The Rumor Buster

Infinite Heroes Hawkgirl, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn Prototypes

Prototypes of the long awaited Infinite Heroes Harley Quinn, along with new reveals Hawkgirl and Poison Ivy, have appeared on eBay. These three would go a long way to rounding out Batman’s Rogues Gallery and the Justice Society and animated Justice League rosters, but remember they’re only prototypes so who knows when, or if, they will ever see official release. Thanks go out to Toy Ark for the news.

Hot Discussions: Is the Super Hero Squad Line Dead?

Every so often a really hot topic comes up on the message board and we’re going to take a minute to highlight some of the better ones when they come up. This week, Teacher of Madness brought up a doozy: Has the Super Hero Squad toy line been sacrificed for wider marketing? Good points have been brought up on all aspects: the SDCC exclusive being targeted at fans of the shows, whether or not we’re currently in a slow-down, the importance of movie sublines, unreleased figures… lots of great points. Head over to the message board to join in the discussion!

Transformers: Good News/Bad News

First, the bad news… it looks like Robot Heroes may have joined Adventure Heroes, M-Pire and Toy Box Heroes in the Hasbro Heroes graveyard. Normanb258 shared this over on the message board but apparently Parry Game Preserve asked a very delicate question regarding Robot Heroes, and got a sad answer:

Preserve: Do you plan to continue the Robot Heroes line beyond the current movie figures?

Hasbro: We do not have any plans to continue with this expression of Transformers past the ROTF line.

So now you want good news? Hasbro has released pictures of some upcoming Transformers figures and we’ve got them over in the Transformers Gallery. One warning for those that don’t collect the line, Rampage may make you want to start. Here’s the rundown:

The Future of Combat Heroes

It’s not uncommon for rumors of a line’s death to circle (ask Super Hero Squad fans), but many have feared Combat Heroes was on life support ever since Wave 3 was announced, then canceled. Of course, a few days ago Combat Heroes Wave 3 pictures started showing up on the toy news sites, which was obviously a good sign.

Then jestergoblin (check out his super hero haikus by the way) pointed us to Toyark’s news of an upcoming Walmart set featuring Xamot and Tamox, gold Destro, Baroness and Cobra Commander. There’s more pictures over at Taobao.

And now Dirge reveals pictures of what looks like either a “Training Movie Snake Eyes or Training Movie Storm Shadow”.

See? Looks pretty cool and hopefully with the movie only 3 months away we’ll find out who it is soon!

One thing is certain though… there’s an awful lot of activity going on for a line many of us had written off as dead not that long ago! Here’s hoping that more cool surprises are right around the corner!

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.

Hawkman: Menace to Society

Cool Toy Review has a Mattel Q&A explaining (rather candidly I might add) what happened to Hawkman and why he’s so hard to find.

Cool Toy Review: What is the final word on Super Friends Hawkman and the rest of the line including Robin & the Joker? Cyborg has starting appearing at Targets in new packaging. But, on the the back of the package it says Hawkman is cancelled. Also, Cyborg & Hawkman are now appearing at Rite-Aids stores in limited supply in the old packaging.

Mattel: The US actually made a change to toy safety laws in 2009 which made Hawkman off limits in 2009 due to the shape of his mace (being similar to a lollypop). That is why he had to be removed from the 2009 shipments. The figures you are seeing in Rite Aides are the 2008 release which was shipped before the new law went into effect. We hope this clears it up. If there is enough retail interest in late 2009 and going forward to continue the Superfriends line in 6” scale we will look into releasing Hawkman without his mace or with a different weapon.

So congratulations on Mattel for being so straightforward, and for giving us an excuse to drag out the old The Line is Doomed tag.

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!