PT is pretty big in modern pup culture right now. A combination of memes, renewed interest, movies being seen more positively, aging kids/teens who are now adults with buying power, and the TCW cartoons. It's why we are seeing so many PT HT now compared to anything else in the last few years.
I understand the point you?re trying to make, but with how long these figures take to develop, get approval for, produce, and release, the handful of PT figures we?ve seen were in development long before the renewed interest in the Prequel Trilogy.
Most of us that have been around for a while are aware of how long Anakin was said to be in development, which is closer to the start of the Star Wars line.
And while the PT has seen a resurgence amongst Star Wars fans for various reasons of late (I think more fondly of it now than before, especially after IX), we all live in a bubble within a bubble of high end collectibles in a specific product market.
Hot Toys doesn?t make business decisions based on the number of people that make prequel memes. There?s a ton of Star Wars collectors but the number of people that buy Hot Toys is minuscule compared to say Hasbro or LEGO. And while I don?t have numbers, OT is likely still far ahead of anything else as far as driving merchandise sales.
At the end of the day, Hot Toys is a business and they release what they believe will sell well and make as much profit as possible. Figures like Obi-Wan, Anakin, Maul, and Yoda were being developed years ago because they were considered safe bets from a business perspective. They?re popular characters even outside of the goodwill the PT has gotten in the last couple of years.
Ultimately, and unfortunately, regardless of what collectors want, we?re now left with a company that?s still small but have taken on way too much and are very, very risk averse for various reasons. Mainly the TFA figure debacle and limited production capacity versus the increasing number of blockbusters with larger and larger casts of characters.
