City in Crisis!

Someone just asked on one of the forums about the City in Crisis set currently listed at Entertainment Earth, and so I'm going to take this time to bust another semi-old rumor... that of the 6 4-packs. Well, I'm not going to bust the rumor that there are 6, but rather the identities of the 6.

When the SKU was first announced in January it was rumored to be the X-Men 4-pack with Emma. Since "Urban Heroes" became "Battle For New York" some people assumed that "City In Crisis" became the X-Men pack and combined it in the rumor lists with the X-Men set labeled "X-Men 1"

Further complicating matters is that some people did not merge the two, resulting in people counting the Showdown with Magneto set as City in Crisis, Urban Heroes as the Spider-Man set (which is correct), the new X-Men set (with Juggernaut, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Gambit) as X-Men 1, and "Avenger" as the Ms. Marvel Avengers set. End result? The rumor that we're getting another X-Men 4 pack, and that the Winter Soldier Saga box set is coming as its own wave.

End result: rumor lists are now listing Winter Soldier, X-Men 2, Champions, New Fantastic Four, and Defenders as the upcoming 4-packs even though X-Men 2 has already been shown (as Nightcrawler, Gambit, Juggernaut and Wolverine) and City in Crisis is the probable working name for one of the other three sets (Champions, F4, or Defenders)

Now, we still don't have any solid info on what set City in Crisis is, but we do know that it wasn't X-Men: Showdown with Magneto, that "Second X-Men Theme Pack???" is most likely the already announced "Second X-Men Theme Pack!!!" and should be removed from rumor lists, and finally, that there's 3 other rumored semi-sure thing 4-packs where either one could fit the title City in Crisis.

Edit: Just for fun, after I posted a nice explanation of City in Crisis question and dispelled the myth of the Second Second X-Men Theme Pack, my SHS stalker announced 8 posts down in the thread that he thinks it's going to be one of the three sets I suggested, or maybe that Second Second X-Men Theme Pack that's rumored.

I don't know if the funny part is how, of all the posts of mine he's responded to, this is the one he apparently never read (in part because he agrees with it), or if the funny part is how he missed the first line where I explained how the mis-counting started, with City in Crisis being passed around on message boards as the Emma set and thus the Second Second X-Men Theme Pack was the Second X-Men Theme Pack.

Actually, the funny part is that in 3 months, when another X-Men theme set is announced, he'll be convinced that the rumor was true, a phenomena I encountered earlier with the She-Hulk phenomena. One guy said he saw She-Hulk on promotional material that could never be found again and that bore a striking resemblance to the Spider-Woman promotional material. After 3 months, a website that's also selling the apparently non-existent Abomination/Hulk Wave 1 2-pack claims that She-Hulk is coming out in Wave 2 and the young man proclaimed he was right! He had known She-Hulk was coming!

And then I, of course, explained how she's a solo star in a fairly long-running comic series and has been a recognizable Marvel character for oh, almost 30 years, has been a member of the Fantastic Four, Avengers, Heroes for Hire, SHIELD, and now the Defenders and thus would eventually get a figure. I also said that using that logic, I was going to use secret promotional material I'd seen to announce that I knew comic Green Goblin, Nova, Iron Fist, Spider-Girl, Red Hulk, Moon Knight, Captain Britain, and Hercules were all on their way.

Now it's just a matter of waiting for my top secret source's prophecy to come true... ::twiddling my thumbs::

Edit 2: Oh, and his theory is that City in Crisis is going to be the "New Fantastic Four set" which he feels will have the Wolverine version of the team from three issues dating from 1990-1991. It's not impossible, but wouldn't a more likely version be the New New Fantastic Four, or just a set of new sculpts for the foursome?

Time will tell.

The 3-inch Switch/The Iron Man 5-Pack

This two-fer has it's basis in a poorly fact-checked listing at Forbidden Planet

See, this site, which has a few other erroneous listings I might go into later on, posted a wonderfully wrong ad for an Iron Man Movie 5-Pack, based on the booming line of new "3-inch" toys. When it was revealed that the Iron Man movie SHS were going to be 2 4-packs, not 4 2-packs as earlier thought, the 5-pack rumor was forgotten, the wise rumor-list keepers started pretending they never said there'd be a 5-pack and all is forgotten.

As for the switch to 3-inch figures, a few diligent rumor-busters pointed out that it was probably just a typo and everyone who believed in the switch quieted themselves and disappeared. And all is well with the world.

Why?

Some people, probably not many, have run afoul of my rumorbusting on the Superhero Squad Forum or at Marvelousnews and so you're probably wondering what I'm doing here. If you're familiar with my posts, you can probably guess at what most of these blog posts will end up like. Probably longer than they should be, full of over-analysis, and more than a little skeptical of totally unsourced anonymous BS.

Inevitably, when I post on a message board encouraging people to not take rumors as truth, or at the very least not to pass it along as a fact, there ends up being a mild disagreement between me and whoever else (although recently I did get my own personal hater... makes me feel like a celebrity) and so I figured rather than spending time countering mis-information, getting into a fight, having the attack turn personal and eventually ending with some moderator or whoever stepping in to sweep everything under the rug, I'd just post my rumor busting on my own corner. People who don't care, don't have to read and its a lot easier to ignore than a huge 3 page long battle right in the middle of a different thread.

Hopefully I'll find time this weekend to re-bust a few rumors that are still lingering.