Last weekend at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 in Southern California, I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with the Hasbro Star Wars team after their panel revealing upcoming new action figures in the Black Series and the Vintage Collection. Read and watch below as we talk about The Mandalorian and Grogu, Maul -Shadow Lord, new packaging, and more.
Mike Celestino, Laughing Place:I want to start off with Rotta the Hutt, the character everybody’s been talking about this summer. He’s coming to both the Black Series and the Vintage Collection. What can you tell me about the design that went into bringing that character into action figure form?
Chris Reiff, Hasbro: Well, it was a it was a really cool one because we got to work really closely between Black Series and TVC. At the time, Emily [Cantelupe] was still cranking away on TVC. So, Emily did foundational work on that, out of the gate. I had been talking to Dwight [Stall] on one of our other lines here [aboiut] a character that has a nice soft chest, and I said, ‘That’s a perfect execution for what we know this character is going to need to do and move.’ So, we worked across Black Series and TVC to really bring that sort of innovation and and tech into the figure. And then, of course, he has a giant tail. So, how do you deal with that? And the team figured out a great way to do a wire in there that’s poseable, but still the whole tail remains squishy. So yeah, it was fun to play in a new territory. That’s not a figure you can just go, ‘Oh, here he is. He has knees and elbows.’
Watch Hasbro Star Wars team INTERVIEW at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 – Rota the Hutt, INT-4, Talzin, more:
LP:Speaking ofThe Mandalorian and Grogu, you also revealed the INT-4 Interceptor vehicle. This vehicle, as folks will know, started off as a Kenner Star Wars Mini Rig. Now it’s graduated to the big screen and you’re reverse engineering it back to being a toy again. Tell me a little bit about that.
Reiff: Yeah, exactly. It’s always special when that happens– when a movie and that design aesthetic influences fresh creations in toy and fresh designs in toy that then get reintegrated back into live action. We’ve seen that before on the vehicle we internally call the Mark-mobile, the Imperial [Troop Transport] where the stormtroopers stand around the outside. That made it into Rebels then live-action in The Mandalorian. This is another one of those that– Mark Boudreaux was with the company for so long and was so foundational to how the toys I played with, and so many of us played with, and then to be able to take a design that was Mark’s original design as a Mini Rig and the filmmakers to bring that into reality, and then for us to be able to take the movie reality that they created and to bring that back into toy again. It’s just a nice, fun, full-circle moment. So, this is my favorite of our reveals.
LP:Brandon, you’re you’re holding the new Black Series packaging that you guys just revealed. We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of Star Wars next year, and this is tied in with that celebration. What can you tell me about the choices that went into the new packaging?
Brandon Tiwari: So, this is a new era for the brand– a new era for Black Series, especially. We had a number of different guiding principles to go into how we were rebranding Black Series. The first one obviously is that, 15 years in, we are proud of what Black Series has been, what it continues to be, [and] what it will go on to become. And so we wanted to celebrate that with a new bigger, bolder logo for Black Series. We wanted to bring the entertainment logos to [the packaging] because we know that whether you’re flicking through Disney+ or going through your DVD collection or your VHS collection still, whatever it may be, we know that fans most identify with the logo– whether it’s the movie, the show, the book– that each of those characters come from. And then we were inspired by the George Lucas silhouette philosophy, right? That each character, each vehicle, everything has to be recognizable [in silhouette]. So what we wanted to do is take the hard work that the team has done to make sure that both the product and illustrations are one. They are no longer separate. So this is an actual render of the product itself. It is not an artistic interpretation of the character. We’re allowing the characters to speak for themselves. My favorite part is when you turn the box all the way around.
Again, Black Series continues to be our premium label line. And so we wanted to make sure that we held a homage to that with the silhouette that you see here. The orange accents around the the box– that again is paying homage to the 2013 lines, but then the cross-sell. We know how toyetic cross-sells have always been to the history of Star Wars toys, and so we wanted to bring that here for what will be a six-figure wave launching January 2027.
Tiwari: So that is because sometime soon you will be seeing us fill these characters in, and then [opening up pre-orders for] the wave all together. It’s a six-figure wave. We’ve been asked about what other characters are coming in that wave. ‘Is it a theme? Is it prequels? Is it this? Is it that?’ All I will say right now is there are six characters in that wave. Make of that what you will.
LP:The last thing I want to ask you guys about is Maul. We got reveals from bothMaul – Shadow Lordand other characters tied to Maul fromThe Clone Wars. There’s just been so much buzz around Maul Shadow Lord and the character in general, so tell me a little bit about the the choices that went into this wave.
Tiwari: We we wanted to continue to build out that cast of characters, specifically Maul’s crew. We knew that they were going to have a lot of screen time. They are background characters, some of them, like Icarus and and Caprice, but it was about, completing that team as best we could, as much as we could. And then while we were playing in that Maul pit, we wanted to try and bring back some characters that were so integral to his story. So for Talzin back on Dathomir, we know fans have been asking for that for a long, long time. And then with Gar Saxon, um we knew that um again fans have been asking for him for a long time. He was Maul’s right-hand man in [The Clone Wars] season seven. It was great to get an array of characters for Maul out there.
Eric Franer: Yeah, it was just great to be able to finally get those characters in there. We’ve been wanting to have them in the line for a while, especially with that dotted line to Maul with Maul – Shadow Lord. We knew that this was a perfect time to finally get those characters into the line. They’re visually striking. It really helps to create this strong color palette across the entire wave and yeah, [we’re] just really excited for you guys to get them in hand.
Many of Hasbro’s Star Wars reveals from San Diego Comic-Con 2026 are available to pre-order right now
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