farmboy Luke (he was made available in the Escape the Death Star release). Max didn’t want to reveal the other mistake.
• The first thousand versions of the Falcon have a handcrafted piece to make sure the top turret wouldn’t fall out. Subsequent tooling corrected the turret so it would friction fit.
• The team is now working on “beard technology” to make sure Biggs looks good before mass production. The mustache seems to be a challenge.
• The U-wing has many action features, just like the AT-AT.
• As a testament to the improving figure quality, the AT-AT driver sports an Imperial symbol on the helmet the size of a pinhead. This will be applied to future Imperial pilots as well, who until now only have a white circle.
• The upcoming Red Squadron pilots also have more detailed helmets than the previous X-wing pilots.

The Host

The livestream was hosted by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, who plays Captain Carson Teva on The Mandalorian. There are two reasons he was chosen by Jazwares to do the N-1 reveal: he spends the majority of the show chasing after the N-1, and Paul is actually an MGS nut just like us!

Paul owns 4 Havoc Marauders, a squadron of TIE Outlanders, and fleets of X-wings and snowspeeders. He also bought “entire cases” of blind boxes to get the escape pod with R2.

Here’s the full 2-hour interview hosted on Paul’s Youtube channel, Bitterasiandude Inc.