Questions We Want Answered

After discussing the still-not-released Collector's Pack 2 with a particularly nice reader (as you can see, we're very long-winded here, so we love to talk about anything from current comic books, toys, weather... just not politics. E-mail us wish questions, comments, suggestions, whatever...) a post was born:

Questions That We Hope Get Answered at SDCC!

There's going to be lots of pictures, peeks into the future of Hasbro's Marvel lines, product revelations, and even a Hasbro panel featuring marketing and design staff, and while we can't be there this year we're hoping Super Hero Squad fans are able to dig up answers to the following questions.

1) What happened to the Collector's Pack, and when will it be out?

The "handicapped figures don't sell" theory just doesn't cut it, for the reasons we already talked about, and with August almost upon us we can finally settle whether some guy's friend was truthful when he said it was coming in August as a Wal-Mart Exclusive (we're not big on gambling here, but we'll take the safe bet of "nope, it's not.")

2) Where's Kraven?

He's designed. He's sculpted. We know you guys plan waves out well in advance of release so it might be hard to fit him into an upcoming wave, but we're still waiting.

And we know the question has been asked before, but usually people tag team it with "and where's Vulture and Rogue?" so we still don't know what "plans to source some (but not all) of these" means.

Just straight up, is Kraven coming?

3) And while we're at it, what are the plans for hard to find figures like Rogue and Vulture?

But notice, it's a separate question from "are you guys going to release Kraven?"

4) Can we expect any more single packs?

England received some Spider-Man single packs, and Target had had the Easter-egg packaging impulse singles, so is that something we can expect to see more of in the future? While Target's price point was a little higher than some would have liked (a single figure at $5, while a 2-pack was a little over $6) and having the identical figures still available in two-packs at the same time probably resulted in some lost-sales, could we perhaps see more exclusives (ie, the white-web-shooting-Spidey?

5) What goes into character selection?

In any toy line you're going to have fans asking why Puma and not Prowler? Why Sentry but not Iron Fist? Why Ultimate Giant Man but not regular Giant Man?

Usually the distinction (ie, why one should be made before the other) is the fan's personal preference, but in general, what makes one character more likely to be made into a figure than another? What criteria do you look for? What can fans of any particular character do to help their favorite's chances?

6) Where's our Quinjet? Or Blackbird? Or Danger Room?

So far the playsets (ok... playset) haven't impressed us. Nor has the Spidey-Jeep. But have you considered meeting the comic/collector market half-way by giving them vehicles and playsets familiar to fans of the classics? A Danger Room with both play value and pose value, or an Avengers Mansion that serves double duty as battleground and showcase appeal to both markets!

What other questions do you guys and gals want answered this year??

Potential re-releases in 2009?

Apparently Hasbro's doing the Q&A rounds this week as Action Figure Insider has a Q&A that actually talks about Super Hero Squad.

"Q2. Several of the Superhero Squad 2 packs released last year were extremely difficult to locate…especially Rogue/Gambit, Spidey/Kraven and Spidey/Vulture. Are there any plans to re-release any/all of these guys in an upcoming wave/set?

A2) We do have some plans to source some (but not all) of these again in 2009."

Now, we understand that Spidey/Kraven was never released, so that would be a welcome addition, but it's too early to figure what sourcing "some of these" means. Straight out re-releases? Repaints? Resculpts?

And there is, of course, the old rumor we mentioned way back when where a guy on the Marvelous News forums said at NYCC another guy told him "Some of the figures, like Kraven, may be worked back into future waves of the main line". And like any good rumor, it was quickly stripped of sources, spread all over, and remixed.

So there you go, there's still hope for the hard-to-find sets, and for the ever elusive Kraven.

More Spider-Man/Kraven/Vulture/Venom rumors

A couple of recent rumors have started, all apparently by one source who doesn’t like to be corrected by yours truly, so while I intended to do a quick run-down, it looks like there’s going to be a couple posts here:

Spider-Man/Kraven

The rumor: Poor Sales killed Kraven

Truth: Nobody knows why he was pulled. This rumor is essentially a portmanteau of existing rumors and unrelated theories. In early January, 2008, a user on a SHS forum reported that he heard it was pulled for a design issue. Also in early January, other users on the same forum reported that their Walmarts were restructuring the toy departments to take out Spider-Man SHS, leaving only Robot Heroes, Super Hero Squad, and Galactic Heroes.

(insert message board posts from people claiming they’ve seen Kraven, they’ve seen others who have purchased Kraven, etc.)

In late January 2008, the same user said his source from Hasbro said that Spider-Man/Kraven would be officially released May 8th.

(insert message board posts from people complaining that Kraven is going to be “movie” version, whatever that means.)

(insert message board posts from people insisting they heard that February was the release date, that March was the release date, that they see it for pre-order here, or there.)

In February, the user with the source said Big Bad Toy Store sent him notice that Hasbro was not able to fill the order for a case with Kraven, and that Hasbro “have just informed me that they do not have any new assortments that include this item scheduled for 2008.” He then says his source still says May.

In March, the user with the source said his source now says that the Spider-Man line didn’t “do well enough at stores to release any further product.”

Note, this is not “Kraven was cancelled because of low sales”, but that Kraven was never released and a guy knows someone that said Kraven would come out months after the Spider-Man line was phased out of stores and stopped having new waves announced, and that someone later changed their mind.

Now, there’s a Vulture rumor from the same source that says Vulture and the Venom/Sandman packs are rare because poor sales resulted in limited quantities. Again, totally unfounded. While Marvel did say that Spider-Man sales were disappointing in an earnings call documented here on Seeking Alpha that was in August 2007. So they knew the sales were disappointing line wide on Spider-Man toys in August, continued to announce upcoming waves including the Kraven wave, released 2/3rds of the wave, and finally 5 months later major retailers take the line off the shelves (months after the wave had hit shelves, sold out and was not refreshed.)

In fact, Marvel does not even discuss the possibility of toy product scale down in the earnings call mentioned earlier. They do say “While Hasbro has not been disappointed with licensed Marvel toy sales to date, we have reduced our forecast for the second half of the 2007 to the lower end of their forecast to reflect a possibility of lower reorders, though we are hopeful that the planned DVD releases in Q4 will further stimulate sales.”

Which, in English, means Hasbro is ok with toy sales (if Hasbro was disappointed in toy sales, Marvel wouldn’t come out and say it, they’d just avoid mentioning Hasbro altogether rather than misrepresenting facts to their shareholders and then publishing those mis-representations) but Marvel doesn’t think they’ll get as much money from the toy line as they once thought they would.

No consideration of distribution problems whatsoever though, or the fact that every message board post I’ve ever found of someone finding the figures was at a Walmart, or how the toys were never even included on Hasbro’s site. Of course, for the distribution angle, the closest we have to an “official” (and I use the term loosely) word is discussed in this post where we nitpick how a guy named ransomz on Marvelousnews says that when he talked to a guy named Scott, from marketing, that the third wave of Spider-Man had crap for distribution and "Some of the figures, like Kraven, may be worked back into future waves of the main line” (keeping in mind that the third wave was the Green Goblin/New Goblin 2 pack wave, and not the Vulture Wave)

Grains of salt people.

And while I’m talking about the dearly departed Spider-Man line, there’s a really, really silly rumor regarding the switch from prototype Venom in the Venom/Puma pack, discussed in an earlier post. Basically, the new rumor is: “the Venom on the back of the package was the Venom that was originally supposed to be released in this 2-Pack, because it was too small to fit in with the line it was removed and replaced with this Venom.”
Of course no source whatsoever would be foolish enough to put a name to this.

The Venoms were switched, but there was never a reason given, either officially or unofficially, on the record or off. The Venom depicted was less hulking than the sculpt that had already been released, and the later re-sculpt, but this is a great example of a misapplied deduction.

There’s a pattern of circumstances made obvious after an event, so thus the event must have been triggered by non-conformity with the pattern. Unfortunately with this line of deduction while the guess may be logical, or “truthy” in a Colbert sense, it’s not actually supported by anything, and can easily be mis-applied. For instance, one could also argue that because the new Venom wasn’t the same as the Venom that had been released, he was replaced. It uses the same facts to arrive at the same truth, but it is not supported.

So while there may be some truth to the rumor, it’s pure guesswork based on faulty deduction.

Kraven never came out/Prototypes/Collector's Pack 2

I'm very behind with other projects so I haven't had a chance to post a few of the other rumors I'd intended to bust, so I figured I'd cherry pick an easy one, and roll it into 2 others.

Kraven never came out.

Most SHS fans know that. They've read the posts, they've scoured eBay. They know. But it's the newcomers that seem to be surprised.

As a piece of advice, if a figure is released, or even close to release, it'll show up on eBay thanks to people willing to steal them off the assembly lines in overseas factories. That's why people willing to pay $30 to $50 to get Fin Fang Foom a couple months early were able to score deals on eBay. For the rest of us who had no interest in a 400% mark-up, we picked it up at Walmart for $10. Plus tax. Go figure. But THAT should have been the first sign that Kraven never came out.

The second sign is that the review sights never posted him, at least not a "real" picture. The only pics that exist are promotional shots. That means there's a prototype. Just like there's a prototype Storm with upside down cape, and a prototype Venom sculpt shown in the early promotional material for Puma (and was at the last minute replaced with a Venom repaint.) But, just because we've seen those prototypes does NOT mean those sculpts were released.

This didn't stop the speculation. People have insisted that Kraven was released but only in certain areas, that he was delayed by put in refreshers. Some people also suggested he was coming out in May refresher cases for Spider-Man. The problem? The Spider-Man line folded into the main line immediately after Christmas, resulting in the now rare 2-packs featuring Vulture and the Sandman/Venom resculpts.

Now, the current rumor is that he's going into the Collector's Pack 2, which was shown last summer and has not been mentioned officially in months and months. The problem with that, is that there's still no confirmation, not even semi-official confirmation that we'll get a CP2. The contents of CP2 were leaked with CP1, and was erroneously included on listings at sites like Amazon.com for CP1, but CP2 is still a myth. Kitty Pryde, Professor X and Chrome Silver Surfer are still, at least as of now, prototypes that might some day come out. Considering that both Kraven and Collector's Pack 2 are the Super Hero Squad equivalent of vaporware, that means those rumors are just that, rumors. Here's the best part: those rumors are absolutely unfounded. Nobody can site to any authority anywhere even suggesting that Kraven is going to be folded in to the Collector's Pack. Not even a random message board. Nothing. Now, there's also absolutely no authority anywhere suggesting when CP2 is coming, but that doesn't stop some people from randomly assigning months to it (and then re-dating it as soon as that month comes and goes) but once again, there's no authority for any suggested release date. Not even totally unreliable authority, just no authority period.

So there you go: Kraven never came out, the pictures are promo pictures, Collector's Pack 2 is not on any schedule, people who say Kraven is getting folded into it are just going off other people who heard similar rumors.