DC Direct suckage drives neutral toy site over the edge!

Now I've seen it all. One of the best toy news sites out there, Cooltoyreview.com, lost it's cool this week. Driven to rant on the keyboard by another action figure line misfire delivered by DC DIRECT.

We love Cooltoyreview, they are one of the top sites out there with connections to most of the main toy vendors and the collector community. They work hard and are on the spot with news daily. But like many of these kinds of sites on the 'net, they have always remained very neutral when delivering photos of new product or the B.S. many of the toy companies spew in Q&A sessions. These sites would never dare comment on or criticize any information delivered for fear of jeopardizing their relationship with the Mattels, Hasbros, Sideshows or even DC Directs of the toy world.

Of course that's where this blog comes in.

But low and behold the guys at Cooltoyreview lost their shit while assembling a photo archive of DC Direct's newest 'History of the DC Universe' wave of action figures. This is the first figure line in DCD's history where they actually tried to add multi-point articulation. Specifically they were attempting to copy the sculpting and articulation of Mattel's superior DC Classics line. Apparently DC failed miserably and Cooltoyreview wasted no time driving the point home.

Amazing that after all these years and countless toy issues to comment on, this was the line that finally broke their silence. The critique is absolutely justified of course but we still can't believe they did it. There isn't nearly enough of this type of commentary on the main toy sites. I applaud the Cooltoy guys for finally stepping out. How do you expect improvement if you don't let the folks behind the scenes producing collectibles know what the collector actually wants?

Give us more like this 'Cool' guys.

You can read their DC Direct 'History of the DC U' Series 2 here.

Mattel DC Universe: Dear God Series 10 is a Wal-Mart Exclusive; Series 11 To Be Revealed AT SDCC; New SDCC 12" Flash Exclusive for TRU

Mattel revealed today that Series 11 of the impossible to find DC Universe line will be shown in it's entirety at SDCC in July. The assortment will include The Question, a fan poll winner, but the rest remain under wraps.

Bad news for Series 10: This assortment will be a Wal-Mart exclusive, as was Series 5, which most fanboys never saw on their local Wally shelves due to low production and horriffic distribution. Two figures from the assortment have already been shown; The Joker (originally teased as a possible SDCC exclusive) and Power Girl (with, surprisingly, the same redonkulous boobs she sports in the comics).

With the Joker being a key figure in the set, let's hope that this time Wal-Mart and Mattel have a better plan to distribute these to their stores than leaving three monkeys in a room with some darts and a map of the USA like they apparently did last time.

There will also be a previously unnanounced 12" DCU figure at SDCC; the Flash, which will only be sold at the TRU booth. The figure appears to have no ankle articulation, but surprisingly has 6" scale DCU type arms, although this may just be a photo of the 6" Flash, as there is nothing else in the shot for scale.

Yes, you read that right, TRU, the store with the worst internal distribution of any large chain in America, is setting up at SDCC for the first time this year. They will no doubt be trying to sell all those overstock Speed Racer and Dark Knight figures that are growing hair in their stores, along with this sure to be overpriced and underarticulated worm on the hook, that will at least get the fanboys to slow down as they pass the TRU display on the way to more rewarding booths.

If I was in charge of TRU, I'd spend more time trying to fix the problems at the existing loactions than setting up off site sales opportunities that come with the extra baggage of exclusive buys like this one, that will undoutably lead to some sweet in-store clearance prices on the 12" Flash for non-San Diego attendees. But that's just me.