Black Panther is being re-released? Black Cat? Puma?

Rumor: This line, or this figure, or this other one, are going to be re-released soon.

There is one thing that can split most toy collector groups in half: the re-release. Basically, when a toy company decides to put out a figure they’ve previously released, either through case revisions like many Marvel Legends variants or in a new package, in a set, whatever, it can turn a previously coveted toy into an eBay loser.
For some reason, everyone seems to have inside knowledge about Super Hero Squad figures being re-released. We’ve already discussed some of the re-release rumors previously, particularly the perpetual rumor that Kraven was going to be inserted into whatever case comes up next.

If it’s a “new” re-release, either in a box set as some of the Super Hero Squad box-sets like Sand Pit Showdown, or the majority of the Easter sets, then the only people “hurt” by the re-release are the collectors who open their figures and now have a figure indistinguishable from a newer, possibly cheaper, release. A repaint solves this problem as you now have “different figures.” When the figure is identical, both in paint and packaging, as the earlier figure the “mint-on-card” people get irked as well. While an out of package Captain America from Wave 1 is “worth” the same as an out of package Easter Egg Cap, in the package they’re different creatures. If the Wave 1 Captain America pack was re-released in modern packaging, they’re still different creatures. If the pack was re-released complete with Wave 1 packaging, then the “collectible” just got a little less rare.
Of course, Captain America is just an example since the Wave 1 set is still readily available on auction sites.

Now, on the other side of the debate are those that want the figure, but not at the “rare” price. When a loose Vulture goes for 38.00 you can be certain that there are many people willing to pick up a box-set with him, even one of straight up re-releases. A repaint would filter out some demand from people collecting only the characters. A re-sculpt would also alleviate some of that demand. Suddenly finding a source of un-opened Vulture packs and flooding the market would almost certainly bring down prices for the figure, both loose and carded.

So, on May 15, someone pointed out on Fwoosh that the Black Panther/Storm wave was back up for order on Entertainment Earth some people will be pleased, some not so much. Of course, the “reorder” was pulled on May 19th, a few days later so don’t get too excited thinking about finally getting your hands on the Black Panther.

Another interesting re-release rumor was started when Hasbro put the Black Cat, Puma, and Mysterio packs onto their website. By changing the Product ID, you can cycle through their latest offerings (as of right now, the last thing up is a Star Wars troop building 8 pack of Destroyer Droids)

So, are we going to see Black Cat, Puma and Mysterio released again? Who knows. It’s also possible Hasbro only put up the package profiles to enable people to completely mark their online Wishlists, or as a way of showing their history. If either of those are the case, then we may see Vulture and the Venom/Sandman two-pack put up soon as well. But, most importantly, it’s not proof that the figures are being re-released.

In short: Rumors that Black Panther or Puma, or any figures from those two waves, are being re-released are just that: rumors. You shouldn’t try to unload your collections before the prices “crash”, and if you’re thinking of purchasing one of those figures, there’s no proof of an impending rerelease to lower the prices. The Black Panther wave was only briefly back up on Entertainment Earth as available for sale, and was then promptly taken back down, and nobody has any idea why Hasbro put Black Cat, Puma and others on their website.

Marvel's Hulk SHS Gallery

Marvel has gotten into the Super Hero Squad promotion bandwagon with high-res pics of 7 of the 8 2-packs from the first waves, pictures of the Brawl That Shook the World set (showing one Hulkbuster's goggles to be blacked out, and both busters having reversed coloring from the 2-pack version of the soldier, and best of all, the box doesn't have that annoying Toys R Us Exclusive sticker in the way) and pictures of the 2-packs display case.

So there you go, the Hulkbusters are all different, clear new pictures, what more can you ask for? The Wave 2 toys themselves? Well... yeah, we're waiting too.

Comic-Style Abomination, A First Look at Mystique, and the Gamma Lab Up Close!

First, as a follow-up to an earlier post, I checked out Animation Magazine again to see if I could find any information on a bigger shot of that promotional art they featured. As you'll remember from my post here we saw Ultimate Nick Fury and others, but some of the figures were crossed off.

Sometime after I posted the link (or else it was there and I totally missed it) they posted the full shot. So what do we see? Abomination is NOT the movie Abomination I thought he was! Great news for fans of the comic style figures. The white hand with the gun was Mystique (in what is our first artwork featuring her I might add) and Super-Skrull is also there. The white hand over Cyclops's shoulder was Iceman, and Hulk and Captain America also make full appearances.

But no Spider-Man.

Secondly, Cool Toy Review has this preview of the Gamma Lab Adventure, which is just a repaint of the Bank playset from the Spider-Man line. The paintjob for the apartment/garage section is a bit more Spider-like than the previous red, yellow, grey and white colors, but the maroon and orange Gamma Lab is… daring.

One fun game is to look at the box art for possible upcoming characters. When the Gamma Lab first appeared, the appearance of a comic Green Goblin took some people by surprise, but now that we’ve seen a larger shot, you’ll see comic book 616 Abomination (taking place before his battle with Red Hulk in Hulk 1 for obvious reasons), flying Iron Man, comic Green Goblin, comic Hobgoblin hiding behind Spidey’s apartment window, comic Venom, comic Doctor Octopus (sitting on his arms just like his recent release), fist-punching Thing from the upcoming Hulk wave 2 (where he accompanies She-Hulk), and of course Spider-Man and Hulk.

For those keeping track at home, if you purchased the original Bank Heist set, the later version of the Bank Heist set with the re-cast Spider-Car, the new Gamma Lab, and the Spider-Vehicles, you’ll have a whopping total of 5 vehicles, 4 of which use almost entirely the same mold (the Spider-Vehicle has a spring-loaded action feature, but otherwise the bodies for all 4 are the same) to drive your 20+ Spider-Men into battle on.

I think this is the first post where I talk about both about how many Spider-Men we have, and how conspicuously absent he is from other aspects of the line, so yeah, it gets a "too many Spider-Men" AND A "where's Spider-Man" tag.

Attack of the Iron Man Repaints!

Yup, those photos from NYC of 8 carefully grouped Iron Men were a sign of things to come.

The Crimson Dynamo Attacks Item Number 78767

and

The Genius of Tony Stark Item Number 78768

And the solicitation text:

Crimson Dynamo Attacks

"The nuclear-powered Super Villain known as the CRIMSON DYNAMO attacks one of Stark International's secluded desert storage facilities, intent on stealing what technology he can sell, and destroying the rest. Luckily, IRON MAN is there, testing his new desert combat armor. Using his remote systems, he takes control of two other powerful armor systems and turns the tables on his attacker!

Team up with these funky figures and create exciting adventures right in your own living room! Small in stature but big on fun, these cool characters are sure to save the day from a boring afternoon. So get ready to do battle with the Super Hero Squad!

Includes CRIMSON DYNAMO, WAR MACHINE, Classic IRON MAN and Desert Armor IRON MAN figures."

and The Genius of Tony Stark:

"No matter where Tony Stark goes, he never stops inventing. He is a restless thinker, and a constant engineer. Over the years, he has built dozens of battle suits, both for himself and his friends and allies. Every single one is the best of its kind, a top-of-the-line suit of armor designed to seek and destroy evil wherever it hides.

Team up with these funky figures and create exciting adventures right in your own living room! Small in stature but big on fun, these cool characters are sure to save the day from a boring afternoon. So get ready to do battle with the Super Hero Squad!

Includes Iron SPIDER-MAN, Ultimate WAR MACHINE, HULKBUSTER IRON MAN and 1st Appearance IRON MAN figures."

In short, it looks like the ugly brown Iron Man is now "Desert Armor" and not "Extremis Iron Man" as some sites have decided. Iron Spider-Man looks more metallic and a more classic Crayola red. The Crimson Dynamo looks like he's got some metallic reds, so here's hoping we have at least moderate repaints for all the characters (that way variant hunters aren't stuck with dupes.)

And on a semi-related note, did I already mention how you shouldn't keep calling a character "First Appearance" when you've already released 2 different versions of his "first appearance" look, and now you're onto his next armor design/color scheme?

More Super Hero Squad photos from NYCC

I know I ragged on Cool Toy Review for jumping on the Guess-the-SKU bandwagon with the Wolverine/Hand Ninja (back when all we had for news on the set was "The H"), but they're not bad folks. In fact, they've even got more photos of the Super Hero Squad figures shown at this year's NYCC.

Obviously the big news was our first look at Mary Jane and the City in Crisis set, and the big rumor was the dubious Wheelchair theory discussed in other posts, but the eagle-eyed observers will notice subtler things, namely all those re-paints.

First off, you'll notice that there were 8 Iron Man related figures grouped together here so it's a good sign we'll be getting Iron Man wave. No word yet on whether it will be another wave of 4-packs (as the first Iron Men were, and as repaint sets usually go), or whether it'll be 2-packs like the Hulk figures, but we'll see soon enough. I still can't tell if Crimson Dynamo is a different paint job but my computer screen may just be off. Same goes for Iron-Spider-Man, but even if he's a straight re-release fans of Avengers: The Initiative will know why they need 2 suit Scarlet Spiders (and why 3 suits is currently too many.)

In prior posts we mentioned how Ares and Thor look less metallic than the current photos, but looking at Spidey's squirting a black web which is a relief to variant hunters who purchased the Target white-web shooting Spider-Man shown in earlier promo shots. Shield-slinging Cap looks a lot darker than the other Captain Americas we see, and Red Skull's Cosmic Cube is gray, not the clear plastic we've seen on Hasbro Toy Shop.

As we discussed in the Prototypes post what you see isn't always what you get. Will these turn out to be surprise paint-change variants like the Silver Iron Man/Gray Iron Man Hall of Armor 4-packs, or is it just a matter of prototypes not matching end results?

We'll find out soon since most of these figures are scheduled for release on Hasbro Toy Shop within the next month and a half.

New York revelations

So NYCC has hit, and so have photos.

Marvelousnews is the big source of photos.

If you flip through you'll see shots of Golden FA Iron Man (uh, it's not First Appearance if it's not a first appearance... but why am I calling it that? Cause others are doing it and I want to be cool), Ultimate Iron Man repainted in War Machine colors, Crimson Dynamo (doesn't look like a repaint to me... maybe it's a little more metallic?), Silver Centurion armor repainted in yellow, the Hulk wave Hulkbuster IM (again... doesn't look repainted to me but maybe?), Tony Stark repainted in brown/gold, War Machine repainted in Iron Man colors, Iron Spidey (again, repaint or not?).

And still going we've got Spider-Man hanging from a lamp-post (back to original sculpts!), a repainted Sandman II (from the Venom set), Crossbones, Falcon, background shots of the recently released Deadpool and Spider-Woman wave, better shots of Red Skull, Sentry (who looks better than I expected after the photo I saw yesterday), Electro and those Spidey re-paints, a less-metalic Thor and Ares (is this a sign of a running change or of an early repaint set?), blurry Green Goblin.

Then some shots of the Hulk toys including the Hulk box set (boxed Abomination's colors are swapped with 2-pack Abomination, and it does look like the box-set will have 2 soldiers, Hulk, Abomination and a larger-than-I-expected Hulkbuster vehicle.

But poke around the photos and see if you find any easter eggs.

Sentry, Electro, Blade and Red Skull photos

Over on The Fwoosh Forums there's a scan of a catalog shot of the new figures. I won't link directly to the picture (since that's a little tasteless for total strangers to burn through the guy's photobucket bandwidth limits) but it's available for viewing in the Super Hero Squad forum.

Most important news: The ad says they start shipping in July. Now, the poster didn't say what company the ad was from, as companies like Entertainment Earth and Hasbro's catalog tend to ship after the figures are already available in stores, so they might hit earlier, but for now, it looks like the totally unsourced and absolutely made-up release date of June that some people are saying is wrong. Now, maybe this catalog is right and it will be July, or maybe the catalog is wrong and they'll hit stores a month before shipping from whereever this catalog is from, but at least it's slightly more reliable than a date picked out of thin air simply because it's somewhat near the pre-order dates for other waves on some other sites (because using that logic, Hasbro's Marvel Legends wave 4 should be hitting any day now.) Well, that's it for the soap-box.

The picture shows that Captain America is going to be in full shield-slinging glory (to go with our holding-the-shield and shield-on-his-back Caps), Punisher is in a trenchcoat with some non-street legal guns blaring from both arms (which solves the complaint people have about Mr. Rocket Launching Punisher from the early waves), Red Skull is in the classic green jumpsuit with a Cosmic Cube.

Blade looks very Wesley Snipes-ish, but that's fine since that's the look most people recognize (although there would be a certain nostalgia factor in a 1970's era Blade), and comes armed with a gun and a sword. Between reality warping cubes, Cap's shield, and the guns-a-blazin Blade and Punishers, this is definitely a more action oriented set of sculpts than we've seen before.

Electro is classic yellow-star-on-his-face, and not Sensational/Animated style or the post-modern mask-off, lightning everywhere style that artists sometimes try to pass off (yeah it's more realistic, but it's not more recognizable.) Fans of the Sinister Six rejoice.

Sentry is the last new sculpt shown, and it's a little... well... I'll hold off until we see more than just a low-res scan of an order form. He looks to be in mid-flight pose, and he's shown as bulkier than Spidey (which he probably should be) but I suppose it is hard to capture the character's powers in SHS format.

The two Spider-Man figures in the line look like re-sculpts, but as I discussed in this previous post promo shots aren't always the end result, and they could just be a place-holders.

If they're NOT place-holders, then one of the Spideys looks to be the white-web shooting Spidey from the Easter single packs (good news for everyone that lives away from a Target, bad news for everyone that picked up the rather over-priced Easter impulse set.)

The other Spidey is a black-webbed (aka "comic" version for those that care) version of the left-hand-shooting, right hand grabbing figure, but it's hard to tell if that hand is open (ie, ready to hold the webbing in the Bank Heist playset) or closed (punching) so we'll have to wait for a clearer picture.

While many people complain about the abundance of Spider-Men, at least we were still getting new sculpts, and even new Spider-Characters (Ben Reilly, the Iron Spidey costume now used by the Scarlet Spiders over in the Initiative) so hopefully this isn't a sign of future trends.

I know Hasbro's sculptors must be running low on ways of making Spidey look unlike the other 20 figures we already have, but just as a bit of pontificating here: Casual collectors will tolerate re-sculpts, and variant collectors will tolerate re-paints, but when it comes to straight up re-issues, you run the risk of alienating those markets.

Edit: a few posts down in the thread, someone says that the picture was from Previews, so there you go, a source for the picture.