We just got new info regarding Series 4 and 5 vehicles, one of the SDCC exclusives, and more!

These were revealed by Jazwares Sr. Brand Manager Max Lux during the Smuggler’s Galaxy podcast on April 29. The channel is dedicated to Star Wars collecting, including Star Wars toy lines.

While the focus was a behind-the-scenes look at MGS, Max dropped a few insider nuggets during the podcast.

Promotional image from Smuggler’s Galaxy, hosted by Glen Williams and Jason Wasulko

Also present were product designer Jon Otinger and Sr. Director for product development Glenn Yu. Jon works with fellow designer Gihoon Song and others on the design team to sculpt the vehicles and add playable features — he is the famous “Bob Ross” of the crew.

Meanwhile, Glenn coordinates with the factories in China to produce the tooling, perform QC, and make sure the samples measure up to the concept before the models hit the shelves.

Here are the highlights from the two-hour podcast:

SDCC

• Max once again confirmed there will be 4 SDCC exclusives
• “Coolest things you’ll ever see in the line. We can’t tell you right now, but I really wish we can.”
• Max was able to reveal 1 out of the 4: a holographic speeder bike with scout trooper.
• It will be limited to 1,000 units.
• The packaging itself is made for display. It’s designed to look like a hologram emitter, showing a floating holo of the speeder bike.
• The 3 other exclusives are interconnected to each other.

SERIES 4

N-1 Starfighter

• 1,000 units were sold out within 15 minutes. The entire 3,000-unit preorder allotment was gone after 6 hours.
• Thanks the frenzy, Jazwares soared to the #2 spot in Amazon for the whole Toys & Games category for a day.
• The physical N-1 model was at Celebration Europe and was supposed to be displayed together with the Series 5 models.
• But The Mandalorian’s executive producer Dave Filoni was so smitten with it that “he took it home.”

AT-AT

• According to Jon, some 3d sculpts take as short as 2 rounds before the issues are ironed out and it’s approved for mass production. But the AT-AT is so complicated it took up to 10 rounds of back and forth discussions and revisions.
• Jon: “The AT AT is “our masterpiece. It’s the most iconic vehicle of the franchise after the Falcon, and we gave it a fitting treatment.”

Max shared a pre-production look of the walker. This was also shown during the Jazwares panel at the last day of Star Wars Celebration Europe.

The many parts and components that make up the AT-AT. Having built a few Imperial walker models from the old AMT and the later Revell one, MGS’ version rivals that of model kits. But it comes with electronics and a full, accurate interior not seen on any other version of the vehicle.

The AT-AT is Gihoon’s project, and he is jokingly called the AT-AT Adoption Manager.

Lambda Shuttle

• The wings are ratcheted. This produces tactile feedback and makes it more realistic.

TIE Bomber

• It was supposed to be rare, but is now common

Jon Showed off an unpainted tooling model of the TIE bomber. According to the team, it’s the first ever rendition of the vehicle that shows the actual bomb bay and has a position for the bombardier. Shown above are the pilot and bomber stations, who sit back-to-back.

The bombs are painted metallic red. The paint was changed 3x before they hit the perfect color agreed on by all the various teams. Shown above is the bomb bay.

Jon also showed off packaged sample of TIE bomber.

SERIES 5

Geonosian Starfighter

For the first time we get to see the physical model, courtesy of Jon.

Shot of the underside showing the tricycle-style landing gear. The team had to create it from scratch.

Shot of the cockpit. Jon says they also had to create the control panels and tubings.

Desert Skiff

• The center table opens up to reveal the engine
• The side fins move
• There are foot clips to hold figures at different parts of the skiff
• The side railing folds down on one side
• The iconic plank slides out
• It comes with a new ball-jointed display stand that allows more poses, including the banked scene with the damaged skiff tilting down to the Sarlacc
• There could be a battle back for Spring 2024. If it gets approved, it will have 2 desert skiffs to recreate a certain famous scene from ROTJ

Series 5 Hidden Ship

• One of the two hidden Interceptors from Series 5 can now be revealed: it’s Darth Vader’s Sith Interceptor
• The ship will be all black with an Imperial logo and a suitably evil droid
• It will be a common ship
• The other unrevealed Interceptor will be the Rare with only 15,000 units

Imperial V-Wing

• One of the Rares in Series 5 will be an Imperial version of the V-wing
• This is to complement the Sith Interceptor above. In fact, the concept came from Jon, who repainted a Jedi Interceptor in black and gave it sinister V-wing escorts.
• It was teased during Jazwares’ panel discussion in Celebration Europe.

B-Wing

• Contrary to our earlier observation, the B-wing has no missing ion cannon and is as screen accurate as possible. Thank you for pointing that out Max!
• The cockpit is not free-floating due to size constraints. However, it can be manually rotated by hand and posed in different positions

TIE Silencer

• It used to be rare, but will now be common
• It comes with a removable back panel that shows off the engine details, just like the TIE Advanced
• The wings are so long they don’t fit in the packaging as is, so they will need assembly like the N-1 and the Sith Inquisitor

U-Wing

• The “best version of this vehicle ever made.”
• The lower cabin door opens out realistically
• With the door open, the cannon swings out 90 degrees toward the exterior just like in the movie, when the door gunner brought down the AT-ACT

Other Series 5 Vehicles

The Resistance A-wing will be a Common ship.

Bespin’s iconic Cloud Car will also be common.

Ewok speeder bike with battle damage

Ewok attack glider

General Grievous’ wheel bike

Right view

In case you missed it, you can see clearer photos of the Wave 5 scout classes in our Star Wars Celebration Europe coverage, courtesy of Katie G and Steven Warmath.

OTHER MODELS

Ahsoka Evolution Battlepack

• Will be an Amazon exclusive
• No hyperdrive ring, but comes with the ETA Interceptor and Delta-7 fighter

The Ghost

• The team confirms they have talked about it internally
• Max: “People might be put off by the huge size.”
• Jon: “That’s actually a plus!”

Rogue One Zeta-class Imperial cargo shuttle

• Max says it’s “too big” to fit the MGS scale and packaging

Distribution

This might be the lead for many collectors, especially active hunters.

• Max has heard from collectors that Series II is now hitting Target stores in the northeast
• Series 3 should arrive in late summer or early fall
• Series 4 should be ready by the winter holiday season
• Both coasts get the stuff first, and the stock gradually moves inward
• Chases are allocated across the entirety of retail chains

Max also shared an explanation on the lack of Series II. According to him, the first series of any toyline usually get very heavy orders from retailers, so they need to get through all that stock first before they order Series II.

Packaging

• The MGS brand has a collection of unified artwork that has different models, to minimize cost
• They reuse the artwork by changing the colors and details, and remove the models not needed for the scene or era.
• The models used in the artwork are the actual 3d renders of each vehicle

Max showed three examples of the artworks made for the lines to date.

Price Reduction

The hosts asked how MGS was able to achieve price cuts despite the ongoing inflation.

According to Max, they want to encourage fleet building for fans instead of just getting one model per line. That can be hard to do if the vehicles go up in cost.

To achieve this, Glenn and his team worked hard to get the best deal from their manufacturing partners. It’s a testament to Glenn’s crew that prices can go lower even as the quality goes higher. Their sales teams also work hard with their retail partners to lower MSRPs.

Max says there is no exact timeline yet when lower prices will take effect, but it can happen in fall 2023 to 2024.

A Look at the Conceptualization and Production Process

Smuggler’s Galaxy’s podcasts also focus on the toymaking aspect of each toy line. In this case, Max and the MGS crew were more than happy to share new insights on how Micro Galaxy are made.

• Some model concepts can be up to 40 pages long.
• It takes up to 14 months for a vehicle to go from concept to production
• Once a ship is finalized, the team creates a product data sheet. It holds all the production information, from the exact colors and wash level to how many degrees a hinge, cockpit or door should open.
• For most toy lines, the product sheet is usually 7-8 pages long.
• For MGS, their product sheets can be up to 50 pages long, due to the amount of detail and exacting standards they require for each model.
• Each product sheet is critically examined and “attacked” by all the MGS teams, before it goes to Lucasfilm
• Some retail partners want a different case pack. A new case pack requires a new product sheet and SKU of its own.
• MGS classes have set package sizes. The ships need to fit in these packaging dimensions.

During the toymaking portion, Max shared the very first pitch deck they made to LFL.

The slide shows how the team used paper models to create physical samples. They also compared the size and proposed detail of their figures with the old Action Fleet series.

According to Max, the Falcon was supposed to be a bit bigger but it had to meet a set price point. Also, the initial idea for the regular TIE Fighter was to have deformable wings to simulate battle damage. This can be seen in the mockup above.

Figures

• Each figure gets almost the same amount of work as the ships themselves
• Even the wrinkles on clothes and tiny details like belt buckles get attention
• MM and Action Fleet were painted by hand, or used rudimentary tampo printing, leading to misaligned eyes or visors. Advances in tampo printing enabled precision deco for MGS

Details, Details, Details

One word was repeated throughout the podcast: details.

Jon and the designers create details for ships that look a little “too smooth” in the animated shows. He showed their prototype for the V-19 as an example. Since the animated V-wing lacked finer details, he turned to the X-wing for inspiration. His aim was to produce something that looks like it came from the same manufacturer and assembly line as the X-wing. As such, he designed little bumps and subtle panelings on the wings to make it more realistic. Instead of an animated model, he wanted the MGS V-Wing to look “part of our world.”

To make sure their detailed sculpts can make it into mass production, Jazwares invests in precision tooling, which allows for incredible detail. According to Glen, this is the same production tool used by hobby-grade brands like Bandai and Tamiya. This makes Jazwares’ detail quality “above toy-grade”.

Glenn says Jazwares also uses slides, which enhances details for vehicles. This is not typically used by toy lines since the process is very exacting and time-consuming. The slides must also be placed and removed in the right order. Once in position, they are precision fit and airtight. This is why MGS vehicles have no flashing, despite being plastic.

Glenn makes sure their manufacturing partners can produce the detail demanded by MGS during the pre-production process, before the full-blown mass production begins. The goal is to produce something as “close to a movie model as possible”, while balancing it with playability and price.

Jon also brought attention to the snappy click that happens when you fold the wings or open the landing gears. This tactile feedback adds to the feeling of holding a real scaled-down starship.

Other Tidbits

• The team is proud of the many paint apps, tampos, and deco applied, much more than conventional toy lines. Jon again showcased the V-wing, which has multiple detailed red stripes and a scale-accurate Republic emblem.
• MGS is committed to washes to make ships look more realistic and used, instead of immaculate. The team works very hard on fine-tuning washes to make it look screen-accurate.
• Jessica, a member of the MGS team, has pushed hard for Padme and Anakin’s H-type Nubian yacht for 5 meetings to date.
• Max says he would like to produce more E-webs and BARC speeders to encourage army builds.

For more information, you can watch the full 2-hour podcast below. It took place at 7 am on a Saturday, so hats off to the the MGS crew for taking time to talk Micro Galaxy even on their weekend off!

About the Podcast

The Smuggler’s Galaxy podcast is a weekly podcast dedicated to Star Wars collecting news. It’s hosted by Glen Williams and Jason Wasulko, who are certified Micro Galaxians. (They hit up to 3 Targets a day in their quest for Sabine’s TIE). The podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify and Youtube.

This is their 139th podcast and is a must if you’re into Star Wars collecting!