Archive for May, 2008:
Wave 1, Wave 2, Mega Packs Wave 1 on sale at Hasbro
At Hasbro Toy Shop a Memorial Day Sale is resulting in Hulk/Wasp, Captain America/Hawkeye, Angel/Colossus, Iron Man/Thor, Galactus/Human Torch, and Sentinel/Wolverine all being marked down to $3.99. The Collector’s Pack is marked down to $15.99 as well.
And finally, although I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, the coupon code SPRREQ8 is supposed to get you 10% off.
Also on sale: An assortment of figures from various lines including Attacktix, Marvel Legends Icons, Marvel Legends, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the Ronan Build a Figure Fantastic Four wave, and Spider-Man 3.
This could be a great chance to pick up the Collector’s Pack you’ve been waiting on, or finally assemble that Sentinel army you’ve been wanting, so happy hunting.
(Not the) End of Marvel Minimates
I’ve never really been a big fan of Minimates, the blocky look, the lack of early character selection, the fact that Ultimate X-Men were represented before regular X-Men, the fact that I just wasn’t collecting collectibles when they started… a whole lot of reasons. But they’ve grown on me, and every so often a set comes out that I can’t pass up.
Since Super Hero Squad came around, the whole SHS vs. Minimates argument has gone round in circles with no real winner. Articulation! Style! Characters! But recently I read this post at Minimate Headquarters which details some of the rumors regarding the death of the Marvel Minimates. These rumors of toy lines ending aren’t anything new, as the talk surrounding Marvel Legends demonstrates.
The post went on about competition, licensing issues, lack of news and of course, the rumors.
Apparently, the sense of dread was unfounded as new lines of Minimates don’t seem to be slowing down. Notice the Invaders set, a San Diego Comic Con exclusive, the Hulk Movie wave mentioned here, Iron Man Through the Ages, which is another SDCC exclusive, and the Avengers Assemble set seen here
Will the Super Hero Squad begin in London?
Toytalk has this article about the Brand Licensing Europe exhibition and lists “Ice Age 3, Avatar, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Iron Man 2, Wolverine, Spectacular Spider-Man, Super Hero Squad, Thor, Captain America, New Avengers, Scooby-Doo, Batman, Harry Potter and Tom and Jerry” as some of the properties being shown in the October show. If the animated Super Hero Squad is really being pumped for a Spring 2009 start, then October would be a great time to break out a trailer of the cartoon. At this point, it’s not a guarantee, just a hope, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
The Brand Licensing Europe site itself has Marvel Entertainment International Ltd. at booth 455. Companies like Lego, Cartoon Network and TV-Loonland will also be there. TV-Loonland may not sound familiar, but as you can read here they were the fine folks onto numerous Hasbro properties like Transformers, thus making DVDs that much more problematic. TV-Loonland’s website is here.
Wave 8, promotional text problems, and paint applications
I happened to see 3/4ths of Super Hero Squad Wave 8 at Target today and noticed a few things:
First: the Psylocke packs had the worst paint jobs I have seen in a long time. One had what looked like a chunk taken out of her cheek (similar to the nick I found on my Fin Fang Foom, a nick straight to the semi-translucentish plastic underneath the outer surface), and the “good one” has purple blemishes all over her arms and legs, while the “good” Wolverine looks dirty. It’s ok… I’ll consider it “battle damage.”
Second: This is apparently the last time we’ll see Wolverine in his classic blue and yellow garb. Up next is Samurai Wolverine, followed by a potential Weapon X Wolverine, and the Wolverine is back to his Astonishing X-Men-esque look (no blue briefs, but blue running down the legs) although why Hasbro is digging to make a repaint of the version 1 Wolvie from the Wolverine/Sabretooth pack rather than a paint of one of the newer sculpts is beyond me.
Third: I tend to enjoy the little descriptions they put on the various characters, and looking at the new packs reminded me of the text Hasbro has up for the Cable and Captain America 2-packs on their website:
“This chunky duo includes the evil-expressioned Cable figure and criminal-capturing Captain America figure both ready for a rumble!”
Apparently the copywriters haven’t read too many Cable books. On the other hand, he can be a little evil.
Fourth, and finally, the Flame Cycle has a kickstand! There was lots of complaining about Wolverine and his bike, but Ghost Rider is now able to sit comfortably on his bike without tipping over.
Hulk Wave 2 Delayed
This isn’t new news (to those of us that ordered the packs when we saw them) but I keep forgetting to put it up here.
When Hulk Wave 2 Super Hero Squad figures were put up for order on Hasbro’s website, as mentioned a while back I was surprised at how quickly the ability to order came, noting how there was no pre-order/coming soon period.
Well, not too long afterwards, the fine folks at Hasbro Toy Shop sent an e-mail explaining that the product was now back-ordered. The current ship-time for Hulk Wave 2 (the She-Hulk, Wolverine, Thing, Black Bolt and Absorbing Man wave) is June 12, 2008, which is conveniently enough the same ship-date as Wave 8 (with Psylocke.) Unless one of these dates gets pushed back, it looks like many of us will have lots of boxes waiting in the mail box mid-June.
Meanwhile, Hulk Wave 2 is still available for purchase on Hasbro Toy Shop, and the somewhat elusive Cable and Deadpool packs are also back in stock.
The Champions rumor
And for the other part of my latest rumor-busting romp, a dissection of the Champions rumor.
Basically, the crux of the rumor is that the Champions and X-Men 2 4-packs have been confirmed by Walmart SKUs.
I already discussed the Second X-Men Super Hero Squad theme pack at length in the City in Crisis post which, to summarize: the second X-Men 4-pack already came out, but because early posts with the SKUs called “City in Crisis” “the one with Emma Frost”, when the official name came out everyone assumed City in Crisis had been named changed to reflect Magneto, and then added City in Crisis back into contention when it was revealed that a 4-pack with that name came out. We got both X-Men packs, we know what “Urban Heroes”, “Winter Soldier Sa”, “Avengers”, and “City in Crisis” are now, and eventually when another X-Men pack comes out, everyone is going to assume it was the X-Men pack that we had the SKU for last year. Long story short: it has been confirmed, but it already came and went and we all have bamfing Nightcrawlers on our shelves.
As for Champions, it is not confirmed by Walmart SKUs.
The known SKUs for 4 packs are:
MVL CITY IN CRISIS 65356933020
MVL THEME PK URBAN HEROES 65356930439
MVL THEME PK X-MEN 1 65356930256
MVL THEME PK AVENGER 65356931768
MVL THEME PK X-MEN 2 65356931769
MVL WINTR SOLDIER SA 65356933021
MVL 4PK THE NEW F4 65356935071
MVL 4PK THE DEFENDERS 65356935072
4 PACK SECRET WARS 65356937551
ALIEN INVASION 6535693755
No Champions listed there. There is mention of Champions coming out of coverage of Toyfair 2008 from Marvelousnews but no SKU, and no other information.
If anything, the fact that “The Champions” are a bit of a name-problem for Marvel, as they discovered during the World War Hulk when they originally pitched “The Order” as the Champions as seen here on Newsarama and then had to change plans as seen elsewhere on Newsarama, means it’s probable that if and when we do see a Champions set, it may not even be called Champions, at least not officially. It’s unlikely that it would be called New F4 or Defenders though.
So yeah, X-Men 2 was a confirmed Walmart SKU, but it’s already been released, and Champions was mentioned at Toyfair, and reported on Marvelousnews, BUT it’s not a confirmed Walmart SKU.
More Spider-Man/Kraven/Vulture/Venom rumors
A couple of recent rumors have started, all apparently by one source who doesn’t like to be corrected by yours truly, so while I intended to do a quick run-down, it looks like there’s going to be a couple posts here:
Spider-Man/Kraven
The rumor: Poor Sales killed Kraven
Truth: Nobody knows why he was pulled. This rumor is essentially a portmanteau of existing rumors and unrelated theories. In early January, 2008, a user on a SHS forum reported that he heard it was pulled for a design issue. Also in early January, other users on the same forum reported that their Walmarts were restructuring the toy departments to take out Spider-Man SHS, leaving only Robot Heroes, Super Hero Squad, and Galactic Heroes.
(insert message board posts from people claiming they’ve seen Kraven, they’ve seen others who have purchased Kraven, etc.)
In late January 2008, the same user said his source from Hasbro said that Spider-Man/Kraven would be officially released May 8th.
(insert message board posts from people complaining that Kraven is going to be “movie” version, whatever that means.)
(insert message board posts from people insisting they heard that February was the release date, that March was the release date, that they see it for pre-order here, or there.)
In February, the user with the source said Big Bad Toy Store sent him notice that Hasbro was not able to fill the order for a case with Kraven, and that Hasbro “have just informed me that they do not have any new assortments that include this item scheduled for 2008.” He then says his source still says May.
In March, the user with the source said his source now says that the Spider-Man line didn’t “do well enough at stores to release any further product.”
Note, this is not “Kraven was cancelled because of low sales”, but that Kraven was never released and a guy knows someone that said Kraven would come out months after the Spider-Man line was phased out of stores and stopped having new waves announced, and that someone later changed their mind.
Now, there’s a Vulture rumor from the same source that says Vulture and the Venom/Sandman packs are rare because poor sales resulted in limited quantities. Again, totally unfounded. While Marvel did say that Spider-Man sales were disappointing in an earnings call documented here on Seeking Alpha that was in August 2007. So they knew the sales were disappointing line wide on Spider-Man toys in August, continued to announce upcoming waves including the Kraven wave, released 2/3rds of the wave, and finally 5 months later major retailers take the line off the shelves (months after the wave had hit shelves, sold out and was not refreshed.)
In fact, Marvel does not even discuss the possibility of toy product scale down in the earnings call mentioned earlier. They do say “While Hasbro has not been disappointed with licensed Marvel toy sales to date, we have reduced our forecast for the second half of the 2007 to the lower end of their forecast to reflect a possibility of lower reorders, though we are hopeful that the planned DVD releases in Q4 will further stimulate sales.”
Which, in English, means Hasbro is ok with toy sales (if Hasbro was disappointed in toy sales, Marvel wouldn’t come out and say it, they’d just avoid mentioning Hasbro altogether rather than misrepresenting facts to their shareholders and then publishing those mis-representations) but Marvel doesn’t think they’ll get as much money from the toy line as they once thought they would.
No consideration of distribution problems whatsoever though, or the fact that every message board post I’ve ever found of someone finding the figures was at a Walmart, or how the toys were never even included on Hasbro’s site. Of course, for the distribution angle, the closest we have to an “official” (and I use the term loosely) word is discussed in this post where we nitpick how a guy named ransomz on Marvelousnews says that when he talked to a guy named Scott, from marketing, that the third wave of Spider-Man had crap for distribution and “Some of the figures, like Kraven, may be worked back into future waves of the main line” (keeping in mind that the third wave was the Green Goblin/New Goblin 2 pack wave, and not the Vulture Wave)
Grains of salt people.
And while I’m talking about the dearly departed Spider-Man line, there’s a really, really silly rumor regarding the switch from prototype Venom in the Venom/Puma pack, discussed in an earlier post. Basically, the new rumor is: “the Venom on the back of the package was the Venom that was originally supposed to be released in this 2-Pack, because it was too small to fit in with the line it was removed and replaced with this Venom.”
Of course no source whatsoever would be foolish enough to put a name to this.
The Venoms were switched, but there was never a reason given, either officially or unofficially, on the record or off. The Venom depicted was less hulking than the sculpt that had already been released, and the later re-sculpt, but this is a great example of a misapplied deduction.
There’s a pattern of circumstances made obvious after an event, so thus the event must have been triggered by non-conformity with the pattern. Unfortunately with this line of deduction while the guess may be logical, or “truthy” in a Colbert sense, it’s not actually supported by anything, and can easily be mis-applied. For instance, one could also argue that because the new Venom wasn’t the same as the Venom that had been released, he was replaced. It uses the same facts to arrive at the same truth, but it is not supported.
So while there may be some truth to the rumor, it’s pure guesswork based on faulty deduction.
