The Action Figure and Toy Collecting and Discussion Thread!

After all, he IS the one who collects.

A couple of fuzzy smartphone pics have leaked onto Facebook allegedly showing Star Wars: Rebels products on the display floor of the upcoming NY Toy Fair. No carded action figures, but it seems as if Rebels will have a decent-sized display of merchandise at Toy Fair alongside whatever other Hasbro Lucas product has been brought along for the ride. Based on the images I saw it looks like everything including LEGOs will bear the animated Stormtrooper helmet logo with lots of white and orange in the color template.

 

Ten days and counting until the start of New York Toy Fair!



Apparently the new Transformers line (Age of Extinction) will take center stage in Hasbro's attention at the event with fresh Marvel product related to the new Captain America film and other projects also sharing the main spotlight from the company. Naturally, Star Wars, G.I. Joe and My Little Pony will also feature prominently but this year looks like it might be a robot and superhero-heavy Hasbro presentation. Stay tuned!

 

A superhero heavy presentation is all gravy with me. Of course, I don't really even think I need to say that.

A new installment of my action figure comic that really needs a title is coming soon, I promise. I've had some busy evenings lately, and just haven't gotten around to it.

 

When it comes to Star Wars product I imagine the big reveals will be packaged samples of Black Series 3.75" Wave Four (Dagobah Luke and Yoda, Toryn Farr) and 6" Wave Three (Stormtrooper, Bespin Luke). I haven't heard of any big new ships or vehicles on tap for the remainder of 2014 unless there's a big surprise they're holding off on revealing until Comic-Con happens later this summer. Right now it's gonna be about the action figures.

We might get a sneak peek of the all-new Ree-Yees sculpt from Jabba's Palace (the last version of him was all the way back in 1998) and a few other teases of a future wave assortment, but we'll see.

 

Haven't done a Clintasha adventure in a while. This time, Tasha and Sif have a girl's night, while Clint and Thor do guy stuff. You know, drink beer, tell each other fart jokes, have burping contests...

The ladies go through my nail polish to help me chose a shade to wear tomorrow.



Sif likes gold, Tasha prefers red.



Clint: Burrrrrrrp. Thor: BURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP.



(I think Thor won.)

 

Thor probably wins most drinking contests. Only Hulk would have a stronger bladder than he would, and the less we think about a gamma-irradiated bladder the better for everybody.

 

"We drank, we fought, he made his ancestors proud."

 

"This drink, I like it! ANOTHER!" *BURP*

 

(*Imagines Loki walking in with a keg over each shoulder*)

 

I'm on pins and needles with this one. Really interested to see how Hasbro is planning to combine the even-more-impossible-than-usual robot designs in AoE with their stated goal of simplifying the toys for younger kids plus the obvious budget cuts their toylines have been going through lately. If the "first edition" preview AoE Optimus Prime they released earlier in the week is any indication, it's going to be a trainwreck.

At the same time, they're supposedly releasing the bulk of the AoE toys under the collector-focused "Generations" brand imprint. I have no idea what to expect at this point.

 

Hasbro all-around has just been a disjointed, unfocused mess. They keep taking shortcuts and trimming corners yet continue to say their product will wow collectors and kids. There's only so much penny-pinching one can do to trim overhead and labor costs and maximize profit margins and still produce merchandise people will want. I guess we'll see.

 

Transformers had a good run until fairly recently; somehow, they managed to avoid the cost-cutting and general shittiness that was happening to all the other brands. But Hasbro finally fired the last of the old design team about a year ago (after a long process of slowly eliminating the engineers who'd worked on the franchise since the early 200s) and it's been crystal clear where they're headed. Within three years, we've gone from amazing, good-quality toys to cheap, simple, hollow crap. The speed of their descent has been rather breathtaking.

 

And there's only so much the company can blame on the bad-to-tepid consumer economy over the past five years or so. Something's just gone awry inside the company itself. The beancounters have taken control and convinced the suits that cutting corners in every way possible to maximize the shareholders' gains is what they should be doing, and the product has suffered as a result. They're taking dumb, lousy shortcuts to pad any profit margin they can and offering a lot of subpar product that is becoming more and more unpopular with its customer base.

This is not the way to compete with and beat companies like LEGO in the marketplace. If they're only focusing on the bottom line and sacrificing quality then the suits need to be replaced, because they took some great toy licenses and have driven them into the ground with their repetitive cost-cutting and poor product selections.

 

Sigh, today's hunt for Fett was still fruitless. It must be because a Black Cat crossed my path:


Damn, this is a nice figure. She reuses much of the Black Widow 2-Pack body, but that was a great body. She is a little....top-heavy, and those boots don't have a large surface area, so you have to fidget a bit to get her in a proper standing pose where she won't topple over.

 

Do they currently manufacture any stands for figures that size, or are there no peg holes on the feet to begin with? There are currently quite a few SW collectors who'd like to see 6"-scale and even larger figure stands developed for the Black Series characters and other products.

 

i hate you guys. i haven't seen any of the new Spidey figures anywhere.

 

Target and TRU seem to be the places they are showing up. I have yet to see them at any other retailers.

I'm sure someone somewhere manufactures stands. I know Mattel lets you buy a set, but they all have the Super Powers logo on them. Not the best for a Marvel toy. There are peg holes for them, at least.

 

My comic shop sold out of them. Amazon have them right now, including the Captain America Infinite Legends series...I think I might get the Marvel Now Cap. He looks great!

 

I'm not even sure if my own Target and TRU are carrying those figures. My stores are either Johnny on the Spot with the new releases or they're really late in getting product on the pegs. Who knows, though, because we're a large enough city and metro area that one collector could have come in and wiped out their new figure stock in just one visit. I've seen it happen with Star Wars. One guy shows up and buys all the new stuff in one purchase, leaving little or no evidence that the store even stocked the newest product to begin with.