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!