Super Hero Squad Rumorbuster

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Squad Past, Present and Future: A look at the

One source of happiness for the devoted Super Hero Squad fan is a set of leaked SKUs. The leaked SKUs are generally discovered months in advance of promotional photos (which are, themselves released often months before the sets are released), and generally have at least a few solid character reveals. There’s often a partial name that causes confusion, or a generic name that falls victim to speculators who refuse to admit they’re speculating, but overall the SKUs are generally accurate, it’s the people passing them around that aren’t.

Anyway, this is a look back at the SKUs, the accuracy, the confusion, the occasional goof-up and overall, the potential future of the line.

The first batch I could find were:

Storm/Black Panther 65356925203
Cpt America/Fury 65356925204
Wolverine/Chopper 653569925205
Torch/Annilus 65356925206
Iceman/Pyro 65356926032
Thor /Loki 65356926033
Gambit/Rogue 65356926034
Dr Strange/Antman 65356926035

Pretty good right? Ultimate Nick Fury was surprising since we didn’t have a 616 Nick Fury (and still don’t unfortunately), but otherwise they were fairly spot on.

And then we have:

MVL HULK SPIDERWOMAN 65356930140
MVL DEADPOOL PUNISHER 65356930141
MVL CPT AMERICA CABLE 65356930142
MVL BLK SPIDER MAN DOC OCK 65356930143
MVL DAREDEVIL SPDMN 65356930144
MVL WOLVERINE PSYLOCKE 65356930145
MVL SPIDERMAN VENOM 65356930146
MVL GHST RDR MTRCY 65356930147

Which was a fairly straightforward set of SKUs, without much guesswork needed. Now we’re going to get into some of the SKUs that caused confusion.

BEN REILLY/SPIDER-MAN 65356931763
NEW THOR/ARES 65356931765
SPIDER-MAN/HOBGOBLIN 65356931764
WOLVERINE/THE H 65356931766

More straightforward SKUs, but “The H” resulted in some confused checklists referring to the set as Wolverine/The Hulk, which we now know as Hand Ninja. Ben Reilly/Spider-Man was also a bit of a conundrum, as we eventually learned that the set included Carnage. It can either be seen as the SKUs’ first mistake (since it essentially lists two Spider-Men, and omitted Carnage) or it’s just a harmless omission in favor of explaining what Spider-Man was included.
Next is the very straightforward set of:

MVL SPIDER-MAN / ELECTRO 65356933280
MVL SPDER-MAN / SENTRY 65356933281
MVL CAPTAIN AMERICA / RED SKULL 65356933283
MVL BLADE / PUNISHER 65356933282

Followed by the not-so obvious line-up of:

MVL SPD ULTRON 65356934449
MVL SOLDIER AGENT 653569344451
MVL S-M RONIN 653569344447
WEAPON X MYSTIQUE 653569344450

This is a great example of the frustrations and satisfaction one gets from the new SKUs. Mystique, Ronin and Ultron are highly demanded characters, but Soldier/Agent say just enough to not say much. And by not SPD and S-M are just assumed to be new or new-ish Spider-Men, which are frustrating in their own way.

We’ve already talked a little about the 4-Pack SKUs:

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

With Urban Heroes apparently turning into “Battle For New York”, “City In Crisis” (Or "Spider-Man Saves The Day", as we learned earlier today from Marvelous News) being erroneously credited as the Emma Frost set we now know was X-Men 1, we see that while the information may be right, it’s still subject to change.

We’ve also got:

MVL 4PK THE NEW F4 65356935071
MVL 4PK THE DEFENDERS 65356935072
4 PACK SECRET WARS 65356937551
ALIEN INVASION 65356937552

Which are subject to the normal speculation and considering how long it took to reveal “City in Crisis”, we’ll probably have nothing but speculation for a long time to come.

Mega Packs get into the action sometime too:

MVL SANDMAN S-MAN 65356933016
MVL GALACTUS MR FAN 65356931165
MVL ULT HULK ULT WOLVERINE 65356931166
MVL WENDIGO WLVRNE S 65356933017

And we now know that Ultimate Hulk is a recreation from the Ultimate Hulk/Wolverine mini-series that has yet to finish, and that Galactus is a repaint. Wendigo… well… come on… when has he ever been Mega-sized? On the other hand, in the recent King Sized Hulk, the Red Hulk faced off against a rather tall and lanky Wendigo, so maybe we’ll forgive the fine Hasbro sculptors for their broken sense of proportion. And we may not need another Sandman when regular Giant Man is still unmade, but oh well.

Back to the two-packs though, we finish up with:

MVL SHS SMAN SHANG UPC 65356936178
MVL SHS CYCLOPS MAR UPC 65356936181
MVL SHS THING KANG UPC 65356936180
MVL SHS INSULATED S-M S UPC 65356936179

HLK GRAY HLK LEADER 65356933645
HLK 2PK HULK ZZZAX 65356933646
HLK HULK DOC SAMSON 65356933647
HLK HULK SOH 65356922648

MVL CPT AMERICA BLK 65356937550
MVL SPDR-ARMOR RHIN 65356937547
MVL SPDR-MAN TOMBST 65356937548
MVL BEAST AVALANCHE 65356937549

Where we have all the highs and lows of SKUs. Kang, Leader, Zzzax, Doc Samson, Avalanche are new characters and pretty self-explanatory (but as we’ve seen, sometimes these things change.) We’ve got some other obvious characters like Cyclops, Thing, Hulk, Captain America, Spider-Man and Beast where the question becomes what versions of the characters, whether they’re repaints or resculpts. We also have the reasonable guesses… like Shang becoming Shang-Chi (as many sites reported Hasbro representatives mentioning by name during Toyfair), “Rhin” and “Tombst” being Rhino and Tombstone. And we have others like “MAR”, “SOH” and “BLK” where reasonable guesses include Marvel Girl, Son of Hulk and Black Widow, but are far from definitive.

And there we go, the past present and possible future of the Super Hero Squad, laid out in 11 digit codes.

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