Gentle Giant Q and A Round Up

Rebelscum forum member BlueSnaggletooth appears to have an inside connection to Gentle Giant. He has posted a Q and A with Amanda from Gentle Giant on the Rebelscum Gentle Giant forum. I am going to present a point by point summary here and also in a series of blog posts through the rest of this week. Read the full Q and A plus responses on Rebelscum here.

1. GG may go back and revisit the Clone Wars Maquettes at a later date.
2. No plans for another MBNA exclusive bust at this time.
3. There will possibly be bronze pieces produced for other licenses, but they want to see how the first offering goes.
4. GG has the same product lines for Indiana Jones as they do for Star Wars. The first official Indy piece (one of the ones shown at SDCC) will be up for pre-order soon.
5. GG hopes to possibly have more Clash of the Titans and Harryhausen products released within the next year.
6. A Star Wars 4-LOM is on the list to be made.
7. GG hopes to get the Collector’s Collections feature up and running in the next few months and start up the ‘Collection of the Month’ contests again.
8. Jabba and the Band statues have just made it to the docks and/or will be in the next few days and should be arriving to the GG warehouse within a week or so. That should make these items getting to retailers/distributors end of August, beginning of September.
9. The Dooku/Asajj statue lightsabers do not have a light-up feature, but that could change as they are still in development on the piece.
10. There are no current plans to do a “Fans Choice” mini-bust where PG members get to vote on who they want, but you never know what may pop up in the future.
11. No word on the upcoming Blue Senate Guard statue and who it will be exclusive to. They will let everyone know when something has been decided.
12. They hope to bring back the Blog comments sometime next month.
13. The reason Blister gets so many exclusives is that Japan is actually a huge market for Gentle Giant and not just a store. Blister also happens to be GG’s main distributor for Japan.
14. They’re already looking/planning ahead into 2008/2009 and are toning down the amount of total exclusives they will be producing as well as the outlets that products are exclusive to.
15. The AT-TE Gunner Accessory Pack will be around $15/$20.
16. There is always the possibility of producing Biggs and/or Wedge in some form down the line.
17. The black light posters (for the Premiere Guild) should be starting to ship out next week. The other licensed and GGLTD goodies will be shipped later. There are 3 licensed products and 3 GGLTD items. All the licensed products are exclusive to the PG and will not be available anywhere else. Some items will be great for display and some you will be able to use everyday.
18. There is nothing in the pipeline right now for other Cantina denizens in mini-bust form, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
19. There are plans to improve the PG program for 2008 to provide better access to exclusives (not via raffle). Before the end of the year, there might just be a few more Premiere Guild only items popping up.
20. There is no B/W variant of the Stormtrooper Maquette. The Blackhole Stormtrooper Maquette is the ‘variant’ to the Stormtrooper Maquette. There are no immediate plans to continue the Black/White Maquette variants.
21. The little bust of Ray Harryhausen, is actually something Gentle Giant Studios put together, and not really a Gentle Giant Ltd. product.
22. They’re in the process of possibly re-vamping the “studio” section on the website into more of a behind the scenes type section.
23. The Gentle Giant Booth at the Baltimore Comic-Con will only be where you can pick-up your Pre-Orders. They will not be selling any other products at the show. Baltimore Comic-Con will be handling the sale of the convention exclusives at a separate booth. They will also be offering the PG members an advance window time to place their “Pre-Orders for Pick-Up”, before opening it up to the rest of the members of our Collector’s Club.
24. GG will not at this time consider making a small amount of Holiday busts available to PG members via the raffle.
25. Gentle Giant Ltd. is now the official licensee for Star Wars LEGO resin products. The LEGO Blackhole Stormtrooper Maquette is the first official LEGO/Gentle Giant Ltd. product.
26. Offering up the Life-Size Animated Princess Leia, is still the plan.
27. No comment on whether or not Gentle Giant will be producing a companion piece to the the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi in Clone Armor statue, as many have speculated.

There you have it. I tried to summarize, but that is a lot. I will be adding separate blog posts for the major announcements that were made here throughout the week. I appreciate any feedback you have in the comments here or at get_real@comcast.net.