Action-Figure.com has updated their gallery to reflect the new Marvel Universe 3.75 inch (or 3 3/4 or... someone should come up with a standard nomenclature) figures, with some really crisp up-close shots.

One of the interesting things is the number of snap-on weapons, like for instance Iron Fist's fist appears to disconnect from his hand for "powered down mode", and Spider-Man's web appears to disconnect as well for use with other characters, or if you have two webs, you can always have a web-slinging good time!

News Clips 7/27/08

New crisp photos of the 3 3/4 Marvel Universe line (the one Furyfiles.com, which is back up now, is promoting)? right here.

Want to see what the line looks like in action? right here

And just to explain how difficult our job is fighting rumors over here on this site, after months and months of speculation and mis-information we finally receive official word on the Collector's Pack last week. So we've got an official time (Late Fall), and an official place (Toys R Us), but what happens on one of the trading boards when someone asks when the set is coming out? He's told that it was officially confirmed to come out in August. At Wal-mart. Now, we thought that when that rumor started in April it was so silly nobody would fall for it, but apparently some did. To break it down once and for all:

Rumor: Collector's Pack 2 will be released in August, at Wal-Mart, and was delayed because characters in wheelchairs don't sell. Source: A guy that had a total of 5 posts to his name, posting on an out of the way thread on a random trading board about something a friend of his says he was told by someone else.

Truth: CP2 will be released in Late Fall, at Toys R Us. Source: an official Hasbro Q&A hosted by Raving Toy Maniac and thus slightly more believable than some guy who says he heard something from his friend who talked to a guy at a Hasbro booth

And finally, since a fair number of readers are interested in the DC Infinite Heroes, we hope to bring a few new surprises for them later this week.

Fury Files/Marvel Universe

While Furyfiles.com is down, there's still the following links available:

Spider-Man
Iron Man
Punisher
Silver Surfer

With more coming soon, as you can see at the SHIELD site while the video can be seen here

And Cool Toy Review has posted their shots of the Marvel Universe 3 and 3/4 inch (and more) toy previews. One of the best is this diorama

And from their coverage of the panel:

Q: How many Marvel Universe figures will there be?
A: 35 figures planned for 2009, possibly more. Maybe vehicles down the road.

Now, they showed pictures of roughly 25 figures during the slideshow, more if you count the Spider-Man/Iron Man/Human Torch/Ms. Marvel variants as separate characters, so that means we've seen a good chunk of the line for 2009 (and these things are planned out well in advance) unless response is strong enough to start a rush to fill the demand.

They're definitely going with the heavy hitters for this line, although they're a little X-Men light, and the women are woefully under-represented, but if they only produce 35 figures during 2009, while DC's Infinite Heroes should have roughly 45 out before 2009 even starts (ie, for that critical holiday shopping season) will that headstart make Marvel want to amp things up? 2009 is going to be fun, but expensive.

From the Hasbro Panel

Marvelous News is covering the Hasbro Panel. Most important:

Super Squad will have several more releases. There are 110 different figures so far. Captain America, Black Widow, Rhino, Tombstone, Astonishing Beast and Avalanche will be coming. There are some TRU exclusive packs coming.

So can we assume that BLK is Black Widow? Rhin is Rhino?

Also

Superhero Squad Spider-Man/Kraven did not ship. There have been a lot of requests for a release of that but there are no present plans. Hasbro is dedicated to the Squad.

And then there's lots of talk about the 3 3/4 line, explanation of Fury Files, pictures and all that

Edit: So they updated their picture gallery to include slides of the upcoming SHS packs, including the one with Black Widow/Captain America (apparently the brown/blue/white repaint we saw in the pictures), Astonishing X-Men costume Beast/Avalanche, Spider-Man (a repaint according to the slide, apparently the wall crawling one we've seen repainted a few times already)/Tombstone, Spider-Armor Spider-Man/Rhino (616).

That keeps true to the 2 Spider-Men, 2 other re-sculpts, 4 new characters (616 Rhino, Avalanche, Black Widow, Tombstone) trend.

And if the slides are wave specific (they look to follow the leaked Walmart SKUs pretty closely,) then Agent/Soldier is apparently a Skrull soldier and Nick Fury, although Nick Fury's body was also seen used for a generic SHIELD agent, so who knows what came first. Maybe it's the first real chase/variant figure (half Nick Fury, half SHIELD agents, or maybe it's just a change in plans, the way that the Carnage/Ben Reilly pack originally called for Ben Reilly/Spider-Man.)

Marvel's 3.75 line

We probably should have included this is our earlier post, but Hasbro has been coyly avoiding rumors and news of a 3 and 3/4 inch G.I.Joe style Marvel line as recently as July 2 in this Q&A with Marvelousnews

MN: Will a new Marvel 3 3/4" line debut at SDCC this year?

Hasbro: Three and three what? Currently, we have no news on a 3.75" line.

Or in this July 7 Q&A hosted at Pendragon's Post:

5) What's the official word on the Marvel 3 3/4th inch line?


The official word is no plans for 3-3/4" in 2008.

And now only a few weeks later, when asked the question again in that Cool Toy Review Q&A we linked to earlier they suggest keeping ones eyes peeled on Fury Files.com which redirects to a Hasbro sub-site which features a very 616 Nick Fury and a SHIELD logo, with news that the "transmission" begins on 7/25/08, this upcoming Friday.

These, plus the upcoming DC Infinite Heroes mean fans of large scale inter-company battles can finally wage war.