price bump to deluxes

[JediTricks]

For me, the Star Wars 6" line's first wave had a high quality of plastic and paint used, but a lot of flaws too, and the R2-D2 was a crappy figure with a kiddie gimmick and being underscaled. The line has digital sculpting by Gentle Giant, the best in the business, but from wave 2 on the plastic used and the paint got cheaper and cheaper so you can't see that quality sculpt as well; and the accessories got fewer, the character choices got more questionable, it just doesn't feel premium enough. You are right that scale does play a factor, a lot of fans stayed away when the figures went from 1:18 to 1:12th, but honestly I think this is just more about a general sense of shittiness. The $40 deluxe Jabba and Scout Trooper with Speeder Bike sets are tanking, Target is selling them for $25 a pop and still cannot get rid of them. The line doesn't have juice.

[Onslaught Six]

I think the fact that it is basically "starting over" for many existing collectors is a huge turnoff for the line, even for casual collectors, like what I consider myself to be. (I think I can count the number of 4" Star Wars figures I own on both hands, and at least half of those are McQuarrie concept figures.) It doesn't help that SW has had the 3.75/4" scale since literally the inception of the toyline (and the scale, for that matter!) while Marvel Legends has the opposite problem--they were existing all the way back to before Hasbro even had the brand, and starting the 4" Universe line was arguably a big gamble. (The difference there is that the 4" figures were, naturally, much cheaper than the expensive 6" Legends line, so one could quickly and cheaply amass a decent sized group of unique and different characters. And, both Legends and Universe had way more mould reuse potential than Star Wars does.)

[Shockwave]

I certainly think scale does factor into it, but mostly because it is kind of like starting over and I agree that a lot of fans just don't want to. I myself have a hard time justifying the purchase of what basically amounts to "that thing you already have, only slightly larger". I only have one SW figure at the new scale, it's R2D2, and even then, it took me weeks of deliberation to finally pull the trigger and when I did, I found myself wishing I hadn't.