Archive for the ‘Marvel Legends’ Category:
CustomCon 26 Going On Now
Head over to joeacevedo’s site and ogle all those awesome customs at the latest edition of Customcon. So far this year there’s plenty of treats, including an alternate history collection of Marvel minimates, some new Infinite Heroes Green Lanterns, and some Ducktales figures that’ll make you wish Disney would get on the ball with mining some of those great 90′s nostalgia-fests.
More SDCC 2009 News
SDCC 2009 is continuing along, so here’s a rundown of some of the bigger discoveries today:
Super Hero Squad Castle Doom playset
A shot of the SHS Iron Man and Doom statues together.
The Marvel Universe Wal-Mart Exclusive Gigantic Battles sets are shown here by Marvelous News, while the 4-inch Iron Man line is here with both comic and movie related figures, including War Machine, Crimson Dynamo and a bunch of movie armors. A loose shot of the Hand Ninja, Hydra Soldier and SHIELD Agent 3-pack.
There’s also Marvel’s new 4 inch Spider-Man line, featuring Doctor Octopus, Rhino, Venom, and Green Goblin (along with a variety of 90′s era Toy Biz Spider-Man variants.
Then non-registration required shots of the Marvel Universe Secret Wars sets, including Enchantress and Thor, Mr. Fantastic and Ultron, Magneto, Hawkeye and Piledriver, the Julia Carpenter (Arachne) Spider-Woman.
Marvel Legends fans can rejoice at the pictures of various Marvel Legends prototypes like Valkyrie, Hood, Bi-Beast, Phoenix of the White Crown, Fantomex, Madrox, Lady Bullseye, Paper Bag Spider-Man, Nuke, Constrictor, Brother Voodo, Classic Ms. Marvel, Black Widow, Warpath, Deadpool, Hulk, and Havok. Did I miss anyone? Probably.
Cool Toy Review has pics of the new Marvel Universe figures for Jean Grey, white and blue Thing, black dragon Iron Fist, Jean Grey, Vision and classic Sunfire. Of course, here’s X-Men Origins Wolverine’s deluxe Astonishing X-Men Colossus.
Back to the Super Hero Squad, is this the X-Cutioner’s Song, featuring Jim Lee designed Jean Grey and Cyclops, along with Stryfe and Wolverine? And Moon Knight and a big headed Iron Man? Hepzibah, Cyclops, Warpath and Wolverine in what could POSSIBLY be the leaked X-Force 4-pack, while Wrecker and company are confirmed as Secret Wars. Then front and back shots of the new Toys R Us exclusive Collector’s Pack featuring Ultimate Hulk, Emma Frost and the Falcon.
Fans of those wacky Mighty Muggs style designer toys may enjoy Mattel’s prototype Attitubes, including Webstor, Mer Man and Orko from Masters of the Universe. There’s more of those Justice League PVC statutes coming.
Infinite Heroes fans might be bummed by the lack of news, but here’s a shot of Red Arrow, and if you picked up Anti-Monitor, you’ll see the card back lists the following four figures as Mattycollector exclusives: Supergirl (battle damaged, and carded to replicate her Crisis cover), Barry Allen with the famous death face, the Monitor and Psycho Pirate. 43, Infinity, 49 and 48 respectively.
Then there’s Brave and the Bold Action League B’Wanna Beast and Ocean Master.
We’ve started a SDCC 2009 page on the Wiki to try and track new discoveries, so feel free to jump in or browse the coverage so far.
Make Mine Hasbro Through 2017
With $100 million (maybe more) in royalties to gain, Hasbro, Marvel and Spider-Man Merchandising LP have extended their merchandising agreement. I can almost imagine the anti-Hasbro contingent hanging out and spouting conspiracy theories about the “death” of Marvel Legends. Oh wait, I found them here.
TheFwoosh Q&A
According to TheFwoosh’s Hasbro Q&A, this Friday we should see the first packaged pictures of Marvel Universe Wave 2 and 3 at Hasbro’s Marvel page. Other information? Characters looks will not necessarily be their most recent as Hasbro suggests “You’ll see some 70′s and 80′s specific characters and costumes as well as plenty of contemporary ones. Heck, you may even see some 40′s inspired choices, but we don’t want to give too much away. We want to throw some fun curveballs into this line and we’ve got some things planned for the back half of the year that are going to take fans by surprise.”
They also mention Marvel Legends continuation, and how they’re working on a plan to provide collectors with new characters without getting stuck with too many A-listers. Sounds like a great idea!
The End of Marvel Legends! BWAH HA HA
I was going to post a myth about the secret truth behind repaints in 4-packs, but unfortunately can’t get to the source of the myth right now (site’s down) so maybe I’ll take a break later on to post it (assuming the source comes back.)
Instead, I’m going to talk about Marvel Legends for just a second. Basically, ever since the Hasbro take-over, the take-over that resulted in the birth of Super Hero Squad, there has been nothing but internet sturm und drang about (1) the quality of the figures and (2) the ever impending death of the line.
Now this week Super Articulated posted an article about the cancellation of Marvel Legends (or rather, th cancellation of retailers orders for Marvel Legends ICONS).
Since then, a bunch of other places have picked up on this article and everyone is spinning the story darker and darker. Look at the comments of the Super Articulated article for examples of some of the craziest conspiracy theories and angriest F.U.s to Hasbro you’ll read on a toy site.
“This is not surprising though and I anticipate the complete cancellation of ML at any time. I only hope I get my FF Foom first. I consider the Hulk series coming to be ML.”
“in toy globe wave 4 and 5 said canceled too, so i think this is it for Marvel Legends… a very little smart move from the guys of Marvel given the license to this crappy toy factory, and now a worst move from Hasbro killing the golden eggs chiken”
“3. (kinda pessimistic, but most likely in my opinion) Hasbro has been begrudgingly dragging along the 6? ML figures at Marvel’s behest, and have finally decided they’re done with that.”
Now, those are actually kind of tame compared to some of the other posts I’ve read, but seriously, wishing a toy company to hell, conspiracy theories that Hasbro was just putting on appearances when they put out the first few waves of Marvel Legends.
But this has all been warm up for my pet peeve: people re-posting suggestions of possible doom-and-gloom on message boards in a totally mis-characterized fashions.
Like this, from the Marvelous New forums:
“In brief, it says that the wave is canceled w/retailers, and that Marvel Legends in general are quite literally the bottom of the totem pole as far as production concerns go. The movie figures can’t share space with Marvel Legends, so they’re gonna get bumped. I don’t really know the source, and I’ll wait til NYCC for official word, but this is the trend many of us have been feeling, and this minor confirmantion could end up being big.”
Now, here’s what the article actually says:
- orders of Icons by online stores have been canceled
- those lines had proposed line-ups already
- the author liked Nightcrawler
- FANS think the Marvel Legends line is doomed.
- Hasbro hasn’t told released any information about what comes after lines that aren’t released yet.
- the author thinks Hasbro is trying to avoid over-saturating the market with wave 4
- many stores have space for Marvel Legends.
- The stores he’s visited ARE OVER SATURATED WITH FIGURES FROM THE LAST TWO MARVEL LEGENDS WAVES.
- And finally, that in the author’s opinion Hasbro only cares about movies and the line is doomed but he’s not going to officially say it because it’s all guesswork.
To sum it up, the author of the original news piece really liked one of the upcoming figures, he’s heard nothing but rumors, one rumor said that there was too much crap out filling shelves, and he’s got some anecdotal evidence to demonstrate that there actually is too much crap still out there. In short: the line of giant-sized Marvel Icons may be canceled. Everything else is speculation.
I have no information one way or the other regarding the future of the line and that’s because there is no information to know. The point of this entire post is to encourage people to look at what “news” is actually saying, what is actually information. Some of the rumors (re: theories) have more sound principles than others, but re-posting an opinion piece based on rumors as “official confirmation” elsewhere doesn’t make them facts!
