Newsclips 04/23/09

April 23rd, 2009 Comments Off Posted in Marvel Animated

Marvel.com has concept art and sketches up for the upcoming Iron Man Armored Adventures animated series. And what’s that? Hulk, Leader, Rick Jones and Fin Fang Foom will be guest starring in upcoming episodes?

Speaking of Iron Man, Terrence Howard is still angry about being replaced as War Machine.

And apparently we have Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen to blame for the Comic Sans font according to the Wall Street Journal.

Don’t forget that Wolverine and the X-Men is out on DVD (at least the first three episodes) as of this past Tuesday!

Newsclips 04/15/09

April 15th, 2009 Comments Off Posted in Hasbro, Mattel, Super Hero Squad

Happy Sinking of the Titanic Day to any that celebrate! For the rest of us, let’s take this slow time between toy releases to do another edition of newsclips!

First, some of you may have noticed that we’re slowly adding to our collection of checklists over on the Wiki. Recent additions include Hasbro’s Marvel Attacktix, and Toy Biz’s long-dead but not forgotten X-Men Evolution figures (and their related merchandise like the maquettes, fast food premiums and unreleased toys. Feel free to adopt one of the many abandoned toy lines out there and help with a checklist!

Second, Mattel’s Masters of the Universe Classics Mer-Man sold out in under an hour. Didn’t get one? You and a bunch of other angry folks over on the Matty Collector Facebook page insisting that Mattel engaged in some kind of insidious geographic preference. Scrolling through the messages, you’ll see allegations of customer service telling international customers the wrong time zone, European shipments getting error figures they can’t return and other accusations of geocentrism. Mattel has yet to officially address the situation, other than their repeated explanations that more Mer-Men are on the way. As for the allegations, even US buyers had issues with the site, including its notoriously buggy Digital River ordering system. While you’d think being there as soon as the Add To Cart button came up would guarantee a slot, the servers froze and buckled for all of us. As for allegations of double charging (did you hit the reload button when you thought the server/your order wasn’t going through?) and of a shopping cart zero-loop (your shopping cart keeps emptying), it may be evil pro-US-ness, but it may also just be the same poor website that locks up and has numerous bugs reported every MOTUC release day. Hopefully Mattel will get the bugs fixed soon, but in the meantime, hopefully they address the rampant allegations and accusations.

In happier news, Hasbrotoyshop continues business as usual (perhaps in part to never revealing when it’s going to add new product, although that would just make MOTUC collectors even more upset, but a search for “Squad” will reveal that the Hulk/Abomination, Hulk/Silver Savage, and Wolverine/Psylocke sets are going for $4.99, while the Genius of Tony Stark, and Crimson Dynamo Attacks sets are now $7.99, the Sand Pit Standoff is $5.99, the Iron Man Hall of Armor is down to $8.99, Gamma Lab is at $19.99, and the first Collector’s Pack is down to $17.99.

Did we miss some news? Most likely! Tell us about it on the board.