Last year, in advance of the release of Episode VII, we got Force Friday – something that had never been done before. It was meant to be the kickoff of all marketing related materials for the new movie, and it was a huge success for the franchise. There were lines at every toy store in the US who was getting shipments of SW gear, and SWCT got in on the fun as well. The FA premiere cards were (and still are) some of the more sought after cards from the entire run of new material, so its only natural that Topps wanted to try it again.

What to Like About New Rogue One Content

As we saw with the originals, much of the content features some great artwork used for the subjects. Publicity images for SW movies rarely disappoint, even when the movies do, and RO is no exception. I love that they are dark and artful, as I think that is the way we want to see them.

Similarly, the odds arent terrible. If you participated in the queue journey, you probably got to the upper tiers of the packs without much effort, thus giving you a better potential to pull at increased odds.

Lastly, I did actually like the queue. I think that it was an interesting way to build up to the film hitting the app, and was something I checked in frequently to try to complete. Although the top three tiers were much more difficult, I was able to make it through up to tier 2 with only about 10 bucks invested. Not bad.

What NOT to Like About New Rogue One Content

NOTE: Rogue One Premiere Cards are no longer Open Edition. This was changed overnight. I will leave my commentary below, because I still have strong feelings against the use of Open Edition as a whole.

This is where I am going to go a bit off the deep end, because I just dont get a few things. First off, these cards are all open edition at the moment. Not only is that INSANELY frustrating, but it could potentially mean a few awful things.

• The cards wont sell out and will forever be gaining in count, making them even more worthless than they should have been
• The cards will be added to 18 different variants that have more limited counts, and therefore could have more limited examples that are coming
• The cards will not retain the value that we expect a card of this type of release to carry.

Bottom line, open edition creates a negative customer experience. I cant tell if they are using this new type of set up to stretch content out so that they dont have to create new stuff or if its just a way to allow new people to collect cards from the past. Both of these things stand against the purpose of the app, and without getting into a page long discussion of why Open Edition challenges collection continuity in a way that is beyond detrimental to the core principles of the app, its not good that its being used here.

Rogue One WILL NOT have the following that Force Awakens did. It could be the best movie ever made, and it will still just be an ancillary part of the SW universe. That means that treating it this way will only contribute to a drop in value much more quickly than we would have seen had they been limited, or at the very least NOT open edition.

I think these cards were awesome, and the treatment here has made them significantly less so. There are only a few things that contribute to long term value in the app, and one of them is card count – or at least the ability to see what it is.

If Topps is A) not going to sell any of these cards out or B) not going show the counts, Im out. Although the teaser cards for FA were in packs forever, this cannot be drawn a parallel to those. We just cant do that. Teaser cards were what launched the app, and had a much more different place in the app’s positioning. They were never meant to have value. They were never meant to LAUNCH the movie the way the premiere cards did. They served as exactly what they were named – teasers.

I sincerely want Topps to think about their long term game with Rogue One here, because the way this played out is not the way we needed it to. Its time for them to start thinking about a plan to reroute and not ACTIVELY try to upset the majority of the population who despise what Open Edition has done to the app.