If You Like... part 4

As you may have notice, while we love Super Hero Squad here at Rumorbuster, there's a whole world of other merchandise out there that you might (and may already) enjoy and we like to bring that to you. Plus, who knew some of this stuff was out there?

A little backstory: Before Marvel and Hasbro entered into their licensing which has had... let's just say mixed reactions (while it brought us the Super Hero Squad, Mighty Muggs and the upcoming 3.75' line, some people think it was tantamount to a deal with Mephisto... read the comments there) their kid-friendly licensing brand was Spider-Man and Friends. There are books, toys, games (the fairly recent Spider-Man Yahtzee used the Spider-Man and Friends logo I believe, while the recent Operation: Hulk had the Super Hero Squad logo) and the whole shebang. These were one of the pieces of merchandise liscenced out, and I have no idea whether more figures were planned but scrapped, or if the line would have continued if not for the Super Hero Squad figures, but as far as I know, these are the only four [Marvel Universe] characters produced. Given that the concept is a lot like a wooden Mighty Mugg I could almost imagine a custom market for these guys given the uniformity of the bodies (although there are dog, horse and skirted princess forms, amongst others) but tucked away in the deep recesses of the infant entertainment aisle there was no way they could be found by a possibly far more lucrative market: The Adult Collector.

News Clips 8/19/08

It's been a while since we've done a News Clips, so here we go.

While we discussed family friendly books earlier in the November Solicitations, Marvel's Free Mondays put up a Marvel Adventure Hulk issue for free reading this week.

Comics Continuum continues coverage of Marvel's animation, discussing how Steve Blum is voicing Wolverine in both the new X-Men cartoon and the upcoming Hulk Vs. direct to DVD title, how Spectacular Spider-Man is still likely homeless, etc, etc.

Marvel Animation Age has a news piece on how Wolverine and the X-Men will be premiering on Canada's YTV in September.

Sand Pit Standoff on Hasbro Toy Shop

This formerly Toys R Us exclusive that apparently first hit Wal-Mart before actually arriving at Toys R Us is now available on Hasbro Toy Shop! It's good to know that the Spider-Man line still pops up every so often, and that exclusives aren't always so exclusive!

Sand Pit Stand-Off

And the text describes it best:

"The sensational Spider-Man is locked in battle with his most dangerous enemies ever! He leaps from construction crane to bulldozer, slinging webs like never before. Meanwhile, New Goblin zooms through the sky on his sky stick, hurling pumpkin bombs, even as Venom and Sandman fight tooth and claw to be the first to land a punch on the web slinger!

Spring into adventure with the world’s greatest collection of Super Heroes. The mighty Spider-Man battles his foes and saves the day with his amazing abilities and super powers. Join the battle with the Spider-Man Super Hero Squad! Collectible, fun five-pack of stylized Spider-Man characters includes Spider-Man, Sandman, Venom, New Goblin and exclusive black chrome Spider-Man figures!"

It's listed to ship within 7 to 9 days and is item number 69277.

Spider-Man Super Hero Squad Playset

Hasbro has a new page up with the cryptical name of "Spider-Man Super hero squad playset". Now, the Bank Heist is already up on Hasbro's site and the Gamma Lab, featuring Spider-Man and Hulk is a TRU exclusive, so we're not quite sure what this posting is, or if it's just an error or test (noting the non-capitalized "hero", "squad" and "playset", but it could turn out to be something interesting. As we've been reporting, in recent Q&A's, when asked about playsets, Hasbro has only mentioned the Gamma Lab.

City in Crisis is now "Spider-Man Saves The Day"?

Marvelous News is reporting here that the new Super Hero Squad Spider-Man set with Green Goblin and Mary Jane is now called "Spider-Man Saves the Day", and as you can see in the up-close photos they've published, if you look at the top of the box, it looks like the box says it too. Of course, Hasbro itself is still calling it the City in Crisis, but oh well.

Comparing the Sandman up-close pictures they have with the Sandman that came in the two-packs, it looks like they've re-done the eyes, going from 2-Pack's round browns with white dots to more oval eyes. The belt buckle on 2-pack was a solid square, and on the new one it's got some stripes. The new Sandman also has belt-loops, and his fist hand looks a little more "muddy."

Looks like the checklist needs to be updated. Oh, and can someone explain to me why many people seem to refer to this Sandman sculpt as "the comic version" and the original sculpt as movie version? Maybe my eyes aren't as attuned as eveyone else's, but the movie Sandman costume was fairly representative of the comic costume, and once Squaded, it looks... well... just like a comic version would look once Squaded. So feel free to explain this riddle to me.

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.

Spider-Man is disproportionately represented.

Not really a myth, just something I want to get off my chest... no matter why you rationalize it Spider-Man is disproportionately represented in Super Hero Squad. With the current information regarding upcoming waves, Spider-Man continues to be 25% of the figures produced, not counting the movie-related lines.

The abundance of Spider-Men is one of the main complaints amongst collectors and we all acknowledge that it's because Spider-Man is popular. Movies, cartoons, toy lines, merchandising. Nobody is saying Spidey should go away (although, it's worth noting that the first 4 waves of Super Hero Squad were all Spider-Man free, and then the movie line came out.

But knowing that Spider-Man is now and will forever be a big seller doesn't change the fact that he's disproportionately represented. There are 3 times as many Spider-Men as his nearest competitors (Iron Man and Hulk) and that's because the recent movie lines result in a nice surplus of those two. There are 5 times as many Spider-Men as there are characters like Wolverine, Captain Ameirca, Ghost Rider, Punisher, any member of the Fantastic Four. WOLVERINE! Wolverine the star of 3 separate titles (Wolverine, Wolverine Origins and Wolverine First Class), leader of X-Force, co-star of New Avengers, Astonishing X-Men and Uncanny X-Men, star of 3 X-Men movies, major player in the animated X-Men, X-Men Evolution and the upcoming Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon.

One can argue that Spider-Man is more popular than Wolverine, but 5 times as popular? Are sales of 2-packs featuring Spider-Man that much higher than sales of 2-packs featuring Wolverine?

Marvel has many popular characters, and while Spider-Man may be the most popular, that doesn't mean other iconic characters like Wolverine "hurt" sales, or that making 1 Spider-Man 2-pack per wave would result in some catastrophic loss.

Sorry that this post is a bit of a soapbox (which you've come to expect from me) but for the life of me I wish people would stop subscribing to the concept that the line would be in some form of great and terrible danger if Spider-Man were not in (literally) every other 2-pack.

Oh, and by the way, look at eBay, online retailers any retail location that managed to get past Wave 1's Angel and Colossus 2-pack. What packs are the rarest, hardest to find and most demanded, first to sell out on Hasbro's online toy shop even. Beast/Iceman, Rogue/Gambit, Phoenix/Wolverine, Black Panther/Storm, Antman/Doctor Strange (baffling, but true), Human Torch/Silver Surfer. Beast/Iceman gets to the top of most Most Wanted lists because of the rarity and distribution problems, but for all the others... it's a solid combination of wanted character, good sculpt and general demand.

Mary Jane

Ok, now I believe in MJ... Actionfigs.com has a few photos, including a very menacing Green Goblin hovering over Mary Jane. Pics are viewable here. Any day now expect the people who could recognize Kraven from the sliver of his forehead, the ones posting "Kraven is coming in the new four-pack", to start realizing that a plume of orange could just as easily have been Mary Jane Watson Parker's bright red hair. Of course, having not seen the final 4-pack yet, it could be someone else but right now is when everyone posts everywhere about how they called X Fact, and how everyone else was wrong so I might as well jump on board.

Note: This is being published on 4/21/08. I had this saved as a draft a couple days ago and then forgot it. Now that the City in Crisis reveal has come and gone I probably should just shelve it, but oh well. I once posted on a forum saying "huh... I didn't think Wolverine/H was going to be Wolverine/Hulk, and it turned out to be Hand Ninja."

In response, a guy started posting a nonsensical tirade straight out of a 1980's Dan Rather beat-down... screaming nonsense and asking me what I won. Today, with the Crisis reveal, he bravely posted "guess I was right" (yup, 4 guesses later, and after everyone else guessed who was in Crisis LOL.) I shouldn't take delight in this, but since he spent the better part of his afternoon calling me stupid, misusing the term irony and just in general being a jerk to me... yeah. I take a little delight.

Long story short: nobody wins anything on the Internet but damned if it's not fun playing the game. For my next rumor: when the color black was invented.